Twenty-five years ago today, a small jet plane that Yankee catcher Thurman Munson owned, and had recently become accredited to fly, crashed due to pilot error in a field near the airport of Munson's hometown, Canton, Ohio. Munson was 32 and the soul of the Yankees that went into the 1979 season as the three-time defending AL champs and winners of the previous two World Series. The story linked in the title of this post is very good and has a rather harrowing description of the crash and the conditions of Munson's plane in the immediate aftermath of the crash. One quibble: Munson was NOT a good pilot -- his teammates would not fly with him and Steinbrenner REPEATEDLY begged Munson to ground himself because The Boss worried that the worst would happen.
And yes, The Monk remembers where he was when he learned the news. The Monk was just a young Monkling and vacationing in Spain with MaMonk and PaMonk when he saw the back page of the International Herald Tribune from August 4, 1979. Then The Monkling began to cry, sad that one of his heroes (whom he did not appreciate nearly enough -- a common failure of young baseball fans) was gone forever.
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