Yankee for life

Written by Bernie Weisz Historian BernWei1@aol.com 10/21/09 ****Reading About Bobby Murcer:My Youth Revisited! This was a very hard book to read, as I knew from page one what Bobby Murcer's fate would be from his inoperable brain tumor. I had this same feeling of "gloom and doom" when I read Tug McGraw's memoir, published posthumously. Ya Gotta Believe!: My Roller-Coaster Life as a Screwball Pitcher and Part-Time Father, and My Hope-Filled Fight Against Brain Cancer Similar to Tug's book, there is a picture of Murcer on the cover showing him ravished by the effects of cancer. This is not the Bobby Murcer I want to remember. I first met Bobby Murcer as an 11 year old adolescent in 1971. My sister, Helaine, had a boyfriend named Mitch. I would constantly watch the Yankees on WPIX, and this gentleman saw that I liked baseball. Mitch asked me why I never went to a ballgame. I had trouble explaining to him that my father was from Czechoslovakia originally (he was an R.A.F. pilot during W.W. II) who not only didn't understand baseball, but thought it was a stupid game. My father taking me to Yankee Stadium was out of the question. Similarly, my mother didn't understand the sport either,