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January 26, 2021
SAYING GOODBYE TO OUR HEROES
The death of Hank Aaron caused a ripple effect throughout not only the baseball world, but in many other quarters as well. The man they called “The Hammer” or “Hammerin’ Hank,” was not only one of the great baseball players of all time, but also a man of integrity, grace, and honor. He will not only be missed as a ballplayer, but as a human being, and he was celebrated as such in the flood of tributes that flowed in as soon as the sad news spread.
For longtime baseball fans like myself, the news of his passing triggered a flood of memories, as well as the realization that Aaron’s death was preceded by the passing of eight other great Hall of Fame players over the past year. The names ring out with a personal familiarity since we knew each one so well. Kaline, Seaver, Brock, Gibson, Ford, Morgan, Niekro and Sutton. Aaron makes number nine, ironically the same number as players on a baseball field. And they recently picked up their manager in Tommy Lasorda. Though older fans may not have met any of the players personally, they still seem in some ways like old friends. And the fact that they are now gone makes you feel as if a little part of yourself is gone, too.
In some ways, baseball is like a ticking clock on our lives. For example, I was just seven years old when Whitley Ford was called up to the Yankees in 1950 and by the time he retired in 1967, I was 25. So he was part of my baseball life from childhood to adulthood. When Hank Aaron made his debut in 1954 I was still 11 years old. When he called it quits in 1976, I was 34. Despite all the changes in my life over those years, baseball and Hank Aaron were a constant, something I could depend on and enjoy year after year.
Tom Seaver was perhaps the key player on the Miracle Mets team of 1969, a team I not only followed but wrote about as the sports editor of a daily Connecticut newspaper. I also had occasion to interview Tom Terrific. As for Bob Gibson, he was simply my favorite pitcher to watch. I loved everything about him, from his pitching motion to his ferocious competitiveness. He was the antithesis of everything that is wrong with pitching today. I’d love to see a manager try to take him out after 5.1 innings, saying he couldn’t trust him to go through the lineup a third time. God help that manager.
Brock, Morgan, Niekro, and Sutton were all players I watched for the entire duration of their careers. That’s what makes it so difficult to accept that they are gone and to say goodbye. In my mind’s eye – and I’m sure in many of yours as well – they’re all still young and out on the diamond doing the things they did so very well. As kids, and even in our formative years, we knew all the batting stances and pitching motions of our heroes, mimicking them in our own sandlot games or just for the fun of it in our backyards. The bottom line: these players and others were all big parts of our lives in a way only a real baseball fan can understand.
That’s another reason it’s so hard to let go. The reality is that we know our childhood, and even young adult heroes, are no longer young. Neither are we. But there’s a kind of comfort knowing they are still out there. And when we see them being interviewed or at the Hall of Fame ceremonies, it always triggers those special baseball memories of them performing on the field and how it made us feel watching their greatness.
So each time one of these special players – or even a journeyman player we might have really liked and rooted for – departs this world it hurts us a little bit, too. Not in the way it would for someone in our own family or a close friend. It hurts because the life cycle of baseball so closely mirrors our own life cycle. And the death of one of our baseball heroes always gives us a not-so-subtle reminder. Nobody is immortal. May they all rest in peace.
Bill Gutman
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