September 9, 2020 - While most will remember Lou Brock as an extraordinary baseball player, I will also remember him as a great storyteller.

Lou Brock had a way with words. And he loved to tell stories. Ask anyone who knew him, Lou could talk. He was a real “ Chatty Cathy ” as my son Charlie would say. It is one of many things I loved about Lou Brock.

It was Lou’s gift for gab that got him into baseball in the first place. That is a true story that I will share with you shortly, along with a few other stories as I reflect on my friend Lou Brock.

Lou Brock was my childhood hero. Lou was the player I most identified with as a young boy as I began to fall in love with Cardinals baseball.

As an adult working for the St. Louis Cardinals, I was fortunate to really get to know him. The more I worked with him and got to know him, the more I loved Lou.

I didn’t go to many baseball games as kid. It just wasn’t something we did as a family led by a young widow. You see, my father died when I was five years old.

My dad was a staff Sergeant in the United States Air Force. When my dad died suddenly in July 1972, our family was stationed at base just outside of Madrid, Spain.

After my father's funeral, my mom, my sister and I came home to St. Louis, moving in with my Aunt and Uncle. I started Kindergarten from their house. A short time later, my mom bought a house in the same neighborhood and school district to raise both my sister and me.

The man who first took me to a Cardinals game was a neighbor. The neighbor was my friend Jeff’s dad – Mr. Stegen - who was a St. Louis County Police officer. While I’m not sure, I believe that first game was in 1975. All I really know it was KSD-TV Night at the ballpark because the team gave out a photograph of Lou Brock stealing his 105th base with his “autograph” in the corner.

That keepsake, which I still have today, was the beginning of my affection for Lou Brock. He immediately became my favorite. The baseball world revolved around Lou Brock as far as I was concerned.

I remember that the next time Mr. Stegen took us to a game, he corrected me when I thought the Musial statue was Lou Brock. "That is Stan the Man," I remember Mr. Stegen saying, "The Greatest Cardinal".

My mistake was more a reflection of my affinity for Lou Brock and my immature baseball knowledge at that time rather than any artistic critique of the iconic St. Louis landmark.

Simply put, Lou was to me, what Yadi has been to my son Charlie. Our first baseball hero.

One of my fondest memories of my time with the St. Louis Cardinals was a March 2012 trip I made to Little Rock, Arkansas to help coordinate the dedication of the “Play Ball” exhibit at the Clinton Presidential Center.

The exhibit was a joint effort with the St. Louis Cardinals Museum - which was “virtual” at that point - awaiting construction of a new home that would be completed with the construction of phase one of Ballpark Village in 2014.

As an Arkansas native and friend of President Clinton, Lou Brock was representing the team to dedicate the exhibit as the leader of our Cardinals delegation. I was there in my role as the PR Director, along with a distinguished group of colleagues from our front office.

It was a memorable trip, special to me on so many different levels.

I’ll never forget the conversation I had with Lou prior to him going to the podium to say a few words as part of the dedication ceremony to open the exhibit. We spoke from the green room upstairs at the Clinton Center while Fredbird was downstairs warming up the crowd.

Lou asked me if it was appropriate to share a story about Arkansas native Johnny Sain being the first pitcher to face Jackie Robinson. He wanted to know if I thought it was appropriate for him to talk about the issue of race in such a setting as a team representative.

While I honestly didn’t think he needed to run his remarks past me, I was grateful that he did. After learning a bit more about the Johnny Sain story, I told Lou that a presidential library was the ideal setting for such remarks. The library was designed to echo Clinton’s campaign promise to build a “bridge to the 21st century,” which included the desire to break down the racial barriers that divide us.

My advice was to speak from the heart.

He did just that. It was vintage Lou. He had everyone’s attention throughout his heartfelt remarks. I learned a lot that night. About baseball, race, politics and the humble kindness of Lou Brock.

It was such a wonderful time for me on so many different levels. Lou and Jackie couldn’t have been more generous with their time with everyone. I believe they were having as much fun as the rest of us.

Following the dedication ceremony, we were given a private tour of the new exhibit and the Presidential archives below the museum. We also went out to dinner with the full group – the Clinton team and our Cardinals entourage. Lou held court. He told dozens of stories.

Each one better than the one before.

While I haven’t been able to find the video on the Cardinals website, we produced a video news story about the Play Ball exhibit opening. It was one of the first professional video news stories we did as a department that we shared on our website and social media. This was very early in our video brand journalism storytelling work.

We had started dabbling with video in 2010 with the launch of the Stand for Stan campaign.

At that point in our evolution, I had a vision for our PR department to consistently share the team’s story using video. I didn’t care if we used a flip cam, an iPhone, a DSLR or a professional ENG camera – so long as we were telling an authentic story.

I remember at that time thinking we had just upped our game in a big way by recruiting someone who had experience in video storytelling and blogging for the American Red Cross.

On that trip, I had Lindsey Weberwho had just joined our team earlier that week, join us to shoot a video news story on her DSLR. She did a great job. Lou couldn’t have been more accommodating to us as we were giving birth to our professional video storytelling work.

Flash forward to 2016. At this point, we were “all in” with video storytelling – having hired two multi-media journalists and having taken over the production of a seasonal, weekly magazine TV show called Cardinal Nation (t hat we rebranded to Cardinals Insider to reflect our commitment to brand journalism from the team POV).

My life was consumed with producing Cardinals Insiderin 2016. The refreshed magazine television show was hosted by Lindsey and produced by our small department. We were up to our eyeballs in work that year.

At that same time, we were also preparing #STLisLou, a social media campaign to honor Lou Brock during the 2016 season.

During that off-season, Lou had a serious health scare. He was hospitalized for more than four months fighting an infection and his left leg was amputated below knee. For months, rumors circulated about his condition and concern for his well-being permeated Cardinals Nation.

After getting home from the hospital, Lou agreed to do his first on-camera media interview with us for our new Cardinals Insider TV show. It was a big deal for us to have that exclusive as we were pioneering our approach video brand journalism. We conducted the interview from the basement of Lou’s home. It was the perfect location.

In his interview with Stan McNeal that we aired on our 6th episode that season , Lou told the story about how a small scratch on his leg became infected and resulted in a fight for his life.

After we finished filming the segment, as we were breaking down our equipment, I asked Lou how he got started in baseball. When I casually asked the question, it was as if I turned a magic key to unlock a special door.

Lou lit up as he shared his personal story.

I wish we had been rolling as Lou shared his extraordinary story with us. As Lou spoke, he used the images, trophies and other ephemera in the room to illustrate the story for how he got into baseball.

He told us that his gift for gab got him in trouble in elementary school. He said he talked too much. So much so that it got him in trouble with his teacher.

As a punishment for disrupting the class, Lou’s teacher had him read a book. And write a book report. Lou could select any book in the classroom for the assignment. He chose a book from a bookshelf in the back of the classroom. It was filled with books. He selected a book about baseball.

He said that book sparked his interested in the game of baseball. Lou said he started to play sandlot baseball with his friends because of that book. He said he didn’t really play organized baseball until the 11th grade.

Lou told us that he received an academic scholarship to college. After his first semester in college, Lou said he was concerned about losing his scholarship because of a grade in a class. Lou said he tried out for the college baseball team so he could remain in school.

Lou told us that he struggled a bit in the beginning, but that he eventually got better. Later, his college team went on to win the NAIA championship.

Lou’s play on that college team earned him an invitation to join the United States team. He told us, as he asked someone to pull a photograph off the wall, that his big break came from the Pan American games where an MLB scout saw him play. He told us the rest of the story is history.

I remember my reaction at the time was pure astonishment. Wow! I had never heard that story!

It seemed like so many elements had to fall so perfectly into place for the son of a sharecropper to become one of the greatest players in MLB history.

What if he had picked a book about soccer? Quantum physics? What if he did just a little better in that college class? What if he gave up when he struggled a bit?

The way he told his story – in his own words – using his keepsakes as both prompts and props was cinematic. It was also inspirational.

As I drove back to the ballpark that afternoon, my mind was filled with ideas on how we could use our developing video storytelling unit to capture the personal stories of our Hall of Famers. We could help bring them alive by illustrating them with their own photo and ephemera collections, which we could digitize as part of the team’s archive.

How cool would it be to get Lou’s story in his own words? Reds? Gibby’s? Whiteys? All of our Hall of Famers?!

They weren’t getting any younger. We could preserve their stories in their own words and share them with future generations. We could also preserve their personal collections to share digitally with family and even fans.

While we all felt a sense of urgency to make that happen, I regret that we didn’t.

The work of producing a TV show, coupled with the daily grind of keeping up with our baseball responsibilities didn’t allow much staff bandwidth to make it happen. It fell down the priority list.

While I regret we didn’t get Lou’s life story in his own words on camera, I’ll be forever grateful that he took the time to share it with us that afternoon. I’ll hold onto Lou’s stories and my many memories of him.

I’ll forever remember Lou Brock as my childhood hero, a great player, a good man and a beautiful storyteller. #RIPLou #STLisLou