Heroic Journey

Boyhood idols are, I hope, exempt. As journalists we are told from Day 1 that we must detach ourselves from a story to be objective. But is that really possible if you’ve been watching that athlete since you were 5?

I grew up in Milwaukee, and when baseball caught my eye in 1982, the Brewers were on top of the American League. A shortstop named Robin Yount was suddenly my hero.

From that point until 1993, I watched his every move. As an 8-year-old, I wondered how it would help his reconstructed shoulder to move from shortstop to way out in center field. The first thing I did every day when the newspaper hit the front door was to rip through the sports section to find the box score, just to see:

Some of my best math lessons came from daily updates of Yount’s batting average.

But the connection we had--well, I had--is rare today.

Yount was a Milwaukee institution for an entire generation of fans. When I was born, he was winding down his third major league season, and by the time he retired I was 17 and a junior in high school.

How could I not be in Cooperstown last month for Yount’s induction into the Hall of Fame?

So I went, armed with a press pass to cover the event for a Wisconsin newspaper, a paper I assumed knew that I couldn’t possibly write this particular story and be completely unbiased. I mean, this was Robin Yount.

My Robin Yount.

Some of you might remember what it was like to cheer Sandy Koufax or Don Drysdale. You might be lucky enough to follow Tony Gwynn’s career if you’re a Padre fan. But what other players belong in that company anymore, especially for Southern California fans?

Raul Mondesi wants a (bleeping) trade. Gary Sheffield and Kevin Brown have been with nine teams in their combined 23 years in the big leagues. Angel Tim Salmon has been around for a while, but let’s see where he is 10 years from now.

Players today sign contracts with clauses written in dictating whose hat will be on their Hall of Fame plaque. In Yount’s case, there was no question. He was a Brewer for life, even if that meant never getting a World Series ring or his proper due as a player.

That’s why it was so stunning to see George Brett and Yount that late July weekend. Brewer and Royal fans came to Cooperstown in record numbers to see their two franchise heroes get the ultimate baseball honor.

Oriole fans will surely come out to see Eddie Murray, but what about the last nine years of his career, when he made stops in four other major league cities? Who will possibly feel that sense of pride if Jose Canseco somehow gets into the hall? Devil Ray fans?

I feel lucky that I got to watch one player throughout my entire childhood, being able to identify a team with a player, even to this day.

Kids today latch onto a player, only to see him go somewhere else for more money. Yount never let me down. If not for him, I don’t know if I would have stayed a loyal baseball fan for so long. I didn’t care if the Brewers were in last place, at least I could still count on Robin being in a Brewer uniform, hustling out every ground ball he hit.

He never let any Brewer fan down, on or off the field. He played the game the way all of us hope we would if given the chance. Even if he was slumping, we all knew it wasn’t because of a lack of effort.

He was supremely talented--he was a starting shortstop in the majors at 18, less than a year out of high school--but he never cheated himself or anyone else by just getting by on his talent. He played hard every day and he played hurt all the time, two more attributes that separate him from a lot of the players people look up to today.

And I still got to experience one more moment of my youth, in Cooperstown on July 25 when Yount took the podium.

You’d never think that a baseball player’s speech could be so moving, but it was. And suddenly I was 8 again, reminiscing about Yount’s graceful swing and how I tried to copy his crouched stance when I played with friends.

And I remembered getting a chance to meet him at County Stadium one day when I was 10, and I stood paralyzed as he signed a baseball that I still have. And I allowed myself to get excited when I saw his plaque with a Brewer hat--a Brewer hat!--on his head. And I allowed myself to think of my grandfather, who died this summer, and how we used to listen to Brewer games on the radio all the time, and how happy he would have been too.

People will claim that baseball is nothing more than a game, that it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but those people probably never felt an attachment to a team or an athlete.

When you’re a kid, you become your boyhood idol, his failures become yours, and you are allowed to share in his accomplishments. I jumped for joy when Yount got his 3,000th hit. I stood and cheered for him one more time when he was handed his Hall of Fame plaque.

I’ve got plenty of time to be an fair and objective journalist. Those chances to be a kid again are few and far between.