Quote of the day
Posted: February 3, 2021 Filed under: Quote of the day | Tags: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Ernie Banks, Major League Baseball, MLB, quotes, sports Leave a commentWhen I wake up in the morning, I feel like a billionaire without paying taxes.
~Ernie Banks

Bowman Baseball Card
NLBM Tribute to Ernie Banks
Posted: January 31, 2021 Filed under: 20th Century | Tags: Baseball, biographies, books, Chicago Cubs, Ernie Banks, history, Major League Baseball, MLB, Ron Rapoport, sports Leave a commentYesterday, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum hosted this talk with author Ron Rapoport about Ernie Banks. Rapoport is the author of the biography on Banks appropriately titled Let’s Play Two. This book is currently on my to-read list, but I look forward to getting to it, especially in the wake of this talk with the author. I love how Rapoport makes a point to stress how good of a ballplayer Banks was, a fact that sometimes gets overlooked as so much focus revolves around his sunny personality.
Today would have been Ernie Banks’s 90th birthday. Happy Birthday, Mr. Cub!
Quote of the day
Posted: December 23, 2020 Filed under: Quote of the day | Tags: Baseball, Ernie Banks, Major League Baseball, MLB, quotes, sports Leave a commentI didn’t understand anything about playing baseball. I started playing, and it was enjoyable. Most of my life, I played with older people on my team, in my league. I learned a lot about life. Every day in my life, I learned something new from somebody.
~Ernie Banks

Chicago Mayor’s Office
Quote of the day
Posted: February 15, 2020 Filed under: Quote of the day | Tags: Baseball, Ernie Banks, Major League Baseball, MLB, quotes, sports, Spring Training 2 CommentsSpring training means flowers, people coming outdoors, sunshine, optimism and baseball. Spring training is a time to think about being young again.
~Ernie Banks

Chicago Mayor’s Office
This day in baseball: Mr. Cub is MVP again
Posted: November 4, 2019 Filed under: 20th Century, This day in baseball | Tags: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Ernie Banks, history, Major League Baseball, Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award, MLB, sports Leave a commentErnie Banks won his second consecutive MVP award on November 4, 1959. Mr. Cub finished the season with a .304 batting average and 143 RBIs, including 45 home runs. Banks collected ten of the writers’ 21 first-place votes, with Eddie Mathews (5) and Hank Aaron (2) of the Braves and Dodger Wally Moon (4) dividing the rest of the first-place votes.
This day in baseball: Moon is Rookie of the Year
Posted: December 19, 2018 Filed under: 20th Century, This day in baseball | Tags: Baseball, Enos Slaughter, Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron, Major League Baseball, National League, Rookie of the Year, sports, St. Louis Cardinals, Wally Moon 2 CommentsOn December 19, 1954, Wally Moon of the St. Louis Cardinals was selected National League Rookie of the Year. Moon finished his first season in the big leagues with a .304 batting average, 12 home runs, and 76 RBIs. The twenty-four-year-old center fielder, who replaced Enos Slaughter in the St. Louis outfield, collected 17 of the 24 writers’ votes, winning easily over future Hall of Famers Ernie Banks and Hank Aaron.

Moon in 1961 (Wikipedia)
Ernie Banks’s Hall of Fame induction speech
Posted: February 18, 2018 Filed under: 20th Century | Tags: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Ernie Banks, history, National Baseball Hall of Fame, sports Leave a commentErnie Banks, “Mr. Cub,” was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977. I love the fact that he starts this speech with his signature, “Let’s play two.”
Ken Burns’s Baseball: The Seventh Inning
Posted: December 6, 2017 Filed under: 20th Century | Tags: Baltimore Orioles, Baseball, Bill Veeck, Bobby Thomson, Branch Rickey, Brooklyn Dodgers, business, Casey Stengel, Curt Flood, documentaries, Don Larsen, Eddie Gaedel, Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron, history, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Kansas City Athletics, Ken Burns, Los Angeles Dodgers, Major League Baseball, Mickey Mantle, MLB, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Negro Leagues, New York Giants, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Athletics, Polo Grounds, Roger Angell, Russ Hodges, San Francisco Giants, sports, St. Louis Browns, Willie Mays, World Series, Yogi Berra Leave a commentThe Seventh Inning of Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns takes us into the 1950s in America. Subtitled “The Capital of Baseball,” this installment of the documentary revolves primarily around New York City and the three teams who dominated the baseball world during this decade: the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. For ten straight years (1947-1956) a local team always played in the World Series, and a local team won nearly all of them as well.
It was certainly a great decade for the Yankees under manager Casey Stengel. With Mickey Mantle in the outfield and Yogi Berra behind the plate, the Yankees were as dominant as ever. The way Roger Angell describes the atmosphere in New York during this period, where everything seemed to revolve around baseball, makes me wish this type of world would come back into existence. “Stengelese” became a thing, though I like how the discussion also revolves around Stengel’s baseball intelligence. Similarly, while Yogi Berra remains most commonly known for “Yogi-isms,” he was also a phenomenal ballplayer. After all, you don’t get elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame just for speaking amusing phrases.
Jackie Robinson, released from his three-year vow of silence with Branch Rickey, began lashing out against those who slighted him. It’s an understandable reaction, especially considering how long he had to go without answering the racism he faced. His play just grew better with his anger, leading the Dodgers to some great seasons, including a World Series championship in 1955.
We get to watch the Giants’ Bobby Thomson’s ever-popular “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” during the 1951 playoffs against the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was an event that ignited a tremendous amount of excitement not only at the Polo Grounds, but also in fans’ homes as the game was televised across the country. I always get a kick out of hearing Russ Hodges’s excited screaming, “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”
A good portion of the disc was devoted to Mickey Mantle, who essentially took Joe DiMaggio’s place with the Yankees. The attention he receives is well-deserved, as is the attention to his struggles with injury and his tendency to stay up all night partying. Given how well he was able to play in spite of being hurt much of the time, one can’t help but wonder what Mantle would have accomplished had he been healthy. Sadly, we’ll never know. Mantle himself doesn’t even touch on the subject in his own discussions of his playing days on the documentary.
While the breaking of the color barrier by Jackie Robinson in 1947 was undeniably a great thing for baseball, it did have an unfortunate downside. Attendance at Negro Leagues games fell as black fans flocked to watch Robinson and those who followed him play in the major leagues. On the positive side, players including Willie Mays, Curt Flood, Ernie Banks and Hank Aaron became stars in Robinson’s wake. We get to watch Willie Mays make “The Catch,” a play that seemed impossible until he pulled it off.
The other unfortunate events, besides the end of the Negro Leagues, that we see during this decade involved the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants to the west coast. In the case of the Dodgers, the move took place in 1957, not long after the team finally managed to win a World Series, which made the move all the more heartbreaking for its fans. The Dodgers’ last ever World Series in 1956 saw them lose to the Yankees in a Series that involved Don Larsen’s perfect game. These moves were great news for Californians, of course, but Dodgers and Giants fans left behind in New York found themselves at a loss. Brooklyn and the Giants weren’t the only teams that moved during this period. The Philadelphia A’s moved to Kansas City, and the St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles.
The subtitle for this Inning, “The Capital of Baseball,” proved itself undeniably fitting. We love to think of baseball as a game and a pastime, but in the case of professional leagues especially, it is first and foremost a business. Bill Veeck’s promotional stunt of sending Eddie Gaedel to the plate is one of many displays of the importance of commercialism in baseball. It makes for a hard reality check when your league is forced to fold or your favorite team moves to an entirely new city, and in the present day, we experience a number of miniature heartbreaks any time an impactful player becomes a free agent and moves on to other teams.
Quote of the day
Posted: February 10, 2016 Filed under: Quote of the day | Tags: Baseball, Ernie Banks, quotes 6 CommentsThe only way to prove that you are a good sport is to lose.
~Ernie Banks

Bowman Baseball Card