I once met a man whose great grandmother remembered hearing the rumble of the Civil War battle of Stones River in Tennessee as a child. Nearly a century later, seeing film of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud, she said it looked just like the column of gunsmoke and dust that rose above the barren trees outside Murfreesboro on New Year's Eve in 1862.

History is funny that way. It seems so far in the past, but is only a few connections away from the present. The passing at 84 of Hank Bauer, the New York Yankee outfielder and Oriole manager, underlines that point.

Bauer was a twelve year old kid in Saint Louis when the Gas House Gang of Dizzy Dean, Frankie Frisch, Pepper Martin, Leo Durocher, and Joe Medwick beat the Detroit Tigers to take the World Series in 1934. He admired that hard nosed style of baseball and carried it with him through American Legion ball and his first pro contract with Oskosh in 1941.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Bauer didn't wait long to join the Marines. It takes a special type to be a Marine, and Hank Bauer was that type. Three years as a combat platoon leader, two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts. He took shrapnel at Guam and Okinawa, and suffered 24 attacks of malaria. Enough action and physical suffering to draw alot of men up short. Not Bauer. He came home, became a pipe fitter, got a lucky break when a scout remembered him, and finally got through the minors and up to the New York Yankees as a 26 year old rookie.

These were the Casey Stengel Yankees who routinely punched the World Series clock every October. Bauer was there between DiMaggio and Mantle. Not nearly so talented, but enough of a hitter to put together a 17 game World Series hit streak and knock out four home runs in 1958 against the Braves. Late in his career he went to Kansas City in the Roger Maris deal and became the A's manager in 1961.

Bauer found his way to the Orioles and in 1966 took them to their first World Championship. They were supposed to roll over for the Los Angeles Dodgers of Koufax and Drysdale, but managed to sweep them 4-0. A big part of that Orioles was another hard nosed right fielder named Frank Robinson.

That Robinson played hard before coming to Baltimore from the Reds is not in question. But he found a kindred spirit in Bauer, who once pinned Whitey Ford to the dugout wall for overindulging the night before he pitched, telling him "Don't mess with my money." That's the way the "Greatest Generation" was. They grew up hard, survived World War II physically and emotionally, and didn't expect or give easy rides.

If you saw Pepper Martin come in hard to wipe out a second baseman for the Cards back in the 30's, you were seeing what Hank Bauer did on the bases with New York in the 50's. And if you saw Frank Robinson hunting down middle infielders in the 60's and 70's you saw Bauer. I suspect that Ryan Zimmerman, who Frank Robinson managed last year with the Washington Nationals is going to carry on the tradition.

Those connections make baseball different from any other sport. Not better, necessarily, but more enduring in ways that matter. The World Series has been eclispsed by the Super Bowl, but as long as parents take children to baseball games then watch them grow into adults who head for the ball park with their kids, baseball will be OK. Pepper Martin, Hank Bauer, and Frank Robinson wouldn't have it any other way.