Baseball Book Review - Munson - The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain by Marty Appel

I just finished a baseball book that I thought I would share, Munson - The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain.  It was written by Marty Appel who once worked for the Yankees, was in the TV business and has authored more than 20 books.  Most of his book are baseball related.  He wrote this biography about Thurman Munson in 2009 with quite a bit of the material coming from interviews he did with Munson when co-authoring Munson's autobiography.

This book was solid but not spectacular in my view.  The first part of the book chronicling Munson's youth and even into his first few years with the Yankees was pretty standard fare for a baseball biography.  Appel clearly was close to Munson and was even part of the story for a while as he was working for the Yankees front office then collaborating on the autobiography.  If I am being honest, this book has been sitting on my nightstand for almost a year as I slowly read through the book before going to sleep at night. 

The book really picked up right before Munson's death, probably the last 150 pages or so of the 355 page book.   I found the most powerful and interesting part of the book was a transcription of an interview with one of the two men who were on the plane with Munson and survived when it crashed.  Amazing to hear a first hand account of what happened.

While I knew a decent amount about his playing career and knew he had died in a crash when he was piloting a plane, I did learn a ton of details surrounding his captaincy with the Yankees, the impact his death had on the team and baseball along with way more information about his death than I even knew before.  One thing that I find interesting is how his teammates and those he played against figured he was a lock for the Hall of Fame and some even suggested waiving the 5 year waiting period as was done for Roberto Clemente.  Now, 40+ years later he still isn't in the HOF.

If you don't know many details about Thurman Munson and have a level of curiosity, I would recommend the book. I do think the second half's content makes up for what I found as a somewhat boring first half.  As a baseball fan I am happy I persevered and made it though this book.