If you’re fortunate in life, you outlive your heroes. Natural, that the favorite player or musician or mentor would be older and would die before you.
If you’re fortunate in life, on a sun-kissed summer day, with a staggering agenda, you get to meet and spend time with your hero.
If you’re especially fortunate in life, that hero doesn’t disappoint.
Sobering fact is, the chance meeting with a favorite singer revealed him to be an unmitigated grump. Could be that writer across the press box, the one you’ve admired for decades, needs a valet to carry his ego. And, sorry to burst a bubble, but not everyone paid to wear a uniform and play a game for our entertainment is an affable figure, cozy as a Muppet.
Then, there is Brooks Calvert Robinson.
Childhood hero.
The most elegant defensive third baseman in history.
A warm, welcoming gentleman.
I always liked to call this photo from 1984 “two ex-third slick-fielding basemen discussing their craft”
Brooks died on Tuesday. A piece of my heart and piece of my childhood went along with him.
Who knows how these bits of fandom turned idolatry begin? Goofy as it was, I had to do a third-grade report on a bird. For some reason, I chose the Baltimore oriole. Colorful. Funky nest. Interesting bird. It then became natural, budding baseball fan and mediocre baseball player that I was, to become a fan of the Baltimore Orioles. This, mind you, back in the days of 16 teams and well before the Braves invaded our geography.
If you were an Orioles fan in the early 1960s, there was but one player to worship. This was before the great pitching era of Palmer, Bunker, McNally, et al. This was before the Cincinnati Reds deemed Frank Robinson to be an “old” 30, and cast him away to Baltimore in a trade for a mediocre pitcher named Milt Pappas.
Brooks Robinson was the Orioles then.
All due respect to Cal Ripken and Eddie Murray and this delightful young team that should soon clinch the division title, Brooks Robinson is the Orioles. Now and forever.
I’m reminded of the great line, after the blowhard Reggie Jackson went to the Yankees and demanded a candy bar be named in his honor. “In New York, they named a candy bar after Reggie. In Baltimore, we name our children after Brooks Robinson,” someone famously said.
“Robinson isn’t just the greatest defensive third baseman in baseball history – he is also the single kindest person I’ve ever met in 45 years of covering baseball,” wrote Tim Kurkjian of ESPN.
The only person I know who didn’t like Brooks Robinson? It was my friend Don Money, who simply acted like he didn’t like him, because Brooks was racking up 16 Gold Gloves in a time when Money would have won a couple of them had there not been an immortal elsewhere in the American League.
I think it was 1984 when a grocery store chain brought Brooks to Chattanooga for a series of appearances. I was typing then for the local newspaper. In tandem with those, he did a gig on behalf of the American Cancer Society. And he went to the Chattanooga Lookouts game.
My brain is fuzzy on this. This could have been over the course of two separate visits. Nonetheless, the grocery store chain was glad to let me ride along as their minions chauffeured him from store to store. I was front and center at his benefit speech.
And, when he arrived at the gate at the ballpark, I was standing there with my parents. Brooks spied me and walked over. I made the introductions. Then, as I looked for a place to hide, my mother proceeded to tell him how he had been my hero and forced the family into an extra 200 miles on a family vacation just to go watch him and the Orioles play.
He simply nodded graciously, perhaps sensing my embarrassment, and let my parents know how he had enjoyed getting to know me that day.
I went more than a few extra miles another time, weaving through Baltimore once on a trip to New England, to be there for “Thanks Brooks Day” to honor his retirement in 1977. The special edition of the Baltimore paper from that day remains in a filing cabinet at my house.
Since then, I have bumped into him another time or two. I reintroduced myself and Brooks did a nice job of acting as if he’d remembered his visit and our time together.
I have in my office a framed autograph photo of Brooks. In a desk, there is a handwritten letter from him. In my garage, there is 55-year-old Rawlings baseball glove, bought from JC Penney for $16 worth of lawn-mowing money. It is a Brooks Robinson model.
I was with my daughter Jordan on Tuesday when I first heard the news. She knew how it broke my heart.
She also knows what her name would have been, had she been a boy.
Never a Bad Game 