Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

“It’s a beautiful day, let’s play two”

Ernie Banks, the greatest power-hitting shortstop of the 20th century and an unconquerable optimist whose sunny disposition never dimmed in 19 seasons with the perennially stumbling Chicago Cubs, died Friday in Chicago. He was 83.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/sport ... .html?_r=0

There is a mental exercise I play with from time to time, trying to determine which athlete in one sport is most like an athlete in another team sport, in personality, career output, etc. Many times it is athletes from the same era.

Some of them are pretty easy, like Yogi Berra and Art Donovan, great players who played in lots of classic games, but were guys who became great storytellers as older men, relating to us their witnesses to history. Another is Paul Hornung and Don Drysdale, both bachelor playboy types who were very good players who played for great teams but were not really the stars of their teams, but went into their respective Halls of Fame despite the suspicion that both were weak choices based on the fact of their celebrity. I have put forth a similarity to Pete Rose (leaving the gambling aside, other than to note that the gambling was an offshoot of his intense competitive nature) and Brett Favre in the past, guys obsessed with setting personal goals, both risk takers on the field, who played each game like it was the last game they would ever play, but their ultra-competitive personalities may have hurt their teams here and there, and both did not know when to hang it up because they were trying to set personal goals.

Ernie Banks was a solid player who was best known for his childlike enthusiasm and perpetual smile, a guy who you got the feeling would have played the game for free just because he loved playing it. There have been other baseball players of this kind in the past, Kirby Puckett is one who comes to mind. With his passing, I got to thinking about who the closest parallel was to Banks in another sport, and since I only follow baseball and football, I tend to look for the most similar football player.

This kind of player like Banks is a type you just don't see in football, and this is the major difference between the psychological makeup of those who play. Jim Taylor was one parallel I can think of to an Ernie Banks in that after retirement he still played semi-pro football because he loved to hit people. However, Dick Butkus had a childlike enthusiasm for the game, that a kid who plays football dreams of burying his opponent into the turf, and Butkus was a direct contemporary of Banks who played in the same city. Also, off the field, Butkus was a softie and a normal, likeable guy, but on the field he was hell in cleats and he left all his anger and aggressive nature on the field where it belonged. They may seem like opposites on the field, but I think the closest parallel for Ernie Banks may have been Butkus. I think Butkus enjoyed playing the game so much he would have wanted to play two just to knock people around some more.