A Hat Tip To Bobby Murcer

This combines footage from an award ceremony earlier this year and a 1971 clip of Bobby Murcer doing a public service announcement
from the 5/9/08 nytimes

Murcer the Author Tells of His Life and New Yogiism, By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Bobby Murcer did not expect to write his autobiography so soon, but in 11 days, on his 62nd birthday, “Yankee for Life: My 40-Year Journey in Pinstripes” (Harper), will be released. It is funny, wry, lovely — and about having the worst brain cancer possible.
“I’d always thought about writing a book, but I wasn’t going to do until I was totally retired,” Murcer, a YES Network analyst, said by telephone from his car on Thursday. “But since I had the cancer, I thought I ought to ratchet it up a year or two.”
The book is not entirely about cancer, but also deals with his upbringing in Oklahoma; his minor league and major league careers; his enduring thrill at being a Yankee; his sense of exile after being traded to the Giants (with glee, he writes, by the Yankees president Gabe Paul); and his elation at returning to the Bronx. It includes his broadcasting career in which, thanks to Phil Rizzuto, he ate about 2,500 cannolis; his devotion to his wife, Kay, and their two children; and his regrets at once endorsing tobacco (and driving the Skoal Mobile).
His chapters about being a Yankee offer mostly gentle, amusing observations. He noted that he was nicknamed Lemon by Fritz Peterson, whose family-swapping with his fellow Yankee pitcher Mike Kekich buried the news in 1973 that Murcer had signed a $100,000 contract. He recalled how the longtime pitching coach Jim Turner, a chocoholic, desperately sought edible pieces of a chocolate cake unspoiled by reliever Sparky Lyle’s nude plunges into pastry delivered to the clubhouse.
He remembered Tommy John’s excessive loquaciousness; his closeness with Thurman Munson and Lou Piniella (and the time they spent together before Munson’s fatal airplane crash); and his decision, rendered within 30 minutes at the persuasive request of George Steinbrenner, that he retire and move into the broadcast booth.
Another “request” by Steinbrenner came a year and a half later: leave Rizzuto’s side to become assistant general manager and succeed Clyde King as G.M. after a year. Murcer’s reaction: “What an honor! What an opportunity! What a mistake!” After a year, he knew a front-office job was not his personal destiny and happily returned to Rizzuto’s side.
Obligatory Rizzuto story: The Tiger Stadium’s radio booth offered a difficult vantage point, prompting the Scooter to declare that a fly ball by Cecil Fielder had soared over the roof. Yet, to Rizzuto’s shock, it was caught by Yankee shortstop Alvaro Espinoza. “The shortstop!” Murcer recalls Rizzuto saying. “Murcer! How can the shortstop catch ... oh, Murcer! I can’t talk anymore.” True to his word, he stopped talking.
Obligatory Yogiism from the book: Berra got a call from Mel Stottlemyre asking about Murcer. “Hey Carm!” Berra shouted to his wife. “He wants to know if we’ve heard anything about Bobby’s autopsy down in Houston.” Not autopsy, Yogi, biopsy.
Murcer writes candidly about his brain tumor, a glioblastoma multiforme discovered in December 2006, and his surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and vaccine, which he takes as part of a clinical trial. He tells an intimate story that does not seem as harrowing as it should be, in a casual voice captured well by his collaborator, Glen Waggoner (a co-creator of Rotisserie baseball). Murcer and his family cry but seem to believe they were chosen by God for the ordeal.
About the five hours required to remove the three-and-a-half-centimeter tumor (which was lifted out of his brain like a golf ball from the rough, his surgeon told him), Murcer wrote: “Think an extra-inning game, plus a couple of rain delays.”
At the end of a course of radiation, he and Kay drove from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to Dallas in time for the birth of their son’s twins.
After Murcer finished his final round of radiation, Kay sent friends a poem she had written that read, in part:
“The end’s in sight, and so tonight/our greeting’s sent with glee./With 7 ‘zaps’ and cute skull caps/From Houston we’ll soon flee.”
Murcer said Thursday that he was accustomed to discussing terminal brain cancer. The book reflects that ease.
“It is what it is,” he said. “I know we have a battle on our hands, and we’re equipped for the battle because we have God on our side. I’m realistic about where things are and how they might turn out but we’re not shying from anything.”
About his wife, whom he met in childhood, he added, “I don’t know why God sent me an angel to take care of me, but she’s that angel for sure.”
Murcer returned to his work at YES last weekend, sounding weak last Friday but stronger on Sunday. He will continue to work as he often as he can.
“God has blessed us so much since I was diagnosed with this brain tumor and so many blessings have come my way,” he said. “It’s changed our lives for the better.”
His coming birthday is a reminder of his mortality and his hope. He will not celebrate it with a book party. He will be in Houston, taking a vaccine whose goal is to stop or slow the growth of new cancer cells.