A baseball lifer
Jeff Banister – the longtime baseball survivor, literally and figuratively – is hired nine years ago today as the Texas Rangers' manager.
Banister is hired after seemingly spending an eternity in the shadows of the game — first as a catcher in Pittsburgh’s system in the 1980s and ’90s, and then as a minor league manager and field coordinator for the Pirates before joining their major league coaching staff.
Of course, he is a hard worker. Has to be to last that long in any one organization.
No one works harder than Banister, who nearly never has a career at all. Not after developing bone cancer in his left ankle while in high school in the late 1970s and nearly has his leg amputated.
Banister needs seven operations on his ankle before ever reaching Baytown Junior College in Texas, where he is temporarily paralyzed after fracturing his neck in a collision at home plate.
Banister recovers from that injury to play seven seasons in pro baseball, a career that culminates with just one at-bat in the major leagues during the 1991 season for Pittsburgh – an at-bat that produces an infield single and a perfect career 1.000 batting average.
Alas, the Pirates make several roster moves after the game, one of which sends Banister back to Class AAA Buffalo. He never plays another game in the majors.
“Probably my favorite part of the day is when I get up in the morning and put my feet on the floor, because there were a couple of different times when I was told that would never happen,” Banister tells writer Anthony Castrovince in 2019.
“My legs were the two things that I was either not going to have or were not going to work anymore, and those two things carried me down the line to first base to etch a moment in time.”
Finally – after 29 seasons in the Pirates' organization as a player, minor league manager, field coordinator and major league coach – Banister joins the Rangers nine years ago today.
With the Rangers, he wins a pair of American League West titles in 2015 and ’16, while also being named the league's manager of the year in 2015.
Of course, in the fickle world of managing, Banister is fired by the Rangers in the waning days of the 2018 season after Texas fails to reach the playoffs for a second straight season.
He now is the bench coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks, who in 2023 are playing for a trip to the World Series.
How Hollywood misses out on Banister’s remarkable story is inexplicable.
Maybe because no one would believe it.