The Last Character of the Game

“You know, Lou Gehrig says, ‘I’m the luckiest man in the world.’ 

Well, if he’s the luckiest man in the world, I’m the second luckiest.” 

Don Zimmer

Don Zimmer passed away yesterday.  He spent 60 years in the greatest game on the planet.  Sixty damn years as a player, manager, coach, consultant.  He had a World Series ring from playing with the Dodgers.  He had several rings from being Joe Torre’s Zen master bench coach for the Yankees.  He’s played with and coached Hall of Fame players such as Jackie Robinson, Carl Yastremski, and Ryne Sandberg.   He also played on the 1962 Mets team that lost 120 games that season. 

Baseball, more than other sports, is rife with nicknames in its history.  Zimmer’s was “Popeye” because of his forearms.  Zimmer also had a steel plate in his head, the result of a bean ball he took early in his career as a player.  He used to joke that he’d set off alarms at airports.  I like to think the character of “Coach” from the television series, “Cheers,” was modeled after Zimmer.

Zimmer was a character of the game.  This is not to say today’s players are not good.  They are.  But, they also have milquetoast personalities.   They are big and strong.  They get angry when they strike out, but for the most part, they lack pizzazz.  They aren’t going to, at age 72, come charging out of a dugout to try to take on a guy half his age and about a foot taller, as Zimmer did to Pedro Martinez.

They announced Zimmer’s passing during an ESPN broadcast of the Yankee game.  Color commentator, Rick Sutcliffe, who played under Zimmer when he managed the Cubs, nearly broke down in tears.  As the news traveled to the Yankee dugout, Derek Jeter just held his head in his hands.  After the game manager Joe Giarardi broke down, too.   

When he managed the Cubs to division championship in 1989, people referred to the team as “The Boys of Zimmer.”  When he was Torre’s bench coach, Jeter would rub his head and Buddha-like belly for luck. 

Yes, Zimmer was a true character, the last true character of the game.  I honestly can’t think of anyone in the game today that even comes close to being worthy of a nickname, let alone being a character.  And certainly none of them will be sticking around in the game for sixty years.

Sixty damn years.

John Donne wrote, “Every man’s death diminishes me.”  Anyone who loves baseball is diminished today.