Note: I
began to draft this upon learning of Ernie’s death. But I couldn’t get it finished in time for a
straight obit, so I finished it and am posting it now on his birthday. I don’t think he would mind.
Today
would have been Ernie Banks 84th
birthday if he had made. But he didn’t. As the world now knows he died in a Chicago hospital on January 23.
The
news that came as a shock. It probably
shouldn’t have. After all he was nearly
84 years old. It’s just that he seemed
so ever youthful, not just in those memory pictures we have in our head of his
days on the diamond, but in the
frequent glimpses we would get of him on TV
at fan events or in interviews. No matter how gray or sparse his hair became,
how lined that lean face, he seemed boyish, bursting with enthusiasm and, yes,
ready to play two.
Banks
was, bar none, the most beloved player in the long history of the Chicago National League franchise. He was the only longtime Cub player not to draw contempt and scorn from hard core White Sox fans. Beyond the playing field his gentle demeanor
and graciousness to fans and the press endeared him to the whole
city. His status as an icon of a losing franchise almost obscured his real accomplishments on the
field.
But
as an obituary in the New York Times, hardly a Second City boosting cheerleader,
pointed out, Banks was, “the greatest power-hitting shortstop of the 20th
century and an unconquerable optimist…”
Banks
was born on January 31, 1931, in Dallas,
Texas, the second oldest of 11 children born to a warehouse worker and his wife.
His father, Eddie Banks had
played semi-pro ball and encouraged
his athletically inclined son to take an interest in the game. Ernie was not much interested and at first
had to be bribed to play catch with the old man. Part of it was that he had few opportunities
to play organized baseball. No Little League for Texas Black boys in those days and Booker T. Washington High School did
not have a team. Instead he lettered in track, basketball, and Football. The closest he could come to baseball was
playing softball in summer church leagues, and for a season with
the semi-pro Amarillo Colts.
Still
after graduating he somehow managed to catch the attention of the Kansas City Monarchs, the most
prestigious franchise in the Negro American
League. Some accounts give credit to
a scout who was friendly with his
father, others to legendary player Cool
Papa Bell. Maybe it was both. But in 1950 he was signed and playing for the
Monarchs.
Bank’s
fledgling baseball career was cut short when he was drafted into the Army in 1951. He suffered a knee injury during basic
training which would haunt him later in his career. He was attached to the 45th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion at Fort Bliss where he was a sharp enough soldier to be made the
unit’s flag bearer. During his months at Bliss he was able to
sub occasionally with the Harlem
Globetrotters operation, usually appearing in the uniform of the
perpetually loosing Washington
Generals. After that he was
stationed in Germany.
Upon
his discharge from active duty,
Banks rejoined the Monarchs. His time
with the team was his university of
baseball. He learned and mastered
quickly all of the fundamentals of
the game. In no time at all he was a star player. So good that he was attracting attention from
Major League scouts who finally ready to stock their teams with Black
talent. He finished the 1953 season batting for an impressive .347 average.
The Chicago Cubs snatched him up and he would wear the blue pinstripes for the final games of
that season.
Despite
the opportunity, Banks was loathe to leave the Monarchs which he considered his
home. He thought about asking the team
not to sell his contract. That is the
kind of loyalty that in the end he transferred to the Cubs.
The
Cubs, badly in need of talent, put Banks directly into the Big League game without any time in the minors. His debut at Wrigley Field was on September 17, 1953
versus the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Before
the game Jackie Robinson crossed the
field to welcome the Cubs’ first Black player and give him some support and
encouragement. Robinson had also played
for the Monarchs and was Banks’s idol.
Banks later recalled that Robinson told him, “Ernie, I’m glad to see
you’re up here so now just listen and learn.”
It was advice he took to heart, maybe too much so. “For years, I didn’t
talk and learned a lot about people.”
His
reticence to speak up on racial tensions
and issues on and off the field would later draw accusations of being an Uncle Tom from some. But it was not in his nature to be
confrontational and he tried hard to make friends with everybody. Robinson believed his early reticence in
responding to abuse on the field when he first broke baseball’s color line earned him the right to
speak out and became Civil Rights
movement spokesman. Despite their
differences over this Banks and Robinson remained close.
In
his first full season with the Cubs as shortstop
he paired up with the team’s second Black player Gene Baker at second base
to form a bang-bang double play
combination. The two also roomed
together on the road. Banks hit a
respectable 19 home runs and had 71 runs batted in. It was good enough to finish second in National League Rookie of the Year voting.
Banks
really took off as a dominant player in 1955, his second full season, after he
switched to a lighter weight bat increasing his bat speed. Thanks to strong wrists and a sharp eye for a fast ball,
the tall, slender (6’1”, 180 lbs.) shortstop became a genuine power hitter and slugger. That season he
slammed 44 round trippers and drove
in 117 runs. He earned the first of 14
consecutive All Star Game
appearances. His home run total was
a single-season record for shortstops and he set a thirty year record of five
single-season grand slam home runs.
It
was the beginning of a parade of phenomenally successful seasons in which he
was a shining star on miserable teams.
In 1956 despite missing 19 games with an infection in one hand that took the edge off of his power Banks
still hit 28 home runs, had 85 RBIs, and a .297 batting average. In 1957, he
bounced back with 43 home runs, 102 RBIs, and a .285 batting average.
Then
there were the back to back Most
Valuable Player (MVP) Awards—a first
in National League history—in ’58 and ’59.
He hit over .300 each year, led the League in RBIs both years, and
knocked 47 homers the first year and 45 the next. In 1960 he led the League with 41 homers,
earned a Gold Glove at short stop
and for the sixth time in his seven year full season career led the league in
most games played.
Banks
was not only the star, but a consistent work
horse on terrible teams. The Cubs
currently have a reputation for a fanatical fan base and the ability to fill the seats of Wrigley Field no
matter how miserable the teams on the field.
But it was not always so. In the
early ‘50’s years of bad teams had slashed attendance. The North
Side ball park frequently resembled a ghost town. Banks gave fans something to plunk down money
to see. As Ernie got hot, the fans began
to come back. Not only that, he helped
them bond with the team, especially with children for whom he always seemed to
have time. Banks was building a fan base
for the team that would become multi-general.
Cubs owner P. K. Wrigley was meddlesome, eccentric, and most of all cheap.
Despite Bank’s value to the team, he was paid remarkably modestly. He was paid only $27,000 for the ’58 season. That did jump to $45,000 the next year and
after that it rose by small increments annual so that by the time he retire in
1971 he was making $50,000. While those
were comfortable salaries in the days before big time agents and skyrocketing pay, they lagged far behind Banks’
peers in the top rung of baseball talent by as much as 50%.
Yet
the star slugger never publicly complained out of loyalty to the team and
because he enjoyed an unusually close personal relationship with Wrigley. The two often had lunch together and in the
off season Wrigley entertained Banks and his wife at his California estate. As if to
make up for the low pay he was handing out, the chewing gum heir advised Banks on investment and encouraged him to
get involved in the business world. Banks credited the advice for encouraging
him to take classes in bank management and
to enter in a variety of partnership
deals in enterprises that included a car
dealership. Some of the investments
worked out. Some didn’t. But Banks did make money. And he discovered he was a personal asset to
companies who wanted to polish their images and raise their public
profiles. If he never became the great executive he yearned to be, he did
become a hugely successful public
relations asset and company spokesperson.
In
1961 Wrigley made the oddest decision of his ownership. Instead of hiring a new manager he put the team in the charge of his famous College of Coaches—management by a
committee of 12 coaches who rotated between them who would be field skipper on game day. The system worked just about as well as you
would expect. That spring the constant
shifting from left to right necessary at shortstop aggravated Banks’ old Army
knee injury. The College decided to rest
him at short and put him in left field,
a position he was totally unfamiliar and uncomfortable with. “Only a duck out of water could have shared
my loneliness in left field,” he later said.
But with the help of center
fielder Richie Ashburn he quickly adapted and made only one error in 23
games out in the cow pasture.
The
College then moved him to first base,
the position he would keep the rest of his career. By May 1963 he was good enough at his new
position to set a record for most put-outs in a game by a first baseman. But Bank’s power began to taper off, as did
his speed on the base paths. In ’62 he had been beaned by Moe Drabowsky and
was carried off the field unconscious with a concussion. He missed three
days and bounced back with a three homer game.
But there were lingering effects. The following year he was weakened by
the mumps, a very dangerous illness
in adult men, and finished the season with 18 home runs, 64 RBIs, and a .227
batting average. But when he hit, it was
timely hitting and the team posted its first winning season since his arrival.
The
next year, however the team was back in the toilet. Banks was settling into homer production in
the high 20’s and still good RBI numbers.
On September 2, 1965 Ernie thrilled fans by smacking his 400th career
homer.
The
next year, 1965, Leo Durocher arrived
from Los Angeles as solo manager
with a mandate to turn the bottom dwelling, money hemorrhaging team around.
Things did not go well. Banks was
having the worst season of his career.
He hit only 15 homers and his slowing on the base paths caused him to
misjudge leads. The Cubs finished the
season with a dismal 59-103 record.
Durocher,
who spent his evenings night clubbing,
let the press who covered his colorful escapades know that he was dissatisfied with
Banks who he considered washed up. In
his memoirs Durocher complained that he wanted to bench banks but could not
because, “there would be rioting in the streets.” Since his past was checkered with racist comments and altercations, there was speculation,
particularly in the Black owned Daily Defender that Durocher’s
animosity was racially motivated.
Banks
denied it and soldiered on. In his
memoirs he wrote sympathetically of Durocher claiming he wished he had a
manager like that early in his career and maintaining that he learned a lot
from him.
 |
| Ernie and me in 20 |
Despite
the tense relations, Banks stayed at first base and his numbers came back
up. In 1967 Durocher even named him a player/coach. He hit 23 home runs, and drove in 95 runs
that year. The next year his home run numbers were back up to 32 and he was
awarded the Lou Gehrig Memorial Award for
playing ability and personal character.
And the Cubs were finally building a decent team around him.
The
following year the famous ’69 Cubs made their legendary run for the National
League pennant leading through much
of August until a long losing streak and a hot New York Mets ended their run.
It was the team with the most eventual Hall of Famers of any that never made it to post season play including Banks, his longtime best friend Billy Williams, pitchers Ferguson Jenkins and Ken Holtzman, and eventually Third Baseman Ron Santo. Banks chipped in 23 home runs, 106 RBIs,
and a batting average of .253 to the effort.
It was also the last year of Ernie’s 14 year run as an All Star.
Banks
hit his 500th round tripper before a home crowd at Wrigley on May 12,
1970. But his career was winding
down. After the 1971 season he announced
his retirement in December. He remained
on as a coach for three more seasons and then had turns as a scout and in the
team front office. Durocher was fired midway through the
next season.
Banks’s
life time stats speak for themselves—512 home runs, 277 of them as a shortstop,
a career record at the time of his retirement; 2,583 hits; 1,636 RBIs; and a .274
batting average. In addition he held the
Major League record for most games played without a postseason appearance—2,528. His Cub records include games played; at-bats,
9,421; extra-base hits, 1,009; and total bases, 4,706.
In
his post playing days Banks divided his time between the Cubs and his business affairs. He became a partner at the first Black owned Ford Dealership in the U.S. He worked in banking, insurance, and was an executive at a moving company. His
investments paid off and he was worth an estimated $4 million when he retired.
But
the Cubs were always closest to his heart.
In 1984 when the Tribune Company bought
the team from the Wrigley family, Banks had a desk in the Front Office and a
title as a Vice President for Corporate
Sales. The new management unceremoniously
dumped him, which was the most disappointing, even heartbreaking moment in his
life. When fan reaction was uniform
outrage, the company charged that Banks had missed some important Sales
meetings and anonymously leaked comments to the press likening him to “your
crazy uncle at Thanksgiving.” That went
over worse. Within a couple of years the
team kissed and made up. Although Banks
was never again given a front office job, he was employed as a team ambassador.
After
retirement honors just kept piling up.
In 1977 he was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. In 1982 the Cubs retired his number 14, the first player so honored,
and flew a flag with the number from the left
field fowl poll. It was five years
before another player was so honored. In
1999 he was named to the Major League
Baseball All-Century Team and the Society
for American Baseball Research listed him 27th on a list of the 100 greatest baseball players. In 2008 Banks became the first Cub player to
be honored with a statue outside
Wrigley Field.
In
2009 Banks was named a Library of
Congress Living Legend, an award in recognition of those “who have made
significant contributions to America’s diverse cultural, scientific and social
heritage.”
 |
| Receiving the Medal of Freedom last year from President Obama. |
On
August 8, 2014 President Barack Obama draped
the Presidential Medal of Freedom around
Banks’ neck in a ceremony that also honored former President Bill Clinton, Oprah
Winfrey and 13 others. Characteristically,
Banks responded with a generous gesture that surprised and touched
everyone. He presented the President
with a bat given to him by Jackie Robinson, Obama’s treasured boyhood
hero. Experts speculated that a bat of
that provenance—Robinson, Banks, to
Obama—instantly became probably the most valuable piece of baseball memorabilia in history.
All
of these awards and honors paled against the love and affection felt for Mr.
Cub by former teammates and fans alike.
When word of his death spread, fans flocked to Wrigley Field which was
blocked by chain link fence for
reconstruction, leaving flowers, candles, baseball cards, and other tributes in
heaps and piles against the fence. The
Cubs had Bank’s statue, which had been removed during construction for
repainting and restoration, moved to Daily
Plaza where more came to pay their respects.
There
was a public yesterday at Chicago’s history Fourth Presbyterian Church. There will be a memorial service this morning which
will be broadcast on WGN-TV
then a processional will carry Ernie for the last time past Wrigley
Field.
And,
hey Cubs, I know of another great way to honor Ernie Banks—win the Pennant and
World Series this year in his honor…..
