![]() This marvelous look at the life of a beloved athlete should be essential reading for baseball fans, and Cubs lovers especially. Rapoport reveals how throughout his life Banks masked his “tortured soul”-in his childhood of poverty in Dallas while playing in the Negro Leagues in Kansas City during the move to the Cubs in 1953, where he had to deal with the city’s segregation and playing under hypercritical manager Leo Durocher during his final years. ![]() Cub.” Through more than 100 interviews with Banks’s family, friends, and teammates, Rapoport traces a complicated life that was masked by a “constant public display of good cheer” during Banks’s career, summed up in his signature line: “It’s a beautiful day for a ball game, let’s play two.” Rapoport expertly describes the skills that made Banks a Hall of Famer in 1977, particularly how Banks “transformed the nature of power hitting” through a combination of upper body strength and a light bat, a practice that Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle copied. The book is well-researched, accurate, and gives a behind-the-scenes portrait of a very private man. ![]() I knew Ernie personally and am friends of his daughter and twin sons. ![]() Rapoport, a 20-year veteran sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, delivers what is sure to be the definitive biography of Chicago Cubs baseball player Ernie Banks (1931–2015), a man known by fans as “Mr. Let’s Play Two by Ron Rapoport is an astounding book that follows the life and times of Mr. Ernie Banks, the first-ballot Hall of Famer and All-Century Team shortstop, played in fourteen All-Star Games, won two MVPs. ![]()
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