W. Curt Vincent, Copy Editor

"And thus he bore without abuse; the grand old name of gentleman."

— Lord Alfred Tennyson

I lost perhaps the closest thing I've ever had as a sports idol the other day.

This is our story ... ...

It was my first-ever spring training game — Scottsdale, Ariz., 1977 — and I was about as excited as I've ever been as I approached that stadium entrance. I was going to see the man who, eight years earlier, started my serious love affair with baseball.

Suddenly, there he was.

His Chicago Cubs uniform wasn't quite as familiar as the New York Yankees pinstripes I'd grown up seeing him in, and he wore the Cubs' No. 7 rather than the No. 1 he'd worn as a Yankee. He was sitting close to the stands — in a rocking chair — laughing with a few fans.

This was Bobby Murcer.

The late-'60s was a time when players like Carl Yastrzemski, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Brooks Robinson and Bob Gibson reigned. But Murcer caught my attention for two reasons. First, he was being touted as the next Mickey Mantle (both were from Oklahoma) and, second, because his early Major League Baseball career mirrored my early Little League Baseball career (we both started as infielders but, after countless wild throws that often endangered the lives of fans along the first-base line, we were both moved to the outfield).

On that warm March day in Arizona, with the game still an hour away, I slowly walked toward Murcer with the trepidation of a first-day clubhouse boy. But moments after saying "Hello, Mr. Murcer," I felt like I'd been a friend of his for years. He eagerly shook my hand, told me to call him Bobby, asked if I was a Cubs fan and posed for photographs. Then, as if he was reading my mind, HE asked ME if I'd like an autograph.

I'm not sure I've ever been as close to Cloud Nine as I was that day.

And over the years, I was ecstatic with the highs of Murcer's career — including a four-homer day across two games of a double-header, all-star nominations, the trade that brought him back to the Yankees from the Cubs and his one-man show against the Orioles just hours after giving a heartfelt eulogy following the passing of his friend, Thurman Munson. I also felt crushed through some of the low points — like the struggles he had when the Yankees were forced to play home games at Shea Stadium while "The House That Ruth Built" was being remodeled in the mid-'70s, being traded to San Francisco for Bobby Bonds, his retirement in 1983 to make room on the Yankees roster for Don Mattingly and the announcement he had brain cancer on Christmas Eve in 2006.

In 1988, with the Yankees going through another tumultuous season with Billy Martin at the helm, I managed to have the Yankees beat for the North Jersey Advance newspaper in Flanders, N.J. Dean Singleton, the owner, didn't know it, but I would have paid him to have that kind of assignment. And it was at the Old-Timers' Game that year that I was able to meet Murcer again — not on the field or in the clubhouse, but in the broadcast booth for WPIX. And he was the very same good-natured, country-charming kind of guy I'd met in 1977.

I knew then not to tell him we'd met at that spring-training game 11 years earlier, but the way he chatted with me almost made it feel like he remembered that day. Then again, it never seemed like Murcer ever met a stranger. But what I'll remember most about that day wasn't the easy way we talked about the Yankees or Oklahoma (he turned down a scholarship to play at Oklahoma University, I attended Oklahoma State), but it was the fact that, as he walked me out of the WPIX booth, he put his hand on my shoulder and asked about my family.

That was Bobby Murcer.

On July 13, Murcer died after an 18-month battle with brain cancer. He left behind a wife, two children and five grandchildren — as well as countless broken hearts belonging to fans throughout Major League Baseball.

There may be a number of Yankee players with better statistics, more gold gloves and more all-star appearances, but there are very few who can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Murcer as a beloved Yankee. He was a true gentleman.

Rest in peace, Mr. Murcer.

— W. Curt Vincent can be reached at 739-4322, Ext. 148, or by e-mail at cvincent@robesonian.com.