One of the more striking baseball tough guys, there wasn't a Hollywood bone in his body. 'If you knew Thurman, you knew he would do anything for you.'

As big as he was in The Big Apple, Thurman Munson was no Babe Ruth.

But Munson was no babe in the woods. It may amuse Munson's Hall of Fame supporters to note that the Sultan of Swat and the catcher from Canton both amassed 129 postseason at-bats as New York Yankees. Ruth hit a robust .326. Munson hit a roaring .357.

Munson was big enough in The Bronx that the New York Daily News, decades later, characterized his death as "the greatest tragedy in Yankee history."

Forty years ago today, Munson crash landed his seven-seat jet to a skidding halt on Greensburg Road. Pinned in the pilot's seat, his last act was to convince his two passengers to escape before flames engulfed the Cessna Citation, two football fields short of the runway.

The funeral was in Canton. George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, Yogi Berra, Lou Piniella, Reggie Jackson and the rest of the Yankees flew into the same airport where Munson had been practicing touch-and-go landings and attended services in Canton Memorial Civic Center.

I was a young writer who had spent the day in downtown Canton, within walking distance of where Munson made a name at Lehman High School.

Like everybody else in the county, I knew about Munson. I had Lehman friends at church, hit lots of Indians games, hated the Yankees, and respected how the one wearing No. 15 mashed Tribe pitching.

Aug. 2, 1979 was a Thursday. The crash happened in broad daylight at 4 p.m., in view of motorists driving where everyone still sees the air traffic coming and going above I-77.

Cell phones and the internet had not arrived. Sketchy reports first hit my car radio while I was driving home, northbound on 77, around 6 p.m.

I exited at the airport, intending to find out what I might. One of the first people I saw was Ronnie Harris, the Canton boxer who had won an Olympic gold medal. He had been driving near the airport, too, and couldn't believe what he was hearing.

The Repository softball team played that night at the Willig complex. Thurman Munson was all anyone talked about.

The Repository and the Beacon-Journal emptied their staffs into coverage of the surreal national story. One of my assignments was to meet with Munson's mother, Ruth, who lived by herself in an apartment building between the Civic Center and the Palace Theater. I met her in her apartment.

Nothing prepares a complete stranger for such a conversation. Mrs. Munson answered questions politely and with deep sadness. That visit sticks with me as much as anything from those few days, 40 years later.

Some of the more iconic celebrities to have populated American culture were born in 1947.

Arnold Schwarzenegger ... Farrah Fawcett ... David Letterman ... Lew Alcindor pivoted into Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ... Elton John ... choose your own one-liner for O.J. Simpson.

Something about those people either was or is too unreal to touch.

Thurman Lee Munson, a newborn in the summer of 1947, was the celebrity next door. He was one of the more striking tough guys to come down the MLB pike, and there wasn't a Hollywood bone in his body.

He lived his first several years in Akron but was in Canton by his grade-school days, forming his identity at Worley Elementary, where he met his future wife and forged his competitive persona.

Then it was onto Lehman. Everybody knew his name, and the few who grew close to him knew he had a strained relationship with his father, a truck driver.

As Thurman got older, he worked at assorted jobs.

Diana Munson, who was Thurman's childhood sweetheart before she was his wife, still lives in the home they shared before the tragedy. She will throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium today.

She laughs at the modern youth coaching philosophy that youth baseball players shouldn't go swimming the day they have a game.

"Thurman worked a lot of different jobs when he was growing up," she said. "There were days when he would caddy at Brookside, mow two lawns, and then go play a game."

He played like no one else in the county. He was good enough at Lehman to be invited to the Class A adult league.

"His dad didn't want him to play," said John Biskup, who became Munson's catching mentor in the adult league. "He thought it was a waste of time. I would pick up Thurman before the games. He told me not to pick him up at the house.

"He told me to park a couple doors down and honk the horn."

The Munsons lived at 2015 Frazer Ave., just south of Malone College. Diana was 10 and Thurman was 12 when they shared a paper route delivering The Repository.

Munson came to hate some of the dog-eat-dog practiced by the papers in New York. Certain writers came to see him as gruff and arrogant.

Biskup loved Munson then and still says he had "a heart of gold." Diana saw her husband as a big teddy bear who was as caring for their three children as a father could possibly be.

"If you knew Thurman," says Joe Gilhousen, another former teammate growing up, "you knew he would do anything for you."

Munson was one of Yankee boss George Steinbrenner's go-to guys when it came to helping with a charity or visiting a kid at a hospital. Munson had a strict rule: He'd help out as long as nothing got in the papers.

During a conversation with Diana on Wednesday, pride welled up in her voice when she noted the Thurman Munson Dinner, held in Manhattan this year for the 39th straight year, has raised $18 million for a children's charity. All three kids made the dinner with their mom.

Forty years ago, Munson was in his 11th year as a Yankee. He had been an All-Star the previous six seasons and was American League MVP in 1976.

The '76 Yankees faced Cincinnati in the World Series. When asked to compare Munson to his own catcher, Reds manager Sparky Anderson basically said Munson was no Johnny Bench.

The Reds won the series, but Munson hit .529 to Bench's .533. It was an anomaly for Bench, who hit .240 in his other 154 postseason at-bats.

Munson was named captain of the Yankees in '76, the first time since Lou Gehrig in the 1930s any Yankee played with that distinction.

By 1979, Munson had built a large home in Stark County, not too far from what became Gervasi Vineyard.

He learned to fly largely because it was a quick ticket home and he eventually splurged for a Cessna Citation twin-engine jet.

Munson helped the Yankees win the World Series in 1977 and 1978, but 1979 was a struggle. They were 39-33 after sweeping the Indians in late June, but they played just .500 ball for the next month.

Manager Bob Lemon got fired in June and was replaced by Billy Martin.

Munson headed into the finale of a three-game series at Comiskey Park having played 95 games in 1979, 88 of them at catcher.

On Aug. 1, a Wednesday night, Munson got a night off from catching, starting at first base and batting third in the order against the White Sox. Munson struck out and walked against Ken Kravec before getting the rest of the night off as the Yankees won a blowout.

Munson arranged to have his jet ready to fly from Chicago to Canton after the game. He invited teammate Bobby Murcer to join him, but he wound up flying home alone.

He bought the Citation less than a month earlier, but he had been flying for a year and a half.

As Aug. 2, a Thursday, got rolling, Munson grabbed a bite with his father-in-law, Tony Dominick, and told Diana he was taking a quick drive to the airport to do a few things with the plane.

Taking the plane up with two friends was supposed to amount to a quick spin around the block, doing a few touch-and-go landings.

After three safe landings, Munson set out to do one more. The tower controller directed him to a new runway, with fresh traffic in the area.

The final approach, approaching Greensburg Road and then the runway, came up short. When Munson realized he would not reach the runway, he went for a ground landing that almost worked.

The Citation scraped a cluster of trees and might have stopped mostly intact had it not stuck a stump, causing the damage that left Munson pinned. The other two men got out, at Munson's urging.

There was nothing they could do for him.

The funeral, a private ceremony in the city's largest assembly facility was conducted on Aug. 6 at a makeshift chapel in the Civic Center. Many from around the county gathered outside while a who's who from baseball filed in and out with Munson's family and friends.

Reggie Jackson, a celebrity teammate who was all Hollywood, paid his respects. Munson's feelings about Jackson have passed to another dimension, but perhaps this story says something:

Jackson had just hit three home runs in a World Series game. Munson made his way to the slugger and said, "Nice job, Mr. October." Jackson replied, "Mr. October? I think I'll keep that name."

During the funeral, teammate Lou Piniella said, "We don't know why God took Thurman from us, but we do know as long as all of us wear the Yankee uniform, he won't be too far from us."

Murcer, who might have been Munson's best friend on the team, stammered out his own words: "He lived. He led. He loved. Most of all, he loved his family."

Munson was supposed to have flown from the Akron-Canton airport to an airstrip in New Jersey in time to play in an Aug. 3 game against the Orioles.

For better or for worse, the game went on, even as Munson's people dealt with a terrible day after.

A moment of silence requested before the game turned into an eight-minute ovation in Yankee Stadium that echoes 40 years later, when Diana Munson will throw out a first pitch.

Reach Steve at 330-580-8347 or steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

On Twitter: @sdoerschukREP