Cook: 'Fam-a-lee' blessed with Tanner
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Go ahead, feel sorry for former Pirates manager Chuck Tanner's family and friends, for anyone, really, who knew the man at all. They suffered a terrible loss Friday when Tanner died at 82. Their world won't be the same, won't be quite as bright, quite as gentle, quite as kind.
But, please, don't feel sorry for Tanner. That's the last thing he would want. It's probably inaccurate to say he eagerly awaited death, although he surely must have had some of those longings during his rough times the past few weeks. But he certainly wasn't afraid of death. He stared it down and saw the positives in it, which is exactly the way he treated his amazing life every day as he lived it.
"The nurses couldn't believe how relaxed I was," Tanner said in May 2007, talking about the surgery he had a few weeks earlier to fix a life-threatening bleeding ulcer. "I told them I had it made. If God takes me, I'll see Babs. If not, Babs will look down on me and help me recover."
I'm thinking Tanner would say Friday was a pretty terrific day.
What a reunion he and Babs -- his wife of 56 years -- must have had. He cherished every day they spent together before her death in August 2006, after a decade-long battle with a variety of health problems. Everyone should be so lucky to have such a soul mate.
But Babs Tanner was pretty fortunate, too. Everybody who knew the couple said the same thing: If you had to be sick, you couldn't ask for a better, more devoted, more loving caregiver than Tanner. His wife's struggles wore him out, mentally and physically. But he never once complained. It wasn't just because it was his husbandly duty to care for her. It was the right thing to do.
Tanner did the right thing as much as any man I've known. He was, simply, the kindest, most decent person I've met in sports.
The world would be such a better place if everyone had Tanner's attitude. Talking baseball now, if the Pirates lost eight games in a row, he would insist that really wasn't all bad because a winning streak certainly was around the corner. If one of his players were in an 0-for-25 slump, he would tell you his breakout game would be that night. If you didn't know him, you would think he was phony. No one could be that positive all the time, right? But he was 100 percent genuine. He was the real deal.
First Published February 12, 2011 12:57 am
