Mr. Selfless

Ernie Banks on a 1969 baseball card shot at Shea Stadium. No way it wasn’t a beautiful day.

We know what Ernie Banks, Mr. Cub, had to say about doubleheaders. Yet I thought it might be fitting to remember there was more to the man who passed away Friday eight days shy of his 84th birthday than one admittedly beautiful quote.

Let’s play two? Absolutely. But let’s hear more.

“You have to be happy, and sports does it. What kind of world would this be without sports, without baseball? Why, you’d have people at each other all the time.”
— Ernie Banks, 1969

“I have problems, like everyone else, but it doesn’t do any good to go around spreading bad news.”
—Ernie Banks, 1971

“Some people can’t deal with strange people. I can. For 35 years all I did was deal with people I didn’t know. But the facade was also me. I view people as if they have a sign on their chest which says, ‘Make me happy,’ and I got happy by making them happy. I always view people as feeling worthless, not having self-esteem, and I try to focus attention off myself and onto them to make them feel important.”
—Ernie Banks, 1988

“I see a lot of people today who struggled and went to jail and the dogs were after them, and I’d look at them and look ’em in the eyes and say, ‘God almighty, I wish I’da been there.’ My children, sometimes they think about, ‘Daddy, where were you all the times that the struggle was going on?’ And I could only answer one way: ‘I was playing baseball.’ That was the struggle.”
—Ernie Banks, 2006