I met Mr. Futch about 13 years ago not long after writing an article about his friend, Dooley Womack. So, I looked into Ike’s story and learned that no player was better at avoiding strikeouts than Ike Futch. Hastily, I scribbled together an essay about Futch’s career. Ike corrected a couple of things – and then we exchanged contact information.

For the next few months, we became friends – he had collected all sorts of articles about his baseball life and had a collection of scrapbooks the way some of us have books full of baseball cards. We started the process of trying to organize all of this into a fuller biography.

If you interviewed Ike Futch, you pretty much learned that everyone he ever met was a great person, that they had a good relationship, and he remembered so many things about everyone else’s life. There was no dirt in his world (there was, but Ike chose to look at only the kind and nice things) – short of the dirt collected on cleats and uniforms in minor league cities across the United States.

Futch should have been a major leaguer. Joe Morgan was injured prepping for the All-Star game; Futch had a contract to take his place. However, before he left to join the Astros, he played one more game in the minors. In that game, he was bowled over at second base, injuring his knee.

Life got in the way of compiling a fuller bio – and that was on me. Dad duties and my other life got busier and all those notes about Ike’s baseball days are stored on my laptop collecting byte dust. But thoses stories still exist in the scrapbooks in his office and the files on my laptop. Fodder for a future essay.

My thoughts are with his wife, Brenda, and the family and friends that love and will miss Ike. Safe travels, sir.