Davey Johnson got the phone call Wednesday night that his friend and former Baltimore Orioles teammate, Brooks Robinson, had passed away.
“I spent the rest of the night thinking about the good times we had,” Johnson said.
There was a lot to think about — two World Series and four American League pennants in the eight years they were teammates in Baltimore.
When the dominance of the New York Yankees began to ease in the mid-60s, the Orioles became, for a time, the gold standard in baseball.
And on those teams, Robinson was the gold standard — literally. The third baseman won 16 Gold Gloves on the field, but he also set a standard off the field, as a player known for generosity and the kindness he extended to everyone he met.
“He was an extraordinary man and an extraordinary player,” Johnson said. “We were like a big family.”
That family is down to three now. “It’s just me and (Jim) Palmer and Boog (Powell) left,” Johnson said.
The Orioles are scheduled to honor Palmer on Friday night at Camden Yards for his 60 years with the organization as a Hall of Fame pitcher and priceless broadcaster. It will likely turn into a Robinson memorial of sorts. Powell is supposed to be there as well. The team will hold a public memorial for Robinson on Monday starting at 10 a.m. at the ballpark.
It seems nearly everyone has a memory of Robinson. Johnson’s are particularly special because they helped form his own playing and managing career.
“My first spring training was in 1965,” he said. “I was making a little bit of a transition from shortstop to second base. (Luis) Aparicio was on the big league club at shortstop, and they had another shortstop coming named (Mark) Belanger.”
Stop for a minute and think about that infield defense — between Robinson, Johnson (three), Aparicio (nine) and later Belanger (eight), they would collect 36 Gold Glove awards during their careers.
“My first workout, I was 22 years old, and I watched everything,” he said. “I noticed that Brooksie was taking 100 ground balls every day. I went over to him and said, ‘Brooks, can I ask you a question?’ He said, ‘Sure.’ I said, ‘You led the league in fielding, you’ve got all those Gold Gloves, why are you taking so many ground balls?’ He said, ‘How do you think I won all those awards.’
“I went back over to second base and instead of taking my 10 ground balls I started taking a hundred of them,” Johnson said.
It’s a story he would repeat while managing the Mets, Reds, Dodgers, Nationals and Orioles. “I would tell stories about Brooksie to my players,” he said.
Like this one: “I knew that he guarded the line and could get great range to his left. He would take a couple of steps, and his right foot would go forward, and that opened up no weight on his left foot so he could go all the way to his left full stride. The reason he had to dive for balls on his right was because all the weight was on his right foot. That’s why he would stay close to the line. He would dive for the ball better than anybody. Diving for balls takes a lot out of you. Everything Brooks did had a purpose and you learned from that. He was the greatest.”
He never big-timed anyone, though, on the field or on the street. “Brooksie was very humble,” Johnson said. “Anything he accomplished, it was just being part of the team. We all looked up to him. He earned it 10 times over.”
Robinson had already established himself as the top player on the team when Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, who passed away in February 2019, arrived in 1966. Brooks was just one year removed from winning the Most Valuable Player award. Frank was a powerful personality who had won the National League MVP with Cincinnati in 1961.
It could have been a volatile mix. Brooks was from Little Rock, Arkansas, a battle ground in the civil rights struggle. He went to Central High School, where two years after he graduated, nine Black students were refused entry. Frank was from Oakland, the birthplace of the Black Panthers.
Brooks embraced Frank, and the two of them set the tone for the big family Davey spoke of.
“They were the leaders,” the late Gold Glove center fielder on those teams, Paul Blair, told me in an interview. “They understood their roles and embraced them. Everybody on the team was like family, and Frank just came in and became part of the family.
“Brooks gets a lot of credit for that,” Blair told me. “Here you had a guy from Arkansas that didn’t have a prejudiced bone in his body. When you have leaders like that, the others have to follow.”
Johnson considers himself fortunate to have been part of that family. “He and Frank were two of the greatest players I ever saw,” Johnson said. “I couldn’t have had two better role models than the two Robinsons.”
⦁ You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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