Country grammar

Enos Slaughter leaves behind one lasting impression

Enos "Country" Slaughter, as you almost certainly know, died on Monday. He was 86, and the obituaries describe him as a Hall of Fame ballplayer, a perennial All-Star, a swift and hellbent outfielder, a .300 hitter who scored on a short hit by Harry Walker to win the World Series in 1946.

Even to the many of us who never saw him play, he was a far more mythic character than that: a spikes-up and fists-out kind of guy who took no guff. A Pete Rose progenitor who emerged -- in black-and-white and a cloud of dust -- from the pages of our baseball history books. He could strike a little fear in you, that was clear. His name was Slaughter, after all.

When I met Enos Slaughter, on a hot summer day in 1999, he was 83 and sharp as the spikes of his baseball shoes. I went to see him at his house, on the farmland outside Roxboro, N. C., where he'd grown up. You drove off the boulevard and through green fields along a narrow, paved road and past a creek. You saw cows grazing and wheat growing and you remembered that Slaughter's nickname was Country.

He lived in a low house -- I'm guessing a ranch, but don't hold me to that -- and when he opened the screen door it creaked. The St. Louis Cardinals had recently erected a statue of Slaughter outside Busch Stadium, and I was visiting him to write a story about it for Sports Illustrated.

"Mr. Slaughter," I said, approaching the door. And we shook hands.

In the two hours I spent with him, Slaughter, as always, covered a lot of ground. One thing in particular stands out. In our conversations, Slaughter made a particular assertion, often apropos of nothing that I could apprehend, over and over and over again -- as he was letting me in for the first time: "I ain't no pantywaist, you know," Slaughter said.

I smiled and assured him that no one had insinuated he might be, nor anything similar, and he gave a gruff, satisfied nod. But still, as we talked, he punctuated each recollection -- of his historic romp home on Walker's hit, of his controversial brushes with Jackie Robinson, of a brawl he'd been in as a Yankee -- with the same reminder: "I ain't no pantywaist." He would say it and then he would hitch up his pants.

He stood for a while and then he sat in a high-backed armchair. The room was carpeted and paneled in oak (or faux-oak, perhaps). There were a few trophies and mementos around but nothing showy. Slaughter told stories. He told me about his first baseball bat, which his father had cut from a Mulberry tree, and of playing in the wheat fields as a boy. When we talked about his career he remembered all his stats, even from the minors.

He had an imposing crackle in his voice and his opinions were sure. I asked him about the World Series of '46 and how, after being drilled on the elbow with a pitch in Game 5, had he been able to play the rest of the Series with a painful and all-but-useless left arm. He gave a four-word explanation that, by now, I'm sure you can guess.

Not long after I got home from the interview, Harry Walker passed away at age 80. The urgency of an obituary on one old-time, hard-nosed Cardinal trumped the story about a statue honoring another, so we ran a story on Walker while the Slaughter piece was shelved. Even so, I knew that my trip to North Carolina had been no loss. I'd met the immortal Enos Slaughter, a man who ran to first base every time he drew a walk, and who played with a hunger we have not seen since Rose retired.

One day, I promised myself, I'd pass on the one little bit of his legacy that I could. Now, three years later, the great ballplayer has passed. Take it from me: That Enos Slaughter warn't no pantywaist.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Kostya Kennedy takes sides every Wednesday at CNNSI.com.

 

Related information

Stories

Kostya Kennedy's Insider Archive

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video