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He Says You’re Never Too Old to Play Two : Baseball: Ernie Banks, who turns 61 today, is now a Hall of Famer on the charity circuit.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Ernie Banks is 61 today, so how old does that make you feel?

“I don’t feel 61,” Banks said from behind a polished desk at his office in Pasadena. “I like getting old. Like they say, I’m not getting older, I’m getting better.”

The most popular player the Chicago Cubs have ever had, Banks hit 512 home runs in 18 years--all with the Cubs--and was chosen the National League’s most valuable player twice. Arthritis in his legs took its toll, though, so Banks retired his smooth swing for good after the 1971 season and was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1977.

Since leaving baseball, he has worked on perfecting his golf swing. Banks, who lives in Encino with his wife, Marjorie, is a regular on the celebrity circuit and in charity events, trying to raise money for two of his pet causes--the young and the elderly.

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One of his projects is the World Children’s Baseball Fair, a two-year-old charitable foundation based in Hollywood and Tokyo and designed to bring together children from all over the world to play baseball.

“We have a need to give something back to the kids because they are our future,” Banks said.

His own future seems secure. Banks is a vice president of Compensation Resource Group, which develops executive benefits packages for corporations, and also sits on the corporation’s advisory board. The view from the smoked-glass windows on the sixth floor of the high-rise where Banks works is a much different vista than what he could have seen in Dallas, where he grew up.

The second-oldest of 12 children of Eddie Banks, a former semipro in the black baseball leagues in Texas, Ernest Banks was born at the family home, 1717 Fairmont on the fringe of downtown Dallas on Jan. 31, 1931. He was exposed to baseball early. Young Ernie was a batboy for both the Dallas Green Monarchs and the Black Giants, teams for which his father pitched and caught.

Eddie Banks, who was born in Marshall in East Texas, picked cotton and worked construction for the Works Progress Administration before taking a job as janitor at the Texas Wholesale Grocery Corp. in Dallas. In addition to raising 12 children, Ernie’s mother held a part-time job doing custodial work in banks.

As a teen-ager in high school, Banks was active in football, basketball and track and field, but not baseball. He was playing softball for his neighborhood Methodist church team when he was discovered by Bill Blair, a scout for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. Banks was 17. Blair signed Banks for the Amarillo Colts, who played games in Texas, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma during the summer, since Banks was still in high school.

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He was in his second year with the Colts when Bill (Dizzy) Dismukes signed him for the Monarchs, whose alumni include Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige. Banks graduated from high school and reported to the team in 1950, then served a two-year hitch in the Army. Banks, who made $300 a month with the Monarchs, attracted the attention of Cubs’ scouts because of surprising power in his thin frame.

Chicago General Manager Wid Matthews purchased Banks’ contract from the Monarchs’ Tom Baird for $15,000 and brought him to the major leagues in September of 1953. He was the first black player for the Cubs.

At 22, Banks hit his first home run on Sept. 20, 1953, off Gerry Staley of the St. Louis Cardinals and quickly became the starting shortstop. So Ernie Banks, who had played neither high school nor college baseball, and had not played a single game in the organized minors, launched a Hall of Fame career.

From 1955 to 1960, Banks hit more home runs than anyone else--including Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. He hit 47 in 1958 and 45 in ’59 and was named the league’s most valuable player both times.

Banks made $7 a game with the Amarillo Colts in 1949, $9,000 a year with the Cubs in 1955 and $27,500 in 1956, but never more than $60,000 in any season. And although he was never really rich, Banks always seemed to be happy and positive. Professional golfer Mac O’Grady, a close friend, calls him “Mr. Yakadacity.” Banks’ sunny disposition is legendary, a portion of it having grown out of a statement he made in the Cubs’ locker room before a game during the 1969 season.

“It’s like a race, the way I view sports,” Banks said. “And the middle of the year is the hardest part because everybody gets kind of psychologically down. So it was about 110 degrees in Chicago. I came into the locker room about 10 minutes before we were supposed to be in uniform. Everybody was sitting around, heads down, depressed, just kind of quiet, into their own little moods.

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“I walked in the door and I said ‘Boy, what a great day! Let’s play two!’ They all woke up and looked. It perked them up. It brought out a little sense of humor. Many places I go today, that’s how people identify me. ‘Hey, Ernie, let’s play two!’ I say, ‘Come on, let’s go.’

“But I liked what happened in that locker room because it kind of typifies my own life. There is a good side and a bad side to everything. I deal with both sides. The race is long; stay with it.”

What with his business interests, golf outings, charity work and corporate speaking engagements, Banks doesn’t have enough time to reflect much on his baseball life.

“I don’t live in the past,” he said. “You know, some people tell me they’ve got this mental image of me frozen in time, like it was 1958 forever. Well, it’s not. When they say that, people are sharing their experience, they are not sharing you. And after all, it’s like Satchel Paige said: ‘Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.’

“I like getting old. Just remember, you only live once. And if you do it right, once is enough.”

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