With a familiar glint in his eye and his trademark grin, Ernie Banks once revealed a recurring dream of him standing on a stage in Stockholm accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.
A friend to presidents who once discussed poverty with Nelson Mandela always wanted to be remembered as much more than a baseball player, not just Mr. Cub and the guy who always wanted to play two.
"I've looked at people who have won it, [Desmond] Tutu, Lech Walesa, people who gave of themselves, helped others and made this a better world," Banks told me. "I can imagine myself in Stockholm. I visualize that, being on that stage. That's the legacy I'm searching for."
The legacy Banks leaves behind after his death Friday at 83 honors a hero to millions of Little Leaguers who grew up loving No. 14, the most positive person in every room he entered. Banks hit 512 career home runs for the Cubs from 1953-71 and touched more lives than any statistician could count. The player known for never winning a World Series never stopped believing.
Indefatigable enthusiasm made Banks everybody's favorite person in town, let alone baseball player. He was uncommonly curious, courteous, considerate and funny. And he will be sorely missed in Chicago and every baseball city Banks graced with his presence and inimitable style.
On the day in 2013 when Banks learned he was receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, his "pinnacle" achievement, he humbly recalled being one of 12 children raised poor in Dallas where he bought his first baseball glove for $2.98.
"I look at my life and any of my 11 brothers or sisters could have done this too, so why me?" Banks asked.
Asked that day if the presidential honor sated his desire to realize his life-long goal of winning the Nobel Prize, Banks scoffed.
"I said I haven't done that ... yet," he said, breaking into laughter.
Anybody who encountered Banks laughed a lot. He made everybody in his company feel special, as if they shared a unique connection that turned into the kind of memory so many Chicagoans recalled Friday night. In the latter innings of his life, Banks liked to ask people he just met if they were married with the hopes of setting them up with their future spouse. He could work a room better than the politicians who would line up to shake his hand. He could be relentless in search of a smile.
"I try to go around and find people to get married all the time," Banks once told the Tribune. "I don't like going to more funerals than weddings, so I have to find some way to balance out all the funerals I go to."
As Banks aged gracefully shuttling between homes in Chicago and Marina Del Rey, Calif., he never stopped swinging for the fences in his mind. Instead of gripping and grinning the days away as one of baseball's cheeriest ambassadors, Banks sought ways to use his platform to fight homelessness and hopelessness. He approached Oprah Winfrey for philanthropic advice. He golfed with Warren Buffett. He reached out to Steve Bartman.
He stayed up nights thinking of solutions to urban problems and considered himself a "social entrepreneur." He took as much pride in breaking racial barriers with the Cubs as he did clearing fences at Wrigley Field.
I once asked Banks why a man so happy spent so much time worrying about issues so heavy. He handed me a seven-paragraph personal statement, summed up best by the last three sentences.
Home runs weren't the only things deep about Banks. But he relished surprising people, as he once did after claiming in an interview he was related to O.J. Simpson. I didn't believe Banks so he called his mother Essie, 93 at the time, and handed me his cellphone.
"Tell him how O.J. and I are related," Banks said.
Has Chicago ever enjoyed a more fascinating athlete for so long? Banks won two Most Valuable Player awards and was a 14-time All-Star as the best Cubs player ever, but that hardly captures all he accomplished as Mr. Cub. Nor did all of Banks' baseball accolades combined make him prouder than what he achieved going from a boy who grew up in Texas picking cotton into a man who died in Chicago symbolizing hope.
The journey always delighted Banks more than the destination, such as the time he recalled teeing off with billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.
"I golfed with half of the U.S. economy at Augusta National!" Banks said, pumping his fist. "Here's a young kid from Dallas, Texas, from a family of 12, playing golf at a private club with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Is this a great country or what?"
It's one a little sadder today.
Sports on 01/25/2015