Ernie Banks

• Born: January 31, 1931
• Birthplace: Dallas, Texas
• Died: January 23, 2015

Baseball player

Described as “an incurable optimist” by Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, Banks spent his whole career with the city’s long-suffering Cubs. Despite the team’s misadventures, Banks kept hope of a championship alive for fans with his infectious charm and annual slogans such as “The Cubs will be great in ’68,” or “The Cubs will shine in ’69.” He was dubbed “Mr. Cub” for his devotion to the team and its city.

Early Life

Ernest Banks was born on January 31, 1931, in Dallas, Texas. His parents possessed a love of baseball that encouraged Banks to consider making the sport his career. One of twelve children, he learned early the importance of being a team player and contributing to the benefit of the larger group, which was something for which he would become known in his later life. Interestingly, as a child, Banks had little interest in baseball; his father reportedly had to pay him a nickel to play catch. Basketball was his first love, and his school did not even field a competitive interscholastic baseball team. On the basketball court, Banks averaged nearly twenty points per game in high school. He also was an impressive high-jumper on the track and field team. His talents even afforded him an opportunity to play for the famous Harlem Globetrotters. However, his skills on the diamond were revealed in a recreational softball league around Dallas, where Banks engaged the interest of professional baseball scouts.

Life’s Work

Banks began his baseball career earning fifteen dollars per game to play for a barnstorming team of African American players before he signed a contract to play baseball for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues—the same professional baseball route taken by his father, who had played for the Dallas Green Monarchs and the Black Giants. The Monarchs planned on him stepping right in as the starting shortstop. Banks hit 15 home runs and batted .305 in his first season with the team. However, the next year, he was drafted by the US Army and sent to West Germany.

When Banks returned to the Monarchs in 1953, he hit .380 with 23 home runs, attracting the attention of Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. Before the end of the season, the Chicago Cubs offered Banks a ten-thousand-dollar signing bonus and purchased his contract from the Monarchs. He became the first African American player for the Cubs, appearing in his first game in the majors in late 1953. “During my half-month stay with the Cubs in September 1953, I met more white people than I had known in all my twenty-two years,” he later said. While playing shortstop for the Cubs, one of his first double-play partners in Wrigley Field was second baseman Gene Baker—the second African American player to be signed by the team.

Banks was not only one of the most outstanding players of his era but also one of the most durable. Before being sidelined with an infection in his hand in the middle of the 1956 season, Banks played in more than four hundred consecutive major-league games in his young career. After recuperating from the infection, he went on to play in seven hundred more before sitting out another contest. It was during the second streak that he established his dominance in the National League, winning the most valuable player (MVP) award in 1958 and 1959 and hitting more home runs than anyone in baseball in the second half of the 1950s—surpassing a list of greats that included Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and other sluggers who were in the primes of their power-hitting careers. In addition, in 1960, Banks became the last National League shortstop to drive in one hundred runs in a season until Hubie Brooks, another African American player, did so in 1985.

Banks’s easygoing personality served him well through the 1960s, tumultuous years for the Cubs. The decade began with the organization’s infamous “College of Coaches” experiment, in which owner Phil Wrigley allowed several men (including Buck O’Neil, an inductee into the Negro Leagues Hall of Fame) to manage the team simultaneously, with each taking a turn at being the “head coach” at various points of the season. The experiment caused disarray in the clubhouse as players were uncertain of who was in charge at any given time. In 1961, the coaches decided to play Banks in left field—a position he had rarely ever played—for twenty-five games; by the time the College of Coaches disbanded in the mid-1960s, Banks was comfortably entrenched at first base, the position he would play for the remainder of his career. While Banks had been a premier defensive shortstop, his all-out play at the demanding position had worn on his body and throwing arm over the years.

Banks’s difficulties did not end with his position change, however. Manager Leo Durocher, who was hired in 1966, constantly challenged Banks with younger, more promising first basemen. None of these players was able to knock Banks out of the lineup. By 1969, Durocher himself admitted that “I’ve retired Banks for three years and he always comes back.” In turn, Banks was grateful for the accommodations Durocher ultimately made to allow Banks to finish his career in Chicago. “Leo made me work harder to get that little extra you need for success,” Banks said. “You might resent his efforts in the beginning, but all of a sudden you realize he has made you a better ballplayer—no, not only a better ballplayer, but a better man. He’s made me go for that little extra you need to win.”

Banks retired in 1971 after nineteen years with the Cubs. Durocher’s term as the manager ended in the middle of the following season. Banks was a beloved institution in Chicago, and his optimism endeared him to fans of the long-suffering franchise. After the 1968 season ended, he visited American troops fighting in Vietnam. Banks was so popular, in fact, that Illinois Governor Richard Oglivie appointed him to the board of directors for the Chicago Transit Authority.

On January 23, 2015, Banks passed away in Chicago following a heart attack. He was eighty-three.

Significance

Banks was known as “Mr. Cub” for his devotion to the team. A strong all-around player, he finished his career with 512 home runs and set a major-league single-season record for fielding percentage as a shortstop. Beyond statistics, he was a popular, likeable star who transcended baseball. In 1977, he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. Decades later, he was still being recognized for his contributions. He became the first Cubs player to be honored with a statue placed at Wrigley Field in 2008. Five years later, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

Bibliography

Banks, Ernie, and Jim Enright. Mr. Cub. Chicago: Follett, 1971. Print.

Feldmann, D. Miracle Collapse: The 1969 Chicago Cubs. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2006. Print.

Freedman, Lew. African American Pioneers of Baseball: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Westport: Greenwood, 2007. Print.

Goldstein, Richard. "Ernie Banks, the Eternally Hopeful Mr. Cub, Dies at 83." New York Times. New York Times, 23 Jan. 2015. Web. 28 Dec. 2015.

Jacobson, Steve. Carrying Jackie’s Torch: The Players Who Integrated Baseball and America. Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 2007. Print.