Ernie Banks

Yesterday Ernie Banks was one of the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Washington D. C. and I don’t think it could have happened to a nicer guy. Ernie Banks, AKA Mr. Cub of baseball’s Chicago Cubs was twice named Most Valuable Player, won a Gold Glove Award, was named to more than a dozen All-Star teams, was inducted into the Hall of Fame and has one of the most recognizable smiles in baseball. He went from a 7-dollar-day player in the Negro Leagues to the first African-American to play for the Cubs. He hit 512 homeruns during his career. Jack Brickhouse who announced for the Cubs back when I went to Wrigley Field and Ernie Banks wore the number 14, was known for his catch phrase, “Hey-hey!” when the Cubs scored and Ernie Banks for saying, “Let’s play two.” My Mom met Ernie Banks years later when she worked at Motorola but one of my best memories from my Wrigley Field days involved getting an autograph from Ernie Banks. We went to lots of games there and always sat along the third baseline. As the game progressed it would become obvious that not all the box seats (closer to the field) were going to be occupied so one thing my twin brother and I did was sneak into them, choose a couple of seats to sit in, and try to act like we belonged there. Sometimes we were escorted back to our mother but sometimes not. Sometimes when we didn’t have money for the ticket into the park we stayed out on Waveland Avenue with a transistor radio listening to the game, waiting to hear “Hey-hey!” while watching for a homerun ball to come out of the park so we could make a scramble for it. After the game we sometimes waited there for the players to come out after the game and head home. That was a good place to try for an autograph too. But the best autograph place and the time most vivid in my memory was once before the game started. My brother and I scooted on our bellies on top of the dugout waving our program and a pen, hoping it would get snatched for an autograph before we were run out of the box seats one more time. And as you might expect we did get returned to the grandstand, but that time with Ernie Banks’ autograph. I loved the foot long hot dogs and the frosties, and the vendors singing about peanuts and cold beer here, bottle of beer, but I loved number fourteen the most.