WRIGLEYVILLE — It's commonly said, when a celebrity dies, that's it's the end of an era, that they were the last of their type, but it's entirely true and deservedly so in the case of Ernie Banks, who died of a heart attack Friday.
Because the thing the sets Mr. Cub apart from the athletes of today — and even the athletes of his own and previous eras as they're perceived with the jaded sophistication of our times — is that he had no edge.
Think about it. That is distinctive. As a baseball star, as an African-American athlete, Banks had no edge and, more markedly, never showed the faintest interest in developing an edge, that quality so critical to the athletes — and, above all, to the marketing of athletes — today.
He was endlessly optimistic in the worst of times, and utterly consistent in that throughout his career and his life. He had a sweetness all his own, and he never suggested there was a darkness or a bitterness behind it, not as an African-American athlete, not as a Hall of Famer who never played in a post-season game. And for that he was beloved, much as Wrigley Field was and is, as the enduring product of a more innocent time.
In the years after Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" first stripped the gloss off athletes and made them recognizable, and flawed, human beings, just as Banks' playing career was winding down, athletes came to develop and nurture an edge, sometimes as a protective coating, sometimes as a marketing stance.
Someone like Banks' longtime opponent, the St. Louis Cardinals' pitcher Bob Gibson, came to be celebrated for his fierce competitiveness and, later, for his equally fierce pride as an African-American who had endured the biases of coming up in the Jim Crow era.
Banks never did. While he acknowledged racial bias in his autobiography, "Mr. Cub," he brushed it off as something that never touched his essential character. And that character was consistent throughout.
That made some suspicious. The Los Angeles Dodgers' catcher John Roseboro, another player who conquered Jim Crow to arrive in the majors, is quoted in "The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract" as calling Banks a "con artist," in that: "No one smiles all the time naturally unless they're putting it on and putting you on. Every day of our lives isn't a good one."
Yet Banks never wavered, never suggested there was some darker impulse being held at bay by his relentless optimism and persistent joy. Not even when the changing times would have made that admission more permissible and, in fact, expected.
Perhaps it was, in some part, a defense mechanism. In the midst of the current election campaign, it's worth remembering that Banks ran for 8th Ward alderman in 1962 — and lost. Later in the decade, he told a sportswriter: "People knew me only as a baseball player. They didn't think I qualified as a government official, and no matter what I did I couldn't change my image.
"What I learned was that it was going to be hard to disengage myself from my baseball life, and I would have to compensate for it when my playing days were over," he added. He did that by becoming a more than capable businessman, but also as a indefatigable ambassador of the game of baseball he loved, and of the Cubs in particular.
To be sure, Banks had some adversity in his life. He weathered divorces and business setbacks. Yet he never allowed that to alter his public persona as an unapologetically joyful person.
Today, all athletes have an acknowledged edge. It's what makes them human, not just "sports heroes," an antiquated concept that seems increasingly quaint if not ridiculous. Consider how even an old-school figure like, say, Joe DiMaggio eventually came to be seen as someone who was domineering in his marriage with Marilyn Monroe, then overly protective of her legacy in death, just as he was overly protective of his own stature as "the greatest living ballplayer" later on.
Banks, however, was preserved as the sweet and joyful person he apparently truly was. The passage of time didn't taint or color that public perception. He was "Mr. Cub" to the end, and retains that lovingly bestowed title in death.
We are not likely to see his type ever again, not for such a sustained period as an entire playing career, much less for an entire lifetime.
The Cubs and Wrigley Field are 95 percent owned by a trust established for the benefit of the family of Joe Ricketts, owner and CEO of DNAinfo.com. Joe Ricketts has no direct involvement in the management of the iconic team.
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