Bobby MurcerLast Saturday, we mourned the passing of Tony Snow, and later that day I heard the news of another death from cancer, former New York Yankee Bobby Murcer.

Being named for Mickey Mantle assured my allegiance to the Yankees, but by the time I was old enough to be aware and follow the game of baseball, Mantle was on his way out and the Yankees had become perennial cellar dwellers. Still, I stuck with them, but I needed a favorite player. Everybody in the neighborhood had picked one for themselves, and Bobby Ray Murcer fit the bill for me. For one thing, he had played for my hometown minor league team, the Greensboro Yankees, a few years earlier. And after being slowed down by a two-year stint in the U.S. Army, his baseball career was beginning to take off. Most important, though, he was being hailed as “The Next Mickey Mantle.” The comparison to Mantle was as understandable as it was unfair. They both were natives of Oklahoma, they both were signed by the same scout, and they both started out as shortstops before being moved to center field.

In our neighborhood backyard Wiffle Ball games, while my friends pretended to be Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, or Pete Rose, I was always No. 1, Bobby Murcer. I even tried to force myself to bat left-handed just like him, usually swinging and missing, not like him. Every year I voted for him to play in the All-Star Game, and thanks to me and thousands of other like-minded fans he made it five straight times. Despite the Yankees’ dismal showing in the early ’70s, Murcer somehow found a way to shine, always finishing high up in batting and fielding statistics, leading the majors in on-base percentage in 1971 and leading the American League in extra-base hits, total bases, and runs scored while winning a Gold Glove for his fielding prowess in 1972. Other highlights included smacking four homers in four consecutive at bats in a doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians in 1970, and hitting for the cycle against the Texas Rangers in 1972.

I was devastated when the Yankees traded him after the 1974 season for San Francisco’s Bobby Bonds (Barry’s dad, who, coincidentally, had been proclaimed “The Next Willie Mays”). It was hard for me to ever forgive owner George Steinbrenner and the Yankees for reneging on their promise that Murcer would be a “Yankee for life” (which happens to be the title of Murcer’s recently published autobiography). I grudgingly remained a Yankee fan but continued to follow Murcer’s career from the Giants’ Candlestick Park to Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Finally, while I was in college, the Yankees did the right thing and brought Murcer back to the Bronx.

The June 1979 trade reunited Murcer with his old friend, catcher Thurman Munson, but that reunion was short-lived, as a little over a month later Munson died tragically in a plane crash. After delivering one of the eulogies at Munson’s funeral in Canton, Ohio, Murcer flew back to New York with his teammates to play against the first-place Baltimore Orioles on national television. With the Yankees trailing 4-0 in the seventh inning, Murcer slammed a three-run homer. In the ninth, he slapped an opposite-field single down the line to knock in two more runs, giving the Yanks an emotional 5-4 win. “There is no way to explain what happened,” Murcer said. “We used every ounce of strength to go out and play that game. We won it for Thurman.”

Murcer, who was in exile when the Yankees won the American League pennant in 1976 and the World Series in 1977 and 1978, finally made it to the Fall Classic in 1981, but as a reserve in a losing effort. Two years later, he retired to make room on the Yankee roster for another former Greensboro minor leaguer, Don Mattingly. (Murcer was the only Yankee to share the field with both Mantle and Mattingly.) Murcer went straight from the playing field to the broadcast booth, where he remained for most of the rest of his life.

It was shortly after Murcer’s retirement that I rekindled an interest in baseball cards, and I was determined to collect every one of Murcer’s cardboard cutouts (even his Canadian ones, eh?). Thanks to a good friend of mine who was a card dealer, I was able to do so. And in 1990, I finally met my favorite player at a hot-stove-league event here in Greensboro. He was as gracious and as nice as I always thought he would be, and he took time to talk to me and my friend and to autograph several items for us.

I lost track of Murcer over the next 16 years, as my interests focused less on baseball and card collecting and more on my faith, family, and career. But in late 2006, I noticed that his name was in the news again, but this time, the news wasn’t good.

On Christmas Eve 2006, Murcer found out he had a brain tumor. Surgery followed two days later, and it was discovered that the tumor was malignant. The night before his surgery, he and his family found comfort in Deuteronomy 31:6, and as he went through various treatments, he continued to rely on the strength of God’s presence in his life. “My faith believes that God has healed me already,” Murcer told The Christian Chronicle in the spring of 2007. “I can’t imagine any other thing because I just think that’s what his promise is for me.”

His faith did not diminish but instead grew as he battled this horrendous disease. “I think God tests us with our faith, and sometimes, he has to get our attention to bring us back on the railroad tracks,” he said in that same interview. “Everybody thinks they’re in charge of their own life, and I’ve come to find out that I’m not really in charge of my own life. It’s not what my will is. It’s what God’s will is. And whatever his will is, it’s fine with us.”

The next time I heard about Murcer was last Saturday. I pulled out his old baseball cards, and while looking at that youthful, smiling face of his, I felt memories of my childhood flooding back, and I could see myself playing in the backyard, trying to swing left-handed, and being my favorite player, Bobby Murcer.