Letters: Baseball's Ernie Banks And Civil Rights

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

We have a footnote this morning to our conversation with the man known as Mr. Cub. Ernie Banks is the former Cub who's brilliant play put him in the Hall of Fame. That's a big honor, though not enough for Ernie Banks. He told us this week of a lifelong regret. He never won the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Mr. ERNIE BANKS (Former Major League Baseball Player): I got an award the other day at the Library of Congress and I said, gosh, I'm getting an award for doing nothing. I haven't done anything, nothing.

INSKEEP: That frank statement prompted some listeners to write in to disagree. Your letters suggest that Ernie Banks influence the world a little more than he may realize. Banks came to the Cubs in 1953. He was one of the first black players in Major League Baseball and he played for two decades in a racially divided city.

In the 1950s, listener Laurel Rabshutz(ph) was growing up in an all-white neighborhood, and she writes that the example of Ernie Banks taught her something about diversity and equality.

Half a century later, she still marks his birthday on her calendar every year.

Listener Pete Mundy(ph) writes that when he was a teenager his parents gave him permission to attend a Cubs game. He describes seeing Ernie Banks at bat, those famous fingers working and working the bat before the pitcher got set. And afterward, Mundy writes, he and a friend waited outside the locker room.

Finally the door opened to reveal, quote, "a big black man in a sharp-looking business suit." The boys edged away, too shy to introduce themselves. And so it was Ernie Banks who introduced himself and signed their programs. That's what I'm here for, he said. We were two young white boys, writes Mr. Mundy, who feels that Ernie Banks transcended centuries of prejudice when he reached out to them.

(Soundbite of baseball game)

Unidentified Man (Announcer): That's the fly ball, deep to left, back, back, back, that's it, that's it, hey, he did it, Ernie Banks got number 500. A line drive shot in the deep to the left, everybody on your feet. This is it. Wee! Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.