FanPost

A Tribute to a Yankee Legend that made me a lifelong Yankees fan. Who's your favorite Yankee?

I was 8 years old in 1976, living in Connecticut in a rural part of the state.

No cable then, cell phones did not exist and the internet was a science fiction dream. The folks behind the creation of the MLB network were not even born yet.

It was not exactly the dark ages though, I mean we did have a TV but we also only had 5 TV channels- ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and UHF and baseball was not exactly a regular thing on the air in those days. Remote controls did not exist in the terms we think of today, but we did have one and I was it. I was the youngest and whenever someone wanted the channel changed, it was my job to turn the knob.

I am sure some of you can relate to those times...and when you turned that knob, you did it slowly. You never wanted to make the machine gun noise on that dial or you would get the dreaded "You know how much that costs? It's not a toy..." talk from the old man.

Back then, if we wanted to experience the Yankees we tuned in on the radio. When that was not possible, for whatever reason, we read the recaps in the newspaper the next day, along with the box scores. Every Sunday in the baseball section of the paper, we could see the stats for the top 100 players in the game.

It would be another year before "This week in Baseball" with Mel Allen would air nationally.

A few times a year, if lucky we would catch the all-star game on TV and if the Yankees were good enough we would see them in the playoffs and the World Series if they made it that far.

You really had to work on being a fan back then and boy did I work at it.

It was in that same year that I decided I would practice all spring and all summer so that when I turned 9 the following year I could try out for little league.

So every day, spring to fall, I would get up early, toss on my sneakers, shorts, Yankees shirt with the old classic Yankees big top hat logo and my Yankees cap- grab my mitt, tennis ball and radio and head out to our big barn and toss that ball off of its walls, doors and roof... at various angles and speeds while listening to Phil Rizzuto and Bill White call those games.

My swing? That developed by using a whiffle ball bat and hitting stones across the river in front of our house. I would go through a bat every 3 months- each looking like it was chewed on by a dog when I was done. I even taught myself to be a switch hitter and I ended up hitting for power from both sides of the plate.

Hours upon hours, day after day...throwing, catching, swinging and listening to the Yankees on that radio. Phil Rizzuto and Bill White made the game come alive for me, but it was one player in particular that made it live within me.

This one player, for some reason, always stood out. His name seemed to jump out of that radio like no other.

He always seemed to be getting that clutch hit or making that clutch play. He was not the best player in the game, by anyone standards, but he was in the conversation. He was one of the best clutch hitters to ever hold a bat and arguably one of the best defenders to ever take the field.

When the paper came, there would often be pictures of him in a still life after-swing of a home run he would hit...but more often he would be pictured flying in mid-air stopping a ball better than anyone else ever had. These pictures in the paper brought to life the audio excitement of White and Rizzuto whenever he would perform his magic with his leather wand.

Graig "freakin" Nettles.

Vacuum, human highlight reel, prankster, brawler, clutch...Captain.

I can still hear it now, in Rizzuto's distinct voice..."There's a smash down the....Holy Cow, what a play by Nettles. I can't believe it, he must have been 50 feet off the ground. Holy Cow White, did you see that?"

Frank White was a bit more realistic but none-the-less awestruck - "Graig Nettles has got to be the best fielding this baseman I have ever seen. He puts on a clinic every day Scooter."

Back then, we had to use our imagination when listening to the game, and in doing so Nettles became larger than life and his exploits as conveyed by Scooter and White and the images that appeared in the paper were proven ever time I had the fortune of seeing him play.

I thought he was Superman. I thought he could fly. He was the greatest player I had ever seen. In 1978, he proved it. His fielding performance in the 1978 World Series is without question the single great one game fielding performance in the history of baseball.

Not even the more ardent Yankee hating Red Sox fan could argue that fact.

Nettles went on to do even more amazing things throughout his 11-year career as a Yankee. He was the ALCS MVP against Oakland in 1981, and in that same year at the same time he also got into an altercation with teammate Reggie Jackson at a celebration dinner for the team in which things got heated and Nettles dropped Reggie cold with a right hand prompting the NY Daily News to quip that the only ting Nettles dropped in the ALCS was Reggie Jackson.

He was not only a great player, but he was also a hockey player on a baseball team. No one wanted to fight Nettles. Ask Red Sox Starter Bill Lee, who mixed it up with Nettles and ate a few lefts and a few rights before Nettles picked him up and slammed Lee on his shoulder, virtually ending his career.

I remember Bill White, who called the game, say "Oh Nettles is in there and that's the last guy anyone wants to mess with Scooter..." seconds later, Bill Lee looked like he went through a meat grinder, hobbling off the field like he had been shot in the shoulder.

Graig Nettles was my childhood hero, my favorite player and one that you can argue should be in the Hall for his defensive prowess alone, but there is no argument that he deserves a plaque or something to signify what he meant to the franchise, in Monument Park.

The way the Yankees fail to honor this man is an ongoing travesty.

He remains one of the most underrated players in the game, but to me, he will always be the greatest third baseman in Yankee History and the player that made me love this franchise.

Once his playing days were over, Don Mattingly took the mantle as my current favorite Yankee, only to be followed by Derek Jeter and not, today, it's a toss-up between Judge and Gardner.

I will always have a current favorite in pinstripes, but no one will ever replace Nettles as my all time favorite.

Today, Graig lives in Lenoir City Tennessee, just an hour and a half from me. I would love to meet him one day- just to say thank you for all the amazing memories he gave me as a young kid into my early 20's.

The game does not see players like him anymore.

Who is your favorite current player and who is your all time fav?

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