Brooksie

Dad’s favorite ballplayer was born left-handed. Think about that for a minute: Brooks Robinson, the best who ever played the hot corner, was born with the one physical quality that should have prevented him from ever playing third base. All his life he would do everything else left-handed — he shot a rifle lefty, he played tennis and ping pong lefty, he signed autographs left-handed.

When Davey Johnson saw his hero sign an autograph left-handed, he decided to try writing left-handed too, hoping it would make him into the same sort of heavenly defender.

It did not. But how could it?

When Dad’s favorite ballplayer was in the second grade, he broke his left arm and collarbone in an accident. Neither Brooks Jr. nor his father, Brooks Sr., had time to wait for the injury to heal. There was baseball to play! So Brooks Sr. put a ball in his son’s right hand and taught him how to throw right-handed. He put a sawed-off broomstick in his right hand and taught him how to swing right-handed. By the time the injury did heal, Brooks Jr. was uninterested in relearning the game as a lefty.

And, anyway, lefties don’t play third base.

This was the charmed American life that Brooks Robinson lived; even childhood accidents led to wonderful things. Brooksie lived a jukebox, varsity jacket, summer picnic, golly-gee, hula hoop, drive-in movies, apple-pie, baseball-on-the-radio kind of childhood in Arkansas. His first date was at a malt shop. He strengthened his arm throwing newspapers on his route; one of his customers was the great Yankee catcher Bill Dickey. “I threw the paper just a little bit harder when I threw it to his house,” Brooksie would say.

“As a boy,” Brooks Sr. would say of his son, “he was happy all day long.”

In high school, he was voted “Best All-Around.” You may ask: “Best All-Around what?” but there was no need for qualifiers with Brooksie. He was simply the best all-around. He was the quarterback who led his team to an undefeated season (then stopped playing football because he didn’t want to get hurt and not be able to play baseball). He was every teacher’s favorite student who in the eighth grade wrote a paper titled, “Why I Want to Play Professional Baseball.”

And he was a ballplayer, a Cardinals fan who idolized the nicest of ballplayers, Stan Musial. Later, Brooksie himself became the nicest of ballplayers. “Compared to this guy,” the writer Jim Elliot said of Brooks Robinson, “Stan Musial was hard to get along with.”

Like the rest of us, Frank was often in awe of his brother. (Getty Images)

He made it to the Baltimore Orioles when he was 18 years old but bounced up and down between the majors and minors until 1960, when he was 23. The truth is, the Orioles didn’t quite know what they had. Robinson wasn’t much of a hitter. He had little-to-no power. He couldn’t run at all. Even his throwing arm seemed weak, as you might expect from a natural left-hander who taught himself to throw right-handed. There were those who thought he should play second base.

But at third base, he was Nureyev. He was Astaire. He was Wallenda. He was Sawchuck. He was Slydini. No matter how hard a ball was hit down the line, no matter how wickedly it was hit into the hole, no matter what sort of bad hop the ball might take, Brooks Robinson somehow was there. He had a way of contorting his body so that the ball always ended up in his glove. It would then magically appear in his right hand, and while he did not have a cannon arm, he had the quickest release imaginable and he could throw falling backward, falling sideways, falling forward, across his body, and somehow, no matter how he threw it, the ball ended up chest-high in the first baseman’s glove.

Defensive numbers can tell half a story, but it’s something that Brooks Robinson not only had more assists than any third baseman in baseball history, he had almost A THOUSAND more assists than any third baseman in baseball history.

The rest of his game, though, came along slowly. But in 1960, he began to hit a bit, he added a little power, he finished third in the MVP balloting and won his first Gold Glove. From 1961 to 1964, he played every single game for the Orioles. The last of those years was his crescendo as a hitter — he hit .317 with 28 home runs and led the league with 118 RBIs. He won the MVP award.

Two years later, in 1966, Frank Robinson joined the Orioles, and the two would often call themselves brothers. Brooksie used to say they were both 6-foot-1, both about 180 pounds, but you could tell them apart pretty easily. “We wear different numbers,” he said.

“I used to stand in the outfield like a fan,” Frank would say of his baseball brother. “I’d watch him make play after play. I used to think, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this.’”

In the six years that Frank and Brooks Robinson played together, the Orioles won four pennants and two World Series. Frank was the MVP of the first World Series they won, in ’66, after he hit two home runs, the second off Don Drysdale in the 1-0 victory that clinched the World Series.

And Brooks was the MVP of the second World Series they won, 1970, when he hit .429 against the Reds, but more, much more, made several of the most dazzling and impossible defensive plays anyone had ever seen. The one that stands out most, even now, was when he backhanded a ball, his momentum carried him into foul ground, he threw the ball off his back foot and somehow got Cincinnati’s Lee May by a half step.

“Great day in the morning!” Reds announcer Jim McIntyre shouted out. “What a play!”*

It was after that series that Pete Rose said that Robinson belonged in a higher league.

*I love that — “Great day in the morning!” is a super-old Southern expression along the lines of “Holy cow!” It’s kind of perfect for Brooksie. There was a 1950s western called “Great Day in the Morning,” starring Robert Stack.

In all, Brooks Robinson won 16 consecutive Gold Gloves, the first when he was 23, the last when he was 38, and the defensive numbers bear out that he was great every one of those years. He was more sporadic as a hitter, mixing good years and tough ones, but with Robinson at third base, the Orioles were always good, every year. They called him “the Human Vacuum Cleaner.” They called him “Houdini of the Hot Corner.” They called him “Mr. Perfection.” George Brett wore No. 5 in his honor.

He didn’t drink. He wouldn’t watch TV for fear it would strain his eyes. He liked good steaks, history books and spending time with his family. Everybody admired him. Everybody loved him.

“Robbie goes 0-for-4,” Boog Powell once said with wonder in his voice, “and he’s dressed and out of the ballpark in 15 minutes, whistling and telling everyone tomorrow will be better.”

“Brooks never asked anyone to name a candy bar after him,” sportswriter Gordon Beard wrote, “In Baltimore, people name their children after him.”

By the way, do you know how Brooks Robinson met Connie, his future wife? She was a flight attendant on the Orioles team plane from Kansas City to Boston — once voted the most beautiful flight attendant working for United — and he was immediately smitten. He showed his affection by ordering and reordering iced teas until she noticed him.

For me, though, what I think about now, in the hours after Brooks Robinson died at age 86, is simply and only that he’s Dad’s favorite player. My parents came to the United States three years before I was born, and Dad wanted nothing more than to be an American and to raise his sons as Americans. That, to him, meant learning baseball.

And baseball to him was Brooks Robinson, the way he played, the way he carried himself. In our stamp-sized backyard, Dad would throw me ground balls and shout out, “Get in front of it like Brooks Robinson!” When I would make a diving stop, he’d shout, “There you go! Just like Brooks Robinson!” When I would throw the ball over his head, he’d remind me to not overthrow, to hit the first baseman in the chest, just like Brooks Robinson.

So many years later, I told all of this to Brooksie himself. He smiled; he’d undoubtedly heard some version of this same story ten thousand times, but he still smiled. Then he said, “Dads are the best, aren’t they?”