Return of Banny Log!

Posted: April 23rd, 2009 | Filed under: Banny Log | 21 Comments »

I remember years ago asking one of my early mentors — the Charlotte Observer’s venerable Ron Green Sr. — if sportswriters are allowed to root. This was a troubling theme for me when I first began because I came to sportswriting directly from sports fanhood. The only thing I knew about newspapers was how to deliver them. I believe I have written this before, but my very first assignment was a high school girls basketball game and the editor told me that I needed to write “eight to 10 graphs.”

Well, I was panicked. Absolutely panicked. You will think this is a joke, but it is not: I had no idea what kind of graphs they wanted. Bar graphs? Line graphs? I mean, I’ve never been artistic. I worried about this the whole day, worked out possibilities in my mind, tried to summon the courage to ask what kind of graphs they wanted but could not find the strength.

Then, before I went to the game, I talked with the editor and again he said “Eight to 10 graphs,” and I did somehow mumble the question: What kind of graphs? It was then, and only then, I learned that “graphs” — it is usually spelled “grafs” in the journalism world — is slang for “paragraphs.” This is what I knew about sportswriting: I was actually going to buy graph paper to cover my first basketball game.

So when I asked Ron if sportswriters were allowed to root, I did not mean out loud. I did have some vague notion that there was no cheering in the press box. What I meant, looking back, was this: When you become a sports writer are you supposed to turn off your insides? Are you supposed to try and live up to some kind of deep standard of impartiality, like an umpire or a judge? Are you supposed to stop caring?

Ron told me many things, some which I have forgotten and some which quietly dissolved into my own feelings about the job. But the thing I remember most is that he said: “You don’t root for a team to win, but you do root for people.”

Through the years, I have quietly (and not so quietly) rooted for people. I rooted for Mel Stewart, an Olympic butterfly swimmer who in the course of interviewing had become my friend. I rooted for Tom Glavine, who was nice to me when I was young and clueless and panicked and covering my first big league baseball game. I rooted for a delightful diver named Becky Ruehl, who finished fourth at the 1996 Olympics and used to read Jane Austen books between dives. I rooted for former Royals general manager Allard Baird because he’s one of the best people I’ve ever known (and, being a sportswriter, I also wrote that he had to go when it was clear that he had to go). I rooted for Skip Prosser because if you knew Skip Prosser you rooted for him. I played weekly chess matches with Priest Holmes and would hope he ran for big yards on Sundays — he usually did.

And I have rooted for the successes of many players who were not entirely successful — Dee Brown, Eric Zeier, Kris Wilson (the pitcher), Tony Cogan, Terry Allen (the football coach), Dick Fick*.

*At the end of this post, I’m going to include a column I wrote for the Kansas City Star in 2003 about the wonderful basketball coach Dick Fick. Every so often, everyone should hear about Dick Fick.

It occurred to me on Wednesday night that much of that was illusion; yes, I have always rooted for people I like because of that — because I like them personally and that human nature. But the way I root for Brian Bannister is somewhat different. Sure, I like him — like him a lot. Everybody likes Banny. And I like his story — college walk-on, underdog, son of a flamethrower and so on. And, of course, I relate to the way he looks at the game; he’s become quasi famous (and quasi infamous too) for his passion for the advanced statistics.

But with Banny, yes, it’s a little bit different. It’s more the way I felt about sports when I was young. I relate to him. In many ways, I feel like he’s what I would be. That’s what drew me to Duane Kuiper, of course. That’s what drew me to Brian Sipe, of course. That’s what drew me to Mark Price. I could never imagine stretch my imagination enough to see myself crushing line drives like George Brett or throwing lasers 40-yards downfield like Dan Marino or jumping over Dick Snyder like Dr. J.*

*I really saw this one time.

But I might with enough effort myself as a hard-working second baseman who dives for every ground ball, and I might imagine myself as a weak-armed quarterback who could inspire a team in the final minutes, and I might even envision spending hundreds and hundreds of hours in a driveway shooting jump shots until I was so good at it that I could make it to the NBA.

And so it is with Banny. He’s really more talented than he lets on — his fastball was in the lower 90s on Wednesday and he can get good movement on it and much of the time he has well-above average command. And let’s face it: You can’t pitch in the big leagues — and pitch successfully — without other-worldly talent.

But, in context, the basic story is true: Bannister does not have a killer fastball or a devastating out pitch. He is not imposing.* He did not have many people believe in him along the way.

*He is listed at 6-foot-2 on his Baseball Reference Page … and I say with affection in my heart as a 5-foot-9 sportswriter who sometimes claims to be 5-foot-10 that there’s no way. None.

And his career is — and always is — very much on the edge. He had a rough 2008, of course, and he had a rough spring training, and the Royals started him in the minor leagues. To be honest, it was sort of a surprise that he got the start on Wednesday. Most people figured that 2006 overall No. 1 pick Luke Hochevar would get the start once the Royals came to the inevitable conclusion that Horacio Ramirez was unpitchable.

It just so happened, because of a variety of coincidences, that I was in Cleveland for Bannister’s start. He was really good. He threw six shutout innings. He gave up just four hits, walked two, struck out one.

And when the game ended, he was not especially happy. He was not unhappy, of course. I think he was proud of the way he pitched, even if he knew that throwing shutout innings with so few strikeouts is not really sustainable. But — and this is the part I could really associate with — he knows the situation. He knows that he will have to prove himself over and over again after last season. He knows that one bad start could mean a demotion (and even one GOOD start could mean a demotion). He knows that the only way to go on this thing is game by game, pitch by pitch, out by out.

I would say that the feeling he had was something closer to relief. He had pitched his heart out, and it worked out on this night, and he could live to fight another day. That’s what it’s all about to me: Sure, I admire talent, and I appreciate genius, and I enjoy dominating performances. But I identify with this kind of struggle. There’s nothing easy for Brian … and that’s a big reason why I root for him. There’s no guessing how he will pitch next time, but Wednesday night was great.

I always believed that the most awesome summers in the entire world are Cleveland summers. Why? Because they follow Cleveland winters.

* * *

Here is that column on Dick Fick:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – When a friend dies young, the best thing you can do is remember him happy. With Dick Fick, that’s easy. We were at a Cubs game. Nothing made him happier than Cubs games. This one was in Cincinnati. The sky was blue, and the grass was green, and the ballpark smelled like bratwurst. And everybody around us, even the people Dick didn’t know, were friends.

“You rooting for the Cubs?” he asked everybody around him. “No? How can you root against the Cubs? Do you know the last time we won a World Series? We’re talking 1908. Come on! Can you pray for us at least? Hey, how’s that pretzel? Good? They have good pretzels here.”

He noticed a woman sitting quietly.

“Hey, how’s that?” he asked her. She was eating one of those chocolate frosty in a cup things.

“Good,” she said cautiously.

“I gotta get me one of those,” he said. “Can I get you another one?”

“No,” she said. He did anyway. By game’s end, she became a friend, too.

Everybody should have a friend like Dick Fick. You might remember him, if you remember him at all, from his wild days as basketball coach at Morehead State here in Kentucky. He lost more games than he won, but nobody could forget him. Coaches admired him – Dick was a coach’s coach, one of those guys who could move around the X’s and O’s, transform a chalkboard into a page of music.

And fans? Well fans just plain loved him. He would never sit down. He stomped. He screamed. He lowered his tie, inch by inch through the game, until it just dangled from his neck like a loose noose. “Why don’t you come on down here and coach,” he told an Indiana fan, and unlike other coaches who might snarl those words bitterly, Dick really meant it.

Once, against Kentucky, an over-and-back call devastated him so completely that he simply lay down on the floor, motionless, a move that inspired ESPN to give out a weekly Dick Fick Award to the wackiest coach.

That was about as famous as he got. In New Orleans before the Final Four one year, college students ran up to Dick and lay down in front of him.

He loved that, of course.

“We all should be young,” he said.

Dick just made people happy. You know how some people are like that? Whenever one of us would get together with Dick Fick, other friends would call the next day to see whether he said anything memorable. He always did.

Once, after a Cincinnati player named Art Long was arrested for allegedly hitting a horse, Dick said he knew Long was innocent.

“I absolutely know Art wasn’t even there,” Dick said.

“How do you know that, Dick?”

“He was still planted in the lane from the last time we played Cincinnati.”

And then there was the time his team lost to Kentucky 96-32, and Dick said, “I looked out there and thought ‘Oh man, we only have three players on the floor. Then I realized two of mine were behind (Kentucky’s massive center) Nazr Mohammed.”

He might tell about the time he kissed a pig at halftime of the Morehead State women’s game. He might talk about how flat pizza wasn’t real pizza. He might announce that dying wouldn’t be too bad if he could still watch his Cubs.

“I sure hope,” he might say, “that they have WGN in the afterlife.”

We lost touch. Friends do that. It seems obvious now that Dick’s life spiraled downward after he left Morehead six years ago. His drinking apparently got worse. Dick always liked beer, drank too much of it – players would say he was erratic, high one minute, low the next – but without basketball, he found himself needing the beers, shaking without them.

Updates came in periodically. One day, someone said he was coaching high schools. Another, he was trying to get into television. He got divorced after a long marriage. He checked in and out of detox centers.

One doctor told Dick the next drink could kill him.

Dick patched a life back together. He became a part-time assistant coach at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, his old Illinois hometown. He told the people he loved that he stopped drinking. He warned kids about the dangers of alcohol and told them about the joys of life. He was born to do that.

He did have a gentle soul.

Monday, doctors found Dick Fick dead in his apartment. He was 50 years old. He left behind a son and a daughter and a lot of friends, many who would love to go to just one more Cubs game with him. Police and doctors won’t say how he died, except to rule out foul play, and maybe that’s best. All you can really do, when a friend dies young, is remember him happy.

Dick, I hope you have a good view of Wrigley Field through the clouds.

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