He grew up in Canton, OH, but embodied everything a New Yorker is supposed to be: tougher than shit, always played hurt, was the first to defend a teammate. You crossed him, and you were done for. One summer, Cadillac gave Thurman and his teammate, Catfish Hunter, a car to share. As they walked to the players’ parking lot late one night, the car had been vandalized, and Thurman, incensed, whipped out a gun and began firing it into the shadows around the lot. Catfish had to wrestle the gun away.
He was all man. Which meant he wasn’t exactly known for his sartorial splendor. I love the pic above of him walking into the stadium in flip-flops. Once, in Manhattan, Thurman had his family with him as he was putting gas in his car. A guy pulled up and, not recognizing Thurman, who was dressed in a ratty, flannel shirt, asked him to fill up his tank. Thurman did.
My friend Jeff once went to New York and brought me back a Yankee t-shirt with Thurman’s name and number on the back. Any time a Yankee fan saw me wearing it, I got a knowing nod. One time I had it on while I was walking my dog, and a mom pushing her 18-month old daughter in a stroller passed me. I heard a little voice from the stroller say “Yankee shirt.”
But for all his gruffness, Thurman was a devoted family man. While his teammates all screwed around on their wives, Thurman never would. He got so homesick for his wife and kids that he bought a plane and learned to fly, so that on off-days he could visit them as much as possible back in Canton. It was in that plane, soon after he purchased it, that he crashed, 600 feet short of a runway. He had two passengers – his flight instructor and a friend – on board with him, and both were burned but survived. Even if Thurman had lived, he probably would have been a quadriplegic. As he lay there, trapped in the crash with his neck broken, his last words were fittingly unselfish: “Are you guys okay?” he asked his buddies.
No one from New York has been okay ever since.
