Silk, Yeager, Veeck--Thanks to All for the Terrific Memories

The easiest thing to do in sports is slip out the back door. Get traded away, retire, and unless you’re a superstar, you exit to polite applause, or silence. Everybody is rushing out to meet the new guy.

That’s OK. That’s the way it is. But sometimes it’s nice to stop for a minute, wave goodby and say something corny, like thanks for the memories.

There’s Jamaal Wilkes, for instance. Played for the Lakers seven seasons. Traded to the Siberian Clippers, then retired. After two NCAA championships at UCLA, one NBA championship at Golden State and three more with the Lakers, he knew a good situation from a bad one, and got out with his dignity still intact.

They called him Silk, which is maybe the most fitting nickname in sports. Silk didn’t run, he whooshed up and down the court on invisible roller skates.

He was thin, almost frail looking, but the NBA bullies never could get a solid shot at him. He was like a ghost, flitting out ahead of the pack on the fast break, flinging in his slingshot jumper, driving quietly to the hoop.

A gentleman, Silk would no more slam dunk a basketball in the hoop than he would slam dunk a crumpet in his tea. He would score his 20 points and slip off the floor before anyone on the other team could get his license number.

And maybe I missed it, but I never saw the guy panic. Silk was cool.

Now Jamaal is a businessman. The Lakers haven’t retired his number, and maybe they never will, but nobody will ever wear his nickname.

Another guy who ducked out the clubhouse door when nobody was looking is Steve Yeager, traded away from the Dodgers after 19 years in the organization.

If Jamaal was silk, Yeager was sandpaper. Tough and gritty.

He’ll never be lumped with the classic Dodger catchers like Campanella and Roseboro, but Yeager had an attitude, a cockiness that helped make the Dodgers a little tougher, a little more competitive.

When Lou Brock was in his prime, he and Yeager would challenge one another. Brock would reach first base. Yeager would glance at Brock. A private look or a nod would be exchanged, and the duel was on. Brock would run on the next pitch. Brock said that nobody was tougher to steal on.

Yeager has moved on to Seattle, leaving behind a trail of Ace bandages. The guy took more shots than Tex Cobb. There was the memorable ’77 home-plate collision with Dave Parker. And the ’76 accident, where Yeager was speared in the neck with a flying piece of broken bat.

He shook ‘em all off, the bumps and bruises, more or less. After games, Yeager wore so many ice packs strapped to his body that he looked like a pack mule, only he didn’t move as quickly.

Wilkes and Yeager aren’t gone, of course, they’ve just moved on, so no tears. But while we’re on he subject of fond farewells, a word or two about a guy nobody will ever replace--Bill Veeck.

I met Veeck in ’78 when I was a rookie baseball writer and he owned the Chicago White Sox. I think he was the only owner I met that season, because he was the only owner who hung around the press lounge after games, drinking beer with writers and broadcasters.

I remember Veeck beating Don Drysdale, then the Angels’ announcer, out of $20 in the press dining room at Comiskey Park, long, long after one game. Veeck bet that he could make Drysdale’s $20-bill stick to the room’s 15-foot-high ceiling. Drysdale bit.

Veeck took out his wallet and placed it on his open palm, laid the bill over the wallet, then put a pat of butter on top of the bill. He threw the wallet to the ceiling. Powered by the weight of the wallet, the butter stuck to the ceiling, the bill stuck to the butter, and Drysdale was out $20.

Veeck didn’t stand on ceremony. He answered his own phone, drank in neighborhood bars and sat in the bleachers. He reveled in his reputation as the common man’s baseball owner, but the rep was genuine. His goal in life seemed to be to find a way to enjoy himself.

“Whatever I’ve said over the years, the owners have looked at me as though I were a little boy trying to run fast so the propeller on my beanie would spin,” Veeck once said.

I dug out a few other Veeck quotes from a book titled “Sportswit.”

“I try not to break the rules,” Veeck said, “but merely to test their elasticity.”

He liked to joke about his wooden leg, but it was painful to wear and he once admitted: “Suffering is overrated. It doesn’t teach you anything.”

On religion, Veeck once said, “I believe in God, but I’m not too clear on the other details.”

I don’t know about the details either, but I’d bet 20 bucks that right now, somewhere, a beanie propeller is spinning.