We All Had A Ball

Then, all of a sudden, I picked up a ball the way the first caveman picked up the first good fist-sized rock. And I felt my hose start to fill with water again. I felt leaner, stronger, springier, glad to have hamstrings. The downside of this was that my pants became even baggier. But I wore a psychic T shirt that said, PLAYING MYSELF INTO SHAPE.

And then you went on a tear, right?

No. Then I reached my nadir. I thought I had reached my nadir years ago, several times, but in the very first intrasquad game I hit another new low.

Because I let the guys down. "We are here," Banks had announced one day behind the batting cage, "to ameliorate the classic polarization of the self-motivated individual and the ideology of the group."

Excuse me. Did Banks say things like that often?

Banks said things that came from the Big Arizona Sky. When someone asked him whether he felt he had come along too soon, before the days of astronomical baseball salaries, he said, "No. Wish I'd been born sooner. With the philosophers. Days of Plato, and Socrates, and Alexander Graham Bell." When I asked him what would be a thrill for him, comparable to the thrill we campers were getting, he said, "To sing in the Metropolitan Opera."

What Banks most often said was "Veez-ualize yourself hitting a home run!"

"Ernie," said a camper, "I thought we were just supposed to meet the ball, and it would take care of itself."
"No," he said. "It won't. It will not take care of itself. You have to see yourself inside the ball when it is in the pitcher's hand, and you're thinking, 'Time to take a long ride.' "

But don't change the subject. I'm ready to discuss my nadir.

You have a lot of heart as an interviewee, you know that?