How Bobby Murcer Saved Me from the Wrath of an Angry Nun

For any 8-year-old kid at Saint Pius X Catholic Grammar School, Sister Helena's name was synonymous with fear and intimidation. She was the Bobby Knight, or perhaps even the Adolph Rupp, of nuns at the school my parents sent me to.

So sadistic and wretched was she that she may be personally responsible for creating a generation of Copy Editors and English Composition Professors. That's because one of her tactics was to make us write essays in class (remember we were all 8 or 9 years old), and then we would line up, single file, in front of her desk and show her our work while she read it. If she saw a grammatical mistake, she would simply belt out the word "Wrong" in a rasping tone while she glared at the student with stabbing, coal black eyes. Then one had to go to the end of the line and figure out what was wrong on the paper before getting to the front of the line again.

If any kid didn't recognize a split infinitive or showed a subject-verb agreement error by the time he got to the head of the line, she would belt him in the behind with a thick metal yardstick. This was no garden variety yardstick; it was something out of a gothic novel. (Think Uncle Fester's closet.) And it had some kind of gemstone embedded in it that I can only imagine had some kind of religious significance. I got to know it personally one day for the egregious sin of giving a dependant clause a period.

Fast forward to recess on a Sunny May day. Sister Helena had a rule that the moment the bell sounded, recess was over and we had to return immediately to our pre-determined lines in single file. Hands by our side…Mouths shut.

However, when the bell rang, I was in the middle of showing some friends my Yankee baseball cards: Ruben Amaro, Steve Whitaker, Roy White, Mel Stottlemyre, and of course, Bobby Murcer.

It's hard to overestimate what Bobby Murcer meant to a young Yankee Fan in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Yanks had fallen on hard times. The farm system dried up and CBS wasn't putting money back into the team. To make matters worse, the Mets had won a World Series and were ruling the baseball world in New York.

Murcer represented-rightly or wrongly-hopes for reviving the Yankee prospects in the decade ahead. Not only was he patrolling the vast sacrosanct pastures of centerfield in Yankee stadium, like the recently retired Mickey Mantle did, but he was also from Oklahoma, like Mantle, and even signed by the same scout, Tom Greenwade.

Many a boy emulated his crouched batting stance and smooth left-handed swing. When he hit .331 in 1971 and finished second in the batting race, we were all certain he was headed to the Hall of Fame.

As the recess bell rang, I moved to quickly pick up my baseball cards. Only eight or ten seconds may have elapsed, but Sister Helena turned her sadistic head my way and began screaming at me for "continuing to play after the bell rang."

I tried to explain that I was picking up the cards as soon as I heard the bell, but she would have none of it. She asked me who my favorite player was, and when I said Bobby Murcer, she proceeded to rip the card up in a dozen pieces. She flung the torn pieces into the air, laughed in my face, and then confiscated the rest of my cards.

It was the most traumatic incident in my young life, and that included a "visitation" I recalled from the summer before when a shapeless form came to me in my bedroom. Alien encounters I could handle….ripping up my Bobby Murcer card, however, was much more significant….This meant war.

When I got home that night I retold the incident to my mother. (Back then, the World Series was played during the day and my mom always let me "be sick with a bad cold" so I could stay home from school and watch the games. My parents had their priorities.)

When my father came home and heard of this atrocity, he hit the roof. Although he reacted to other tales of discipline at Saint Pius X School with indifference, he immediately took action on this.

I wish I had been permitted to go with him to the principal's office the next day. (The fact that he took the morning off from work was an event in and of itself.) But the next thing I knew, I was taken out of catholic school and plunked down in public school, right into Mrs. Fields home room at Mill Hill School in Southport, CT.

Eureka…I was sprung from a childhood of forced humility and corporal punishment and brought to a school where I excelled and recall nothing but good memories (except that day when Randy Brophy, on a dare, sucked water from a toilet bowl with a straw).

I have thanked my dad countless times for this display of courage, but I never thanked Bobby Murcer.

So thanks Bobby, for being the driving force that saved me from the clutches of angry nuns. I can never thank you enough and you remain my favorite ballplayer and announcer.

Get well Bobby, my whole family is rooting for you.