Like many baseball fans throughout the country, we mourn the passing of Ernie Banks, who died last Friday. Banks, who started his career in the Negro Leagues, became the first black player in Cubs history, and he went on to become one of the franchise’s greatest. He was also one of the team’s most beloved figures, in part because of his boundless optimism in the face of a decades-long tradition of losing. Whatever the record or the attendance, Chicago was his kind of town. He was our kind of Cub.
