If It’s Fox Tales You Want . . .

I bet if I called my friend, Bob Costas, the TV broadcaster, or, say, Billy Crystal, the actor, to ask for their favorite stories of their favorite baseball player, Mickey Mantle, neither one would know where to start. I’m sure both of them would have story after story after story.

A couple of days ago, however, after my favorite player, Nellie Fox, had been voted--and about time, dammit!--into baseball’s Hall of Fame, somebody called me to ask for a remembrance of Nellie, a favorite quip, an anecdote, maybe a specific World Series hit he made, or a play at second base.

Much to my own amazement, I said, “I can’t think of any.”

I didn’t even know where Fox was from. (Mantle was from Oklahoma, of course.) I couldn’t recall Nellie’s voice. (Whereas the Mick’s twang, I knew quite well.) If he ever did a TV commercial, locally or otherwise, I have no memory of it. (But I used Mickey’s brand of lather, soon as I could shave.)

To be perfectly blunt, I never even knew how he died. Not until I was watching a Warren Beatty movie called “Love Affair,” a year or two ago, and, apropos of nothing, Beatty’s character mentions that Nellie Fox died of cancer.

I was sorry to hear it. He died in a 1975.

He was 47.

The way Costas carries a baseball card of Mantle, I have one of Fox. I dug it out--Bob keeps his in his wallet, being a true fan--from a shoe box, simply to refresh my memory of a childhood idol.

Nellie Fox was born on Christmas Day, I learned, for openers. His height was listed as 5 feet 9. The guy who called me had asked, “Wasn’t he, like, 5-6?”

I wasn’t sure.

It also came as news to me that Fox played his first three seasons for the Philadelphia A’s. And that he didn’t hit a homer in the majors until his fifth year.

All I did know was that back in my hometown of Steger, Ill., in tribute to Fox, I would wedge a wad of Bazooka bubble gum inside my left cheek, until it puffed out like a chipmunk’s, before I took the field in my uniform representing Sam’s Enco gas station.

Boys did things like that for the guys they loved. You kicked your leg like Juan Marichal, or you made your bat do a pendulum like Vic Power’s, or you played shallow in the outfield like Paul Blair. Kids did it in Babe Ruth’s generation. They do it in Barry Bonds’. Some things don’t change.

Some do.

Today, I vote for the Hall of Fame.

I wasn’t a voter when Fox was on the writers’ ballot for the last time, when he fell two votes short. He would have had mine. I would have done my homework, looked up his stats, not voted with bias, but he sure wouldn’t have had to wait until 1997, for some veterans’ committee to recognize him, had I had any say.

Still, my memory being fuzzy, lo, these many years later, I began to wonder exactly how good a player Jacob Nelson Fox was. Maybe he wasn’t so hot. After all, the voters did keep snubbing him.

So, I found a few things out.

Here’s the one that I love most: Did you know that Fox had more hits than Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams or Mickey Mantle? Neither did I, until yesterday.

He was a 13-time all-star. He struck out 216 times in 9,232 at-bats, which is, man, unreal.

I wondered what peers had to say of Fox, after the Hall of Fame announcement was made.

Williams, for one, said, “I just loved him. As a second baseman, I rate him close to [Bobby] Doerr and [Joe] Gordon.” High praise from Teddy Ballgame.

Luis Aparicio, who formed the other half of a Cooperstown keystone combo--excuse the lingo; I’m in a sentimental mood--said, “He was a wonderful guy, a great family man and a great friend.”

And speaking of family, Joanne Fox, still living in Chambersburg, Pa., told her daughters to run to the store, before the Hall of Fame announcement, to buy popcorn, pretzels, Cracker Jack, even the “little cheddar fishies” Nellie liked to munch. She set them near her husband’s photo, his MVP award and a bottle of Crown Royal booze he also liked, way back when.

Memories are memories, whatever they are.

Tom Lasorda will forgive me if I point out that two little guys from Pennsylvania who wore No. 2 on their uniforms were elected last week to baseball’s Hall of Fame. I knew so many stories about Tommy, I could have written a book. I knew no stories of Nellie, whom I adored.

I typed this story with a wad of bubble gum inside my cheek.

Warren Beatty had his love affair, I have mine.