Fair warning: I’m suspending any notion of objectivity for these 400 or so words. Banks retired when I was young, but he still counted as the face of those Cubs teams as the years passed. In his world, the Cubs really were going to win the World Series next year. Banks would throw out the ceremonial first pitch, Wrigley would shake to its ancient core and his team would tilt baseball on its axis. “It would be the epitome of my whole life,” he said in a March 2008 interview. Banks meant more than wins and (lots of) losses. Ron Kroichick is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.