By Mike Burke
I knew Chuck Eirich. He saw to that.
Not that I was anybody special -- just a kid who loved to play baseball who didn’t know what the hell he was doing on the ballfield. Of course, to Chuck, perhaps that was sort of special, because in his view it was completely unacceptable. I was even on the other team, but Chuck Eirich, you see, was a fixer, no matter what team you played for.
In that regard, a lot of us knew Chuck Eirich. He saw to it. So many of us … on the opposing teams.
In one of the two beautiful eulogies delivered during Chuck’s funeral service on Tuesday, his granddaughter Taylor Eirich, speaking for all of the grandchildren, said she has always been struck by the impact Chuck has had on so many people who are not members of the Eirich family. She shared that seemingly all of these folks have their own favorite story about her grandfather Chuck Eirich, and that all of us love to tell it.
The funeral service on Tuesday was much like the man it honored – direct and to the point. During the eulogy Chuck’s oldest son Toby delivered, Toby said of his father, “If you ask him for an opinion, you better be ready to hear the truth.”
To Taylor’s point about having a favorite story about Chuck, I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite story, but it is certainly the most important story, because, otherwise, I likely would not have had the outrageous good fortune of knowing Chuck Eirich through the years the way I did.
As a lad, I played Hot Stove League baseball for the Bedford Road Optimist. On one particular day, I had played first base in the field. We had just played the Elks and had lost the game, which was no big surprise, because most teams lost to the Elks. Chuck Eirich and Jim Miller, after all, coached the Elks.
I always knew who Chuck Eirich was dating back to our days in the Midget League basketball organization on Frederick Street. His sons Toby and Todd and I grew up playing in all of those leagues in those days. Tedd was around by that time, but I don’t remember his being old enough to play. But he was always around shooting a basketball that was bigger than he was at the time.
Still, up to that day on the Penn Avenue baseball field when Chuck (I called him Mr. Eirich once) took the time to help me after the game, I had never really met him.
Chuck had baseballs in each hand and repeatedly rolled them to me to field, instructing me to field them, then throw them back to him as he rolled me another one to field and caught the ball I had thrown back with his bare hand (which impressed me very much).
Next, he stood behind the pitcher’s mound to make throws to me as though they were coming from the shortstop because he wanted to see my footwork around the bag. Well, I showed him my footwork …
“Awful,” he said between one of the early throws (Keep in mind, I had just met him).
“Not good,” he said after another throw.
“Terrible,” he added. “Where did you learn this?”
I didn’t know … Nowhere? Which, I came to learn was his point. He was going to teach me the proper, fundamental way to do things. And he did. And though I never unseated Boog Powell, Lee May or Eddie Murray as the Orioles first baseman, Chuck took the time to show me the best way, the easiest way, the fundamental way to play first base. And I will never forget that.
It's no wonder the Elks rarely lost a game in those days. Chuck was their coach. Yet he helped kids on opposing teams, during and after games, as well. In my case, it was footwork at first base.
Outside of the realm of sports, while using the realm of sports to make his point, he took kids under his wing who needed a wing without their ever knowing that was what was happening.
He made sure kids got to practice and to games. He made sure they learned how to play the game correctly and had structure. And discipline. The foundation for everything in life, he believed, was responsibility and hard work.
Chuck played tough guy sometimes, though, sometimes, not very well. He could be salty, which we thought, being kids, was pretty cool and then realized there was nothing wrong with being a little salty every now and then once we grew a little older.
Chuck would help any kid play baseball, and he did just that. He wanted toughness. The game isn’t easy; life will be harder. Rub some dirt on it -- advice he even gave Toby as he was rolling around in the dirt one day as catcher for the Hot Stove Elks after a foul ball shot off the hard ACC infield (called The Rock for a reason) and struck Toby in a very (ahem) delicate area.
As Toby was writhing in pain and screaming at the top of his lungs (for obvious reasons if you’ve ever been hit there), Chuck calmly walked out to his fallen catcher and son and said, “Where’d it get ya?”
To which Toby was able to collect a breath to scream back, “Where the hell do you think it got me!!!”
Chuck was ornery. He said what he thought. He always went through the front door. One day along the fence beside the Allegany baseball field on Sedgwick Street, where I covered baseball games while spending the days talking with Chuck and Gary Powell (Chuck used a piece of chalk to keep score on the sidewalk), Chuck looked me in the eye upon my arrival and said, “They actually pay you down there to write some of that (stuff)?”
Whatever happened to hello, right? Well, there were some days when that was Chuck’s way of saying hello, and for some reason, it always made me feel more comfortable when I was with him. It was as though he felt like I was alright after all. For a Fort Hill guy.
Once I started to watch reruns of the television series “Frasier,” I told Chuck he reminded me of Martin Crane because he loved his dogs so much, and for some other reasons that I saw to be obvious. I meant it in the order of the highest compliment, and Chuck was familiar with the show. He just didn’t seem to care for the analogy.
But he did love dogs. To Chuck, there was no such thing as a bad dog. Kind of like there being no such thing as a bad boy.
Chuck helped growing up in Cumberland be a wonderful thing for a lot of kids by extending his hand of guidance and coaching them. He helped make coming back to Cumberland to live and work pretty great too.
He coached a lot of kids and virtually every sport that was available for a kid to play in those days. And as far as we know, there was never a detail he missed. We thought he knew everything.
It was written in his obituary, “His favorite coaching position was held for 62 years, coaching his three sons from the day they were born.”
We all know how that turned out. Toby Eirich, Todd Eirich and Tedd Eirich are three of the greatest coaches we’ve ever had the good fortune to have in Western Maryland. Their careers in athletics and education speak for themselves and began to come to fruition 62 years ago when Chuck and Donna Eirich began to raise their family – a family that continues to grow even stronger through this next generation of brothers, sisters and cousins.
Yet, as Taylor Eirich said on Tuesday morning, there are a whole lot of us out here who are not named Eirich, who will always be thankful that her grandfather saw something in all of us, too, to take the time to help us see some of the best in ourselves and to do our very best along the way.
Mike Burke has been writing and covering sports since 1981. Write to him at [email protected], or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @MikeBurkeMDT and @JackYdk. Listen to him, Matt Gilmore and Lydia Savramis on their “You Don’t Know Jack” podcast. Follow “You Don’t Know Jack” on Facebook as well.