The Murc

Nice piece on Bobby Murcer's return to Yankee Stadium yesterday.

At the Stadium, some fans looked twice at Murcer, with his full head of silver hair now down to some stubble, as he walked toward them.

Downstairs in the press dining room, he was embraced in a bear hug by Ken Singleton, his YES colleague.

“I missed you a whole lot,” he said directly into Murcer’s ear.

“Hello, sweetheart, I love you!” Murcer said to Suzyn Waldman, who calls Yankee games on WCBS Radio. “Thanks for everything you did.”

Waldman, a breast cancer survivor, sent him care packages with boxes of lemon drops to stimulate taste buds deadened by his treatments.

“Welcome back and God bless you,” the public-address announcer Bob Sheppard said as he wrapped Murcer in a surprisingly long and tight grip, and confided that his daughter was being treated at M. D. Anderson.

Murcer watched the first two innings in the Babe Ruth Suite, where he was embraced some more, before he walked with his wife to the YES booth to join Singleton, Michael Kay and Joe Girardi for the third inning.

Their boss, John Filippelli, has been concerned for weeks about the effect that traveling to games from Oklahoma City, and calling them, might have on Murcer’s health. Filippelli, YES’s president of production, has reason for concern: one of his two sons, Pierce, 17, has been in remission from Burkitt’s lymphoma for two years. “Bobby looks good and feels good,” Filippelli said, “but if I sense fatigue, we’ll play things accordingly.”

Murcer stood between Singleton and Girardi for one inning, and then a second, his voice strong as he offered bits of analysis. “I can’t tell you I know everything about baseball,” he said, “but I’ll just make it up like I always do.”

Good people.