Before the mustache

Thurman Munson

A few years before becoming the iconic, mustachioed, brawling catcher and captain of the most famous franchise in sports, Thurman Munson is a mere rookie with the New York Yankees.

Actually, Munson is better than anyone else in his first full season in 1970 and is named the American League's rookie of the year 54 years ago today.

Roy Foster

Munson earns 23 of 24 first-place votes with the other vote going to Cleveland outfielder Roy Foster.

Foster, though, quickly regresses as a player and is out of the major leagues before the start of the 1973 season, the same season Munson makes the second of his seven All-Star Game appearances from 1971-78.

Munson surely would end up making even more appearances in those midsummer games, but he tragically passes away in 1979 – less than two months after his 32nd birthday – in a private plane crash near his home in Canton, Ohio.

“He was cocky in a good sense, very confident,” longtime Yankees pitcher Fritz Peterson says of Munson, his teammate from 1969-74.

“He was, so talented he could get away with it,” Peterson says. “He did all of the things that a Yankee of old would have done to win games: run, hit, throw and break up double plays.”