July 20, 1968: Eastern League game marks Thurman Munson’s Yankee Stadium debut

The record books will tell you that Thurman Munson played his first game at Yankee Stadium—and his first in the major leagues—on August 8, 1969, in the second game of a doubleheader between the New York Yankees and Oakland Athletics.

But that wasn’t the sparkplug catcher’s first appearance at the “House that Ruth Built.” On July 20, 1968, a small contingent of early-arriving fans for the game between the Yankees and Cleveland Indians got an advance look at the young man who became the American League 1970 Rookie of the Year, the 1976 AL Most Valuable Player, the Yankees’ first captain since Lou Gehrig, and one of the finest catchers of the 1970s. As a bonus, it was Bat Day, so some of those prescient fans went home with a tangible souvenir as well as a unique memory.1

The Binghamton Triplets, the Yankees’ farm team in the Double-A Eastern League, played a regular-season game against the Waterbury Indians at Yankee Stadium prior to the major-league game between the Yankees and Indians. Munson, 21 years old, went 1-for-3 and reached on an error as Binghamton beat Waterbury 3-1.

The Triplets had played a regular-season game at Yankee Stadium once before, on August 20, 1966, when they matched up against the New York Mets’ Auburn (New York) affiliate. That game turned into a pitchers’ duel between future major leaguers Mickey Scott of Binghamton and Jerry Koosman of Auburn. Binghamton pulled out a 2-1 win on a seventh-inning solo home run by left fielder Al Otto.

The 1968 game brought together the Eastern League’s bottom-dwelling teams. Binghamton held fifth place in the six-team loop with a 40-48 record, 15 games out of first place. Waterbury brought up the rear at 33-54, 21½ games out.2 While 38,224 fans turned out for the Yankees-Indians game and the Bat Day giveaway, news coverage did not specify how many of them showed up early for the underwhelming minor-league matchup.

The Triplets’ appearance gave several future major leaguers a glimpse of the big time, including Munson’s Binghamton batterymate, starting pitcher Steve Kline. The 20-year-old righty from Washington state went just 5-6 in 14 starts at Double A that season but threw three shutouts and posted a 2.03 ERA.3 News stories at the time compared Kline’s pitching style to that of fellow Washingtonian Mel Stottlemyre, then the Yankees’ ace.4

The 1968 season was a “Year of the Pitcher” in the Eastern League as well as the majors. The league’s batters hit a cumulative .220. The Triplets hit a puny .210 as a team, and Waterbury hitters trailed the loop with a collective .208 average.

Munson, the Yankees’ first-round pick in the June 1968 draft from Kent State University, drew attention by bucking that trend. Over his first month as a professional, he batted .348, hitting safely in 14 straight starts, at a time when no other EL starter was batting better than .292. He also caught four shutouts and four one-run games during that period.5 Munson cooled off slightly the rest of the way but ended the season hitting .301 with 6 home runs and 37 RBIs in 71 games.6 He was the only batter in the league with more than 140 at-bats to hit .300 or higher. “This is an exciting ballplayer, believe you me,” manager Cloyd Boyer enthused.7

Other starters on July 20 who reached the majors were Triplets shortstop Jim Kennedy and three Waterbury players—third baseman Sam Parrilla, shortstop Lou Camilli, and catcher Fran Healy. Healy later donned Yankee pinstripes as Munson’s backup between May 1976, when the Kansas City Royals traded him to New York, and May 1978, when injuries ended his career. Healy then joined the team’s broadcast booth from 1978 to 1983.8

Binghamton’s 5-foot-6 second baseman, Matt Galante, a Brooklyn native, peaked at Triple A as a player but reached the majors as a coach for 19 seasons with the Houston Astros and Mets. Galante also served as Houston’s interim manager for 27 games in 1999 during the illness of manager Larry Dierker. Galante was the only member of the Triplets team that had played at Yankee Stadium two years earlier to play there again in 1968.

Despite their affiliation with the Yankees, Binghamton played as the visiting team at Yankee Stadium because the game took the place of a home date for Waterbury.9 The game started at 11:15 a.m.10

After a scoreless first inning, cleanup hitter Munson began the second by banging a solid single into left field in his first Yankee Stadium at-bat.11 He subsequently scored the game’s first run. News accounts don’t provide details, but the box score indicates that the run was unearned and none of the ensuing Triplets batters were credited with an RBI. Waterbury committed four errors that day—two by catcher Healy, two by second baseman John Sandknop—while Binghamton fielded flawlessly.12

Kline opened the top of the third by singling off Waterbury starter Ron Constantino, a righty who had been the Indians’ third-round pick in the June 1965 amateur draft. Constantino had won 12 games at Double A the previous season, and split his time in 1968 between Double A and Triple A. It was the highest level he reached in a six-season pro career. The Binghamton newspaper noted that Constantino came “from a town in Massachusetts named Munson,” which might have been humorous if it were true. (The pitcher’s hometown, about 15 miles east of Springfield, is called Monson.)

Kennedy followed Kline’s single by lining a ground-rule double into the right-field stands, putting runners on second and third. Three batters later, Munson grounded to second base, where Sandknop muffed it. Kline crossed the plate on the error to give Binghamton a 2-0 advantage.

Binghamton added an insurance run in the seventh, the only earned run charged to Constantino in his eight-inning stint. Kennedy drew a two-out walk, stole second base, and scored the third and final Triplets run on Galante’s single.

In the Waterbury eighth, Gomer Hodge, who reached the majors with Cleveland three seasons later, pinch-hit unsuccessfully for Constantino. Gary Kroll, a former Phillie, Met, and Astro trying to return to the majors, pitched a shutout ninth for the Indians.13

Kline needed an economical 89 pitches to stifle the Indians, scattering four hits. Two came in the fourth inning, representing Kline’s only real jam, but he emerged unscathed.14 The only blemish on Kline’s outing came in the seventh inning, when 6-foot-4, lefty-swinging first baseman Steve Wrenn lashed a pitch into the right-field seats for his 20th home run of the season between Class A and Double A. It was also his last four-bagger of 1968.15

Kline struck out the final two batters in the ninth to end the game in 2 hours and 2 minutes. He struck out six and walked none in pitching his fifth straight complete game. Constantino, who took the loss, walked three and struck out seven. In the day’s second game, Cleveland’s Luis Tiant held the Yankees hitless for six innings, ending up with a complete-game three-hit shutout in a 3-0 Indians win.

After the game, New York Times reporter Gerald Eskenazi spotted Munson in the Yankees’ dressing room, waiting to meet Mickey Mantle—“Mr. Mantle,” Munson called him. The two Yankee legends never played side by side, as Mantle retired after the 1968 season.16 Munson admitted to some nervousness playing at Yankee Stadium. “We play before 500 people at Binghamton,” he said.17

The 1968 season was the last year the Yankees operated an affiliate in Binghamton, ending a relationship that dated to 1932 with a few interruptions. The Triplets’ aging home, Johnson Field, was torn down after the season to make way for a highway,18 and the Yankees moved their Double-A team to Manchester, New Hampshire. Previous Yankee greats who passed through Binghamton on their way up included Spud Chandler, Whitey Ford, and Bobby Richardson; Munson would be the last. “Probably no Triplet catcher in history looked more like a major-leaguer,” a veteran Binghamton sportswriter summarized.19

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Trading Card DB.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team, and season data.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but the July 21, 1968, edition of the Binghamton Sunday Press published a box score.

Notes

1 Jim Schlemmer, “Tiant Continues Mastery of Yanks on 3-Hitter,” Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, July 21, 1968: B1.

2 Eastern League standings as printed in the Binghamton (New York) Evening Press, July 20, 1968: 8.

3 Kline also started five games with Fort Lauderdale of the Class A Florida State League in 1968, going 1-4 with a 3.90 ERA.

4 “First in the Hearts of his Countrymen” (photo and caption), Binghamton Sunday Press, July 21, 1968: 1C. Stottlemyre won 21 games in 1968, his second of three 20-win seasons, and made his third of five All-Star teams.

5 “Munson Is Eastern ‘Swinger,’” Akron Beacon Journal, July 21, 1968: B5.

6 Munson tied with outfielder Joe Pactwa for the team lead in RBIs, though Pactwa played 31 more games and had almost 100 more plate appearances than Munson. Pactwa briefly made the majors as a pitcher with the California Angels. Munson ranked third on the 1968 Binghamton team in home runs. Again, the players ahead of him—infielder Ed Gagle with 12, and outfielder Johnnie Fenderson with 9—played significantly more games than Munson did.

7 “Munson Is Eastern ‘Swinger.’”

8 Alan Cohen, “Fran Healy,” SABR Biography Project, accessed May 3, 2023. Healy played in only one game for the Yankees in 1978, on April 21; he was released on May 10. After leaving the Yankees’ broadcast team, Healy called Mets games from 1984 through 2005.

9 Newspapers from July 1968 confirm that the teams were scheduled to play in Waterbury on Friday, July 19, but were rained out, and played in Waterbury on Sunday, July 21. Associated Press, “Reading Phillies Lose 1-0 Decision at Elmira,” Lebanon (Pennsylvania) Daily News, July 20, 1968: 15; “Binghamton Defeats Waterbury,” Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), July 22, 1968: 20. Waterbury is about 80 highway miles from the Bronx.

10 Gerald Eskenazi, “Indians Score, 3-0,” New York Times, July 21, 1968: 1S.

11 Munson’s final Yankee Stadium at-bat took place on July 24, 1979, as he drew a fourth-inning walk off California Angels pitcher Mike Barlow. Jerry Narron subsequently replaced Munson in the game. Munson appeared in five more games on the road before his death on August 2 in an airplane crash.

12 Unless otherwise noted, all game action in this story is based on “Kline-to-Munson Unveiling a 3-1 Stadium Success,” Binghamton Sunday Press, July 21, 1968: 1C, and the accompanying box score.

13 Kroll did not make it back to the majors in 1968 but pitched in 19 games for the Indians in 1969 in his final major-league action. He continued to play in the minors until 1971.

14 The Binghamton paper’s account does not specify who collected the two hits in the fourth inning. The box score credits left fielder Pete Sarron, right fielder Johnny Scruggs, first baseman Steve Wrenn (who homered), and shortstop Camilli with collecting Waterbury’s four hits. It seems most likely that Sarron and Scruggs collected the fourth-inning hits, based on the team’s batting order.

15 Wrenn, a product of Wake Forest University, hit 24 homers for Waterbury in 1969 and 19 more for the Indians’ Double-A team in Savannah, Georgia, in 1970. He hit only .221 and .198 at the Double-A level in those seasons, respectively, and 1970 was the last of his four seasons in pro ball.

16 Mantle and Munson shared a clubhouse for part of the 1970 season, during which Mantle served briefly on the Yankees’ coaching staff.

17 Eskenazi, “Indians Score, 3-0.”

18 Kurt Blumenau, “Johnson Field,” SABR Biography Project, accessed May 3, 2023.

19 John Fox, untitled column, Binghamton Evening Press, April 30, 1969: 1C.