New Hawk Flies Into Hall

January 6, 2010

At 2:00 pm EST today Andre Dawson was elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
A humble man who worked ceaselessly to perfect his great gifts, called “Hawk” for his intense gaze, he gave Cubs’ fans happiness in the arts of the outfield done well. They salaamed him in the right field bleachers for his dignity and his excellence, waiting, with just the right angle of vision, for Dawson to throw behind not a runner but the batter rounding first, or even to throw a batter out at first on a sharp single to right.
Only he and Willie Mays hit over 400 homers and stole over 300 bases. Well, Mays and Dawson and one other of ill repute, the bionic man Bonds, who squandered his own great gifts in dishonor.

Sandberg, another man known for silent professionalism, praised Dawson more than any other colleague and outspokenly demanded the election that at last, today, came to pass.
I remember Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse, with the Expos at Wrigley, telling his listeners ominously, “And here comes Andre Dawson. He murders the Cubs here.” And inevitably, wham, there went the game again. But lo and behold (Lo and behold, said Humbert), Dawson became a Cub, under, for him, humiliating circumstances that we would not be given to understand for some time. And now hear Brickhouse: “Here’s Andre!” And there was hope again.
We also remember moments that are indelibly inscribed on the mind’s eye of imagination, indelibly, never to disappear. One day in Wrigley, the afternoon sun long in the sky, the Cubs trailing 6-4, two out, bottom of the ninth. It is a Saturday afternoon in July, in the 1980s; the stadium is filled with fans who didn’t yet have to pay $140 a seat (I know; I was there). A man gets on base; no matter who. Dawson is up. He gets a low curve ball over the plate but very low, and muscles it on a line over the basket in left to tie the game. A surprised roar of delight rises and echoes in the stadium, just as everyone is preparing for departure we are stopped in our tracks. The game goes on for several innings before the (inept) Cubs finally win a game that Andre willed them to win.

That’s one indelible memory; a truism, but a true one nevertheless.

gmc