Mr. Cub

When a 163-ton abstract metal sculpture by Pablo Picasso was unveiled in the plaza of Chicago's Civic Center two years ago, one official was outraged. Describing the work as a "rusting junk heap," Alderman John Hoellen demanded in a resolution to the city council that it be dismantled. In all seriousness, he suggested replacing it with a 50-ft. statue of that modern folk hero and living symbol of a "vibrant city": Chicago Cub Infielder Ernie Banks.

At the time, Chicago baseball fans thought that Hoellen had an excellent idea. Today, with the Cubs leading their National League division by a wide margin and already talking about their first pennant in 24 years, the fans are more convinced than ever. Banks, who has been known as "Mr. Cub" for most of his 17 seasons in Chicago, is collecting a large share of the team's extra-base hits --and passing quite a few major league milestones as well.

Two weeks ago, for instance, in a game with the San Diego Padres, Banks swung at an inside pitch and, as he likes to put it, "Swoosh! Swoooosh! Suh-woooosh!" It was a home run into the leftfield bleachers. With that hit, Banks became the 17th player in baseball history to drive in 1,500 or more runs. Last week Ernie belted the 480th homer of his career (he is tenth on the list of alltime home-run hitters, just ahead of Stan Musial) and a double against the Los Angeles Dodgers to take over the league lead in RBIs.

Joy Boy. By all the laws of man and nature, Mr. Cub should be hibernating somewhere, reminiscing about the two successive seasons when he was named the league's Most Valuable Player (1958 and 1959), or the year that he set a major league record for shortstops with a .985 fielding average. He admits to being 38, but instead of slowing down, he just keeps suh-wooooshing along. When Cub Manager Leo Durocher took over the ball club three years ago, he started calling Banks "old grampa" and at one point asked the baseball writers to "knock off that Mr. Cub stuff." Said Durocher: "The guy's wearing out. He can't go on forever." Now Durocher seems convinced that Banks intends to do just that. "I retired him three years in a row," marvels Leo, "but I guess he just gets tired of seeing those young kids I keep putting in his place."

No muscleman, Banks derives his deceptive power from a pair of outsize hands and wrists that allow him to whip the bat around at the last possible instant. Last season, while aging superstars like Mickey Mantle were going into slow fadeouts, Ernie knocked in 83 runs and belted 32 home runs, the most he had hit in six years. Says Durocher: "I wish I knew what kind of pills he takes. I'd like to feed them to some of my other players."

They are happy pills. When Banks, one of twelve children of a Dallas wholesale grocery handyman, jumped from the all-Negro Kansas City Monarchs to the Cubs in 1953, he was a shy, retiring man who would burst into tears when sidelined by an injury. Gradually, as he established himself as the hardest-hitting shortstop since Honus Wagner, he became the original joy boy of baseball. One minute he is crawling around on the clubhouse floor in a hilarious demonstration of what it feels like to play on a second-division team for so many years. The next, to show the comeback powers of the Cubs, he leaps up and sings out in his quavery baritone: "Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin' town . . ." When the national anthem is played, most players just stand there with their caps over their hearts. Not Ernie. He sings it loud enough for everyone in Wrigley Field's bleachers to hear.

Sticking Power. Banks is no nut. His locker-room exclamations that baseball is "fun, fun, fuun!" and that the Cubs are "fantastic, fantaaastic!" are just his way of keeping his teammates hustling. When Chicago wins a home game, Ernie likes to rush to the telephone and, within earshot of the other players, give a pep talk to the star of whatever team is playing the Cubs' closest rival. "Hello, Willie!" he will shout in a long-distance call to Willie Mays in San Francisco. "It's Ernie Banks. I'm calling to tell you to go out there tonight and give it your all. You're a superstar! I want to see you play like a superstar!"

Though Banks is host of a popular TV sports show and co-owner of a Ford agency in Chicago (he was the first Negro to be awarded a Ford dealership), he has not begun to think about retirement. He is still dreaming of his first World Series. "We've got durable players," he says hopefully. "Whenever a guy breaks down, we just stick him together with chewing gum--Wrigley's."

His own sticking power is legendary. "Nineteen years," he mused last week, recalling his graduation from the sandlots of Texas to the Kansas City Monarchs in 1950. "That's a long, long time." Catching his own cue, he began to sing out his feelings about the 1969 season: "For it's a long, long time from May to December." It is, but October isn't quite so far away--and that's World Series time.

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