Let's Play Two: The Life and Times of Ernie Banks by Doug Wilson | Book Review

As the April sun peaks through the clouds to signal the start of a new baseball season, excited children and parents echo Ernie Banks’ famous “Let’s Play Two!” at fields across the country. While the Hall of Famer died in 2015, author Doug Wilson ensures that fans remember his shining spirit through his new biography, “Let’s Play Two: The Life and Times of Ernie Banks”.

Let's Play Two / Rowman and Littlefield

Wilson provides a fascinating look at Banks’ early life in Dallas, Texas, connecting with Banks’ few living high school teammates and classmates to detail not only his early athletic prowess but also the history of the segregated North Dallas neighborhood.

Wilson pours through a seeming encyclopedia of sources to chronologically reconstruct Banks’ life on and off the field. While fans may be familiar with the narrative of his 512 career home runs, stories like Banks’ ill-fated run for local office serve to spice up the details of a man who projected an overwhelmingly positive public persona.

“He refused to acknowledge that anything other than good existed, in every person and every situation,” Wilson wrote. “He was a true-life Don Quixote de la Mancha, seeing the world not as it was, but as it should be, climbing aboard his trusted steed, ready to charge windmills to undo wrongs and bring justice to those in need.”

Shaving another layer of the seemingly impenetrable curtain that Banks maintained, Wilson dug into the tumultuous relationship between Banks and his manager Leo Durocher. When Durocher arrived after the end of the 1965 season, he sets his sight on Chicago’s largest target, Ernie Banks.

“He turned his wrath on Ernie Banks—something no one has ever done before,” Wilson wrote. “He nagged incessantly about little things … he quickly added complains about Ernie not taking a big enough lead as a baserunner.”

Durocher thought that Banks was damaged goods and wanted to replace Banks with faster and younger talent, similar to what he did when he jettisoned Johnny Mize and Walker Cooper from the New York Giants in 1949. However, with his hands tied by the Wrigley family, Durocher used the only power he had to voice his displeasure—his lineup card.

“Leo really treated him badly,” Cubs first baseman Lee Thomas said to Wilson. “He would ignore him; he wouldn’t play him. Sometimes he would say things in front of the team or in the papers. It bothered me, and I know the other players didn’t like it either.”

Banks maintained his composure and eventually, he played well enough that even Durocher could not keep him on the bench. It was only much later in Durocher’s life that he apologized for how he treated Mr. Cub.

Throughout the remainder of his career and retired life as a Hall of Famer, Banks befuddled the media with his bureaucratic retorts. Wilson explained how Banks frustrated writers in their attempts to gain depth into his thoughts and character.

“For whatever reason, he had decided he would not discuss subjects painful to himself or others. His image was a hard-candy protective coating. No one was ever able to crack it open to find out what was inside. … Ernie’s polished dance with writers was his way of saying the same thing but doing it while still looking like a nice guy. Writers who accepted this at face value and were content with the status quo were allowed to remain, pleasant acquaintances, even friends. Those who didn’t were doomed to frustration.”

After his playing days were finished, Banks encountered many speed bumps as he tried to escape his career in a baseball uniform. He faced multiple divorces, failed business ventures, and a reputation sullied by his inability to follow through on his promises to make public appearances. At the end of the day, there was only one place where he truly found success, and that was being Mr. Cub himself.

Wilson was not able to get Banks to open up for this work, as a Chicago area entrepreneur Regina Rice kept the Hall of Famer protected in his later years through a series of muddy dealings that Wilson explores in detail. As of the writing of his book, Banks’ will remained contested between Rice and his former wife Elizabeth Banks.

“The man famous for cooperation and peace was the subject of a nasty public battle after his death,” Wilson said.

Whatever Wilson's book lacks in the absence of Banks’ direct narratives, is bolstered by the vivid sources used for the intimate details of Banks’ career. “Let’s Play Two” shows that while heroes like Ernie Banks appear to be impenetrable on the field, away from the game, they are susceptible to imperfections that cannot be measured by the stats on the backs of their baseball cards.