Bobby "Warning Track" Murcer

Sad day in Yankeeland. Our thoughts go to his wife of 40-odd years, Kay.

He was named to five All-Star teams, from 1971 to 1974 while with the Yankees and in 1975 while with the San Francisco Giants. A memorable career moment came on June 24, 1970, when he hit four consecutive home runs in a doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians.

Murcer moved to the Yankee broadcast booth, as a commentator, the night of June 20, 1983, hours after George Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ principal owner, offered him the job during his second stint with the Yankees, when he was playing infrequently. He teamed at the outset with Phil Rizzuto, Frank Messer and Bill White and remained a Yankee broadcaster most of the time after that until his death.

Murcer recalled how “one critic sniffed that my Oklahoma accent sounded a bit incongruous.” But, as he put it, “I’d spent almost four decades perfecting that accent, and I sure wasn’t going to change now.”

As for those early comparisons to Mantle, Murcer once told The New York Times that he did not feel overburdened. “I was too young and too dumb to realize what they were trying to do in the first place,” he said, “and by the time I realized it, I had already established myself.”

It seems like not a season goes by that the Yankees don't have a black arm band with their navy pinstripes.

In August 1993, Mantle presented Murcer for induction into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame at ceremonies in Oklahoma City.

Mantle, who died in 1995, struck an irreverent note at the ceremony. “The first time I ever heard of Bobby Murcer,” The Saturday Oklahoman quoted him as saying, “they said a kid from Oklahoma was gonna be the next Mickey Mantle. They were right. Sure enough, he couldn’t play shortstop either.”