Written by This past year or so has been tragic. There has been so much death and so much destruction to our way of life. And, unfortunately, our culture has been in survival mode, and it is going to take us years to understand and appreciate all that we have lost. We are so used to hearing stories of our heroes passing away we are almost numb to the significance of the loss we are enduring.
Over three and a half million Americans died in 2020, half a million more than in 2019. Most of the increase was due to COVID-19. However, we are losing our heroes in many ways. They are young, old, and all ages in between. It’s been overwhelming.
At the Academy Awards, the “In Memoriam” segment seemed like an album played on the 45 RPM setting. I felt bad for how many stars that I had forgotten had passed away this year. We lost Sean Connery, the original James Bond, and Jerry Stiller, whose lines as Frank Costanza like “Serenity Now!” and “You Wanna Piece of Me?” stole many scenes on Seinfeld. The Grammys had a hard time fitting in tributes to all of the stars who had passed, glancing over rock legend Eddie Van Halen.
Baseball has lost ten Hall of Fame members in the past year, a record. Johnny Bench knew most of them and had a wonderful tribute to them in a recent article in the New York Times. Al Kaline was a hero to Bench growing up who became a close friend. Joe Morgan and Bench were leaders of the “Big Red Machine” teams in the 1970s.
Whitey Ford won many games for the historic Yankees teams in the 1950s and early 1960s. Bob Gibson dominated batters in the 1960s, while Lou Brock set records for stolen bases. Together, they won two World Series for the Cardinals. Tom Seaver led the Amazing Mets in 1969 and went on to win 311 games for four teams, including a run with Bench on the Reds. Don Sutton had a 23-year career, most notably winning many games for manager Tommy Lasorda. Sutton was a tough competitor, famous for scuffing the ball. Phil Niekro’s knuckleball baffled hitters.
The greatest of all on the list was Henry Aaron, who died this past January of natural causes. He was a humble man, small in size but giant in stature and accomplishment. The highlight of Milo Hamilton calling Aaron’s 715th home run is something I will never forget. It’s hard to comprehend the significance of a black man from rural Alabama breaking the hallowed record of legendary Babe Ruth. And he did it in Atlanta in 1974, with two white men who came down from the stands escorting him around the bases. I love this tribute Sports Illustrated published after Aaron’s final photoshoot.
I got to know these players when I was growing up by playing Sports Illustrated All-Time All-Star Baseball. Many of them were still playing but were good enough to be featured in the game besides greats like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Stan Musial. The Yankees lineup featured Micky Mantle, Joe Dimaggio, Ruth, and Gehrig a the top of the order. I was a Twins fan, and they were paired with the Washington Senators and were very good, with Walter “Big Train” Johnson pitching and Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva batting. Surprisingly, the best of them all was the Pittsburgh Pirates, with Honus Wagner and the Waner brothers.
You made your lineups and rolled dice to see the outcome of pitches and at-bats based on colored sheets for each of the original 16 teams. I worked my way through a major-league schedule, filling up scorebooks with the results of each game. I learned a lot about the history of the game and many of the greatest players. Years later, I took my son to Cooperstown to see many of them at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
We are losing a generation of people who lived extraordinary lives. They were born into the depression, impacted by World War II, and thrived in the subsequent economic boom. Some were left out and had to fight for their civil rights. All of them saw tremendous advances in technology, from radio to television to the internet. With the advances in media, we know more detail about the lives of their generation than any that preceded them. Unfortunately, most of them smoked and drank too much. They ate poison like margarine and Spam, but somehow many survived. They raised baby boomers, who saw the cracks in the society and rebelled. However, its result was to set us on a pursuit of individual gain that has resulted in today’s inequalities.
I love Ken Burns documentaries. I have watched or rewatched many of them over the past couple of years. Most are detailed chronicles of the twentieth century, as the recent series on country music does. I wasn’t a huge fan of country music when I was young, but my parents listened to Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Emmylou Harris. And after watching the documentary, I’ve been listening to Willie’s Roadhouse on SiriusXM. As a result, I have learned the soundtrack to many in this great generation. Most consist of “three chords and the truth,” and all of them are great. Willie himself has written many of the great songs of this soundtrack like “Crazy,” “Night Life,” and “Hello Walls.” He wrote the song that Don Meredith made famous on Monday Night Football, “The Party’s Over.” Willie has been recording albums for over sixty years, still going strong. His 88th birthday was last week, and he has almost seen it all.
I hope that we don’t miss out and find time to recognize this generation at its lights turn out. Those that passed too early, those we have lost recently, and those few that remain. Gee, ain’t it funny how time slips away.