Sometimes words don’t work. This was one of them.
Those were my feelings on and shortly after 9/26/2023, a fittingly gloomy, dreary day, when the world learned that Brooks Robinson had died.
Mr. Oriole to some, the No. 1 Oriole to others or, my personal favorite, the Original Oriole, had moved on to a higher league. That’s where former umpire Ed Hurley once famously said Brooks had come from before joining the Baltimore Orioles.
The news of his passing shook me to the core, as I’m sure it did thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. Who knows? Based on the number who have a story to tell, it seems you could reduce the Six Degrees of Separation idea by half if Brooks was in the mix.
Perhaps because the stars were aligned just right, my trajectory through life, to my great good fortune, intersected with Brooks professionally and personally for most of our lifetimes. We were never “let’s grab a beer” buddies, except for occasions during the second part of his career as a television analyst when we were on the road together. Mostly, we were just a couple of guys who loved baseball and liked to talk about it. And, yeah, the fact that we had both been around the team almost from its inception might have had something to do with that.
I had known, as did most of you, that Brooks had recent health issues. But always, it seemed, he bounced back, so when the news of his passing came, it hit hard. As I’m sure many others did, I heard it on the 6 o’clock news — literally while saying grace before dinner.
I easily admit to crying hard and long, as I’m sure did most of Birdland, and make no apologies. With those tears came the urge to do something I’ve done my whole professional life … only to realize I couldn’t do it.
Even though there was nothing I could possibly say that hadn’t already been said in different ways many times over, that immediate urge was the need to write something about someone who was not just a friend, but also an icon in our community and, in fact, the entire baseball world, and God only knows how far beyond.
But the words wouldn’t come, which is why they didn’t work, and at first I couldn’t figure it out. Why was it so difficult to write something about somebody you admired and respected and whose friendship was so treasured? That’s when I realized there was a second part of the equation.
Sometimes things get personal. Too personal. And this was definitely one of them.
Why was it so important that I write a story?
Jim Palmer called Brooks “the gold standard for human beings.” Is there anything more powerful than that? Boog Powell, like Palmer a beloved teammate who never flinched in the batter’s box or missed a chance to visit when he was in town, choked up saying “I love him, man,” when talking about his friend.
How do you top that? Or any of the other wonderful tributes? They’re all out there. Just Google Brooks Robinson.
The bottom line is that I came to realize that there was no real “need” for me to write a story. Perhaps it was just a “want to,” something to satisfy a selfish ego rather than pay tribute.
It took awhile, until very recently actually, to realize why this was so personal. And the answer is simple. It’s because that’s what Brooks Robinson did. He made it personal — for everybody. So, while my stories and/or memories might be different than yours, they aren’t better, they’re just different. They’re just mine, just as you … and you … and you … and you … have yours.
That’s what Brooks did even better than he played third base — he made the contact as important to him as it was to you. He made it personal for both. And nobody did it better.
It wasn’t until I realized it wasn’t any more personal for me than it was for anybody else that I finally got it. That’s when the dreaded “writer’s block” let the words out, let them try to do their thing and allowed me to do whatever it was I was trying to do, even if it was “too personal.”
That makes it easier to recall that my first recollection of what might be “something special” came when I was still in college, moonlighting as an usher in the third base upper deck at Memorial Stadium (I’d like to say Section 5). Some unsuspecting and unknown hitter lined a drive down the line that was destined to become a double into the left field corner — until this diving, sprawling, scrambling third baseman intercepted and threw him out at first.
I joined the sports staff at the Baltimore News American in 1959, which was Brooks’ first full year in the big leagues and our paths began to intermingle almost immediately. On Opening Day 1963, in brand new D.C. Stadium, I surprisingly became a volunteer substitute bat boy for a day (having previously had minor league experience). My game day uniform was completed with a sweatshirt and pair of size 10 spikes courtesy of the Orioles’ by-then-resident third baseman.
Fast forward to 1966, my next Opening Day road assignment, when Frank Robinson was hit by a pitch during his first at-bat in the American League and Brooks followed with a home run into the netting at Boston’s Fenway Park. Months later, in the first game of the World Series (the first for us both) Frank and Brooks hit back-to-back homers in the first inning.
A highlight reel full of sensational plays and situational hitting led Brooks to Cooperstown, where our paths intertwined at a special time, with him being elected in his first year of eligibility in 1983, when I held national office for the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. On the January day his election was announced, after an afternoon press conference in New York, legendary Orioles public relations director Bob Brown and I had dinner with Brooks and his wife Connie.
It was just the four of us and my memory of that day was that Brooks still had that “aw shucks attitude,” not quite understanding what the big deal was just because he was going into the Hall of Fame. “You’ll find out,” Brownie told him. Needless to say, Brooks did. He and Connie became staples of induction ceremonies throughout the years.
Since I had a cameo role in the 1983 ceremony that attracted a then-record crowd of 15,000 and didn’t have opportunity for note-taking, I borrowed Brooks’ speech to use in my story (and promptly returned them). Somewhere in the family archives there is a photograph of that speech, one of the best ever given, which was typed on a series of 5×7 index cards.
I’ve never been very big on memorabilia, so it will come as no shock that I have no idea where that photo might be. Some day, somebody might find it and ask, “Does anybody know what this is?”
For now, it’s the only place it really needs to be — in my memory bank, where it has a lot of company.
And that, for whatever the reason, is the story I couldn’t write until now. So I offer this for all of you out there who know the feeling.
Thanks, Brooks — you always made it personal.
Jim Henneman can be contacted at JimH@pressboxonline.com.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles