The Cubs’ Hall of Famer seemed like the epitome of sunshine and happiness, much like the buoyant lyrics co-written by Englishman Daniel Boone and Rod McQueen (“Hey, hey, hey, it’s a beautiful day.”).
That was the carefully crafted persona of Banks, lovingly known as “Mr. Cub” during his 19-year career in Chicago. “Let’s play two” was more than a catchy slogan. It was a mantra for Cubs fans who streamed into Wrigley Field, the last major league baseball stadium to install lights. When Banks played at the Friendly Confines, there was always sunshine.
Rapoport, a former columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and Los Angeles Daily News, originally was going to collaborate with Banks on an autobiography. However, Banks’ death Jan. 23, 2015, ended that project. But armed with hours of taped conversations with Banks, Rapoport began calling people that knew the Hall of Famer, or played with or against him, and wound up speaking with more than 100 people, including Marjorie Lott, the third of Banks’ four wives; and Regina Rice, his friend and caretaker during the final years of his life.
Rapoport notes that the closer people were to Banks, the more they shared the frustrating notion that this “joyful, melancholy, humble, complicated, companionable, lonely man … remained imprisoned in an image of one simplistic dimension.”
Banks was not a one-dimensional player. He hit 512 home runs and was a graceful shortstop before his bad knees forced him to play first base over the final decade of his career. He was a back-to-back National League MVP on teams that finished in fifth place both years and was selected to play in 14 All-Star Games. Banks was a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 1977 and was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. He was the one shining star on some lousy teams during the 1950s and ’60s, but in 1969 it looked as if he might finally get to play in the postseason. The New York Mets shattered that dream, and that had to be an empty feeling for Banks.
Banks, author Howard Bryant wrote in his 2010 book, The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, “carried that heavy and unfortunate asterisk of being the greatest player never to take his team to the World Series.”
Rapoport traces Banks from his youth in Dallas, when he lived in poverty and was subjected to racism. He missed a year of school because he helped his father pick cotton. Banks learned one lesson from his father, Eddie Banks, that made him uncomfortable, Rapoport writes.
“I don’t want my son working for no white people,” Eddie Banks told his wife. “Whatever he does in life, I want him to do it on his own.”
Banks did it on his own, jumping from the Negro Leagues to the major leagues and becoming a star in the National League.
Rapoport draws a parallel line from Banks’ career to the fate of the Cubs from 1953 to 1971. He devotes a good chunk of Let’s Play Two to Banks’ teammates, Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley, the College of Coaches, the tragedy surrounding Ken Hubbs, the Bleacher Bums and the self-destructive leadership of manager Leo Durocher.
But to understand those deviations from a traditional biography is to grasp the essence of what made Banks such a beloved figure in Chicago.
He even weathered the criticism of Durocher, who openly wanted to get rid of him.
“Unfortunately,” Leo Durocher wrote in his 1975 autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Last (which Rapoport also uses as a source), “his time was not my time.”
“He did love to play. That part of the Ernie Banks legend is true.”
Players were “dumbstruck” when Durocher, who became the Cubs manager in 1966, challenged Banks, Rapoport wrote. Durocher would nitpick about Banks’ base running, his fielding and his inability to take a longer lead at first base. And in classic Durocher style, the manager would call out his star in front of the team.
He also complained to the writers, and even in his autobiography, Durocher could not resist taking a mocking shot.
“All he knew was, ‘Ho, let’s go. Ho, babydoobedoobedoo. It’s a wonderful day for a game in Chicago. Let’s play twooo,’” Durocher wrote.
Rapoport devotes a chapter to Banks’ signature phrase and its variations, trying to determine the origin of “Let’s play two.” While it presented Banks as a positive player with a sunny disposition, there were those who thought it was a sham.
“Maybe it’s sacrilege, but I believe Banks was a con artist,” former Dodgers catcher John Roseboro said. “No one smiles all the time naturally unless they’re putting it on and putting you on.”
Rapoport then goes on a tangent, showing how “Lets’ play two” has been blended into areas of American culture other than sports. Singers, politicians, writers, rock ’n’ roll bands, playwrights and even economic experts found a way to work the phrase into their vocabularies.
With a pair of Ernie Banks biographies on the market this year — Doug Wilson wrote one with a similar title — baseball fans might be tempted to say, “Let’s read two.”
But that’s an extreme case.
Despite the criticism from his manager, or the skepticism about his optimism, Banks never groused publicly. That was not part of his DNA. “Banks was, after all, the boy who never complained about the poverty and segregation in which he was raised,” Rapoport wrote. He also was the player “who never complained about wasting his finest seasons with a team that had no hope of winning the pennant.”
Rapoport’s Let’s Play Two has some unexpected nuggets, too. He writes about a 2002 family reunion Banks’ mother, Essie Durden Banks, attended in Louisiana. Walter Banks, Ernie’s younger brother, was stunned to see O.J. Simpson there, and even more surprised to learn his mother was first cousins with Simpson’s mother, Eunice Durden Simpson.
Rapoport’s writing is smooth and easy, and he covers all angles of Banks’ personal and professional life. Married life was not sunny, as Banks went to the altar four times. His children hardly saw him during the regular season, but that’s a byproduct of baseball’s nomadic nature.
As he got older, Banks would make commitments for speaking engagements and appearances that he would either forget about or simply not honor. Even in death, there was a melancholy ending, as Banks’ family got into a legal tussle with Regina Rice over the player’s will.
“The man can’t die in peace,” Banks’ teammate, Billy Williams, told Rapoport.
While most authors compile a bibliography, Rapoport chose to label it “Sources.” It works well, because the reader can look how each chapter was formed. Rapoport lists the people he interviewed and the publications he used as source material. It’s unorthodox, but I found it fascinating. It overrode the concern of no bibliography or formal, detailed end notes.
Banks had a dark, sad side the public never saw. Rapoport does a nice job balancing that conflict with his persona.
“He had a great skill at building a façade around him,” Marjorie Lott told Rapaport. “I think a lot of his ‘It’s a great day, let’s play two’ was a cover-up of his sadness.”
“He was a tortured soul,” one prominent Chicagoan told Rapoport. “He just hid it very well.”
But with a statue of Ernie Banks now standing outside Wrigley Field, it will always be a beautiful Sunday at the Friendly Confines. And beautiful every other day, too. A smiling Banks on the cover of Let’s Play Two cannot convince you otherwise.