Rickey & Robinson (25 page)

“He did it for attendance,” you hear people say.

I’ve never met a club-owner who didn’t want larger attendance and every one had the same chance as Rickey to attract Negro fans. The thing is that Rickey did it—he took the step no one else had the courage to take.

Certainly crowds increased with my arrival, but I believe what motivated Branch Rickey to sign me was his sincere belief in the brotherhood of man. Mr. Rickey is a student of the Bible—a serious student.

“But he’s a pompous windbag,” others object. You can judge for yourself when you check a few more facts.

I’ve always admired the way he handles the language but the one time we had to make sure that every word was the right word, Rickey was humble enough to seek assistance from others.

That was in 1949 when I was asked to testify in Congress as a loyalty witness. They wanted me to voice my feelings—as an American Negro—about my country. Between us, Rickey and I must have spoken to fifty people as we tried to frame my beliefs in the best possible phrases. The words weren’t quite right until
Rickey remembered Lester Granger, whom he’d met at a dinner of the Urban League. Mr. Granger is one of the finest men we have in our race and possibly one of the smartest men in the whole country.

Among the three of us we worked out a speech that perfectly expressed my views. What impressed me so much was Rickey’s insistence on getting another Negro to help. He did not trust his own ability alone to aid in explaining the viewpoint of a Negro.

Because of the speech, I came in for a lot of praise and delivering it was as important a step as any in my life outside of baseball.

But with every forward step I made, Branch Rickey was at my side. Today I think baseball has reached the point where Negroes are accepted by every real fan and soon will be accepted by every team.

Baseball has advanced—and with baseball the country—because of Mr. Rickey.

Vicious men may insult him, foolish men may make fun of him and petty men may not understand him. But when the vicious, the foolish and the petty men are forgotten, Mr. Rickey will be remembered. And all decent men—whether Negro or white—will respect the memory and the blow Branch Rickey struck in the cause of human progress.

This column did draw a response, but one that was less than positive. When Robinson told me that he was not earning more in 1953 than he had in 1950, I stopped taking notes. “That isn’t what you hear in the Dodger front office, Jack.”

Robinson’s answer was curt. “Just write what I told you.”

The June issue of
Our Sports
appeared when the Dodgers were playing at Pittsburgh. Two newspapermen called my room in the Hotel Schenley to ask about Robinson’s assertion that his salary had not increased. Now it was my answer that was curt. “I just typed what he told me.”

At Forbes Field during pregame warm-ups, perhaps 20 reporters were gathered around Robinson. Among all of his observations on Rickey, the reporters focused only on Robinson’s assertion that his salary had not increased under Walter O’Malley. The lead questioners, Al Abrams of the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
and Bill Roeder of the
New York World-Telegram
, pressed him again and again. How could he say his salary was frozen when the Dodgers announced salary increases for him in 1951, ’52 and ’53? Was he charging that Walter O’Malley and Buzzie Bavasi were liars? Listening in, I had a nervous moment. Several Dodgers, notably Roy Campanella, tended to issue controversial quotes and then, when the controversy flared, deny that they had said any such thing. Doublespeak still is common in baseball. I worried that Robinson would say that in preparing the column it was I, not he, who had messed up.

Doublespeak was not Robinson’s way. As the rapid-fire questioning crackled around him, he said without flinching, “Sure they’ve announced raises for me and sure I’ve gotten them. But as my salary has gone up, so has the cost of living. So in a real sense my salary is not a penny higher than it was when Mr. Rickey left Brooklyn.” Abrams and Roeder then wrote sour pieces, saying Robinson was at the least guilty of misleading readers. I suppose in a limited way they were right, but Robinson, also in a limited way, was right as well.

Aside from money, the press ignored all the issues the Rickey column raised. No probing into Robinson’s trials during his epochal rookie season with Montreal. No reconsidering his testimony before the House of Representatives. No review of Rickey’s solidarity with Robinson. Jack and I were dedicated to the ideology of integration. The mainstream press was not. Their interest seemed to be money, only money.

The silence of the mainstream press proved fatal.
Our Sports
did not survive the season. Today few copies can be found. The Library of Congress issues an imposing purpose statement:

The Library’s mission is to support the Congress in fulfilling its constitutional duties and to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people
.

I could find no copies, not one, of any issue of
Our Sports
in all the files and warehouses of knowledge and creativity that constitute America’s national library. Until now it was almost as if Jackie Robinson and I wrote the
Our Sports
stories between midnight and 4:00 a.m., then put them into a bottle and shipped them out before the sun rose into a dark and endless sea of silence.

“Do you really think a nigger is a human being, Mr. Rickey?”

—CLAY HOPPER, Montreal manager, during spring training 1946

“Robinson must go to the majors. He’s a big-league ballplayer, a good team hustler and a real gentleman.”

—CLAY HOPPER at the conclusion of the 1946 season

G
LENN HALL, THE GREAT HOCKEY GOALIE WHO grew up in Manitoba, succinctly described Canadian attitudes on black and white. “We are nice to our Negroes in Canada,” Hall told me. “Both of them.” (It is a touch ironic that the first Canadian inducted into the American Baseball Hall of Fame was the fine right-handed pitcher Ferguson Jenkins. An Ontario native, he made Cooperstown in 1991. Fergie Jenkins is black.)

Actually, the Anglo-Canadian Establishment discriminated against both Eskimos and Native Americans and was constantly at odds with the proud French-speaking minority that was clustered mostly in the province of Quebec. But the kind of sweeping antiblack segregation that infested the United States was unknown.

On the afternoon of October 23, 1945, a cadre of 15 Canadian sportswriters gathered at the offices of the Royeaux de Montréal, the
Montreal Royals, of the Triple A International League. They had promised “a major announcement.” Dink Carroll of the
Montreal Gazette
told me, “We’d heard that the Royals were going to announce that they’d hired Babe Ruth to manage. That would have been one helluva story. What awaited us was one helluva different story.”

At the appointed hour Hector Racine, the portly president of the Royals, entered a conference room followed by Branch Rickey Jr., now director of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ superb 22-team minor-league farm system. The Montreal press corps had previously encountered both men. But the third entrant was a surprise, even a shock. He was a muscular, athletic-looking black man named Jack Roosevelt Robinson. “Here is the newest member of the Brooklyn Dodger organization,” Racine said. “Last year he was the star shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs. He will have every opportunity to make the Royals for the upcoming season, 1946.”

“There was no applause,” Al Parsley of the
Montreal Herald
told me, “and neither were there hostile outbursts. I’d sum up the reporters’ approach in two words: belligerent neutrality.”

Rickey Jr. read a prepared statement: “Mr. Racine and my father undoubtedly will be criticized in some sections of the United States where racial prejudice is rampant. We are not inviting trouble, but we will not try to avoid it if it comes. Jack Robinson is a fine type of young man, intelligent and college-bred. And I think he can take it, too. Some players may protest. A few may even quit. But they’ll be back in baseball after they work a year or two in a cotton mill.” Then, in a long-distance howitzer shot at Jimmy Powers and the nickname “El Cheapo,” Branch Jr. said, “We believe that Jackie Robinson is the right man for this mission and we have spared no expense in trying to make sure of that. The cost of scouting Negro players has run to over $25,000.”

Next Robinson stood up. “Of course I can’t tell you how happy I am that I am the first member of my race in organized baseball,” he
began. “I realize how much this means to me, my race and baseball. I can only say I’ll do my best to come through in every manner.” He smiled a disarming smile. “I guess I’m just a guinea pig in a noble experiment.”

A reporter called out, “Are you going to try and take Stan Breard’s job?” Stanislaus Breard, a Montreal native, was expected to be the Royals starting shortstop.

“I’m not trying to take anybody’s job. I’m just going to do the best I can.”

Summing up, Dink Carroll commented, “I wouldn’t say that he turned all the pagans into Christians right there and then. Lloyd McGowan of the
Star
said there was no need for him in baseball. But Robinson made a more than decent start. I know some were impressed just by the clarity of his diction.”

Jack was only beginning his long assault on the stereotypical Negro, exemplified by the comic actor Stepin Fetchit, who on the screen was invariably wide-eyed and afraid of ghosts and answered questions by saying, “Yowsah, boss.” (Fetchit’s real name was Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry. He is said to have been the first black actor to become a millionaire.)

The response to the Robinson announcement was volcanic and, to put this charitably, mixed. Jimmy Powers wrote in the New York
Daily News
, “Robinson will not make the grade this year or next. . . . Robinson is a 1,000-to-one shot to make the grade.”

Bob Feller, the great right-hander, had pitched against Robinson in barnstorming games. “He won’t hit,” Feller said. “He has too much upper-body muscle. He isn’t supple enough to get around on high inside fastballs.”

“This move,” said Clark Griffith, longtime owner of the Washington Senators, “is a bad one. It’s going to kill the Negro Leagues.” (Griffith, whose teams were seldom contenders, made important money renting the Washington ballpark to teams in the Negro Leagues.)

Alvin Gardner, president of the Texas League, said, “You’ll never see any Negro players on any teams in the South as long as the Jim Crow laws are in force. And that may be forever.”

The president of the National Association, the umbrella group covering the minor leagues, was one William Bramham, a former Rickey protégé and a Carolina native. “Father Divine will now have to look to his laurels,” Bramham told reporters, referring to a popular, oddball black evangelical minister who claimed to be no one less than God. “Soon we can expect to see a Rickey Temple erected in Harlem.”

“This whole thing is okay with me,” said Herb Pennock, the general manager of the Phillies, “as long as Rickey doesn’t bring the nigger to Philadelphia. We’re not ready for him here [in the City of Brotherly Love].”

“I have no problem with this,” said Dixie Walker, the Dodgers skilled and popular right fielder, “just so long as I am not asked to play on the same team as Robinson.”

Commissioner Happy Chandler claimed in later years that he championed integration. But on this day, when the issue was hot and words were so very important, Chandler had no comment.

Billy Werber, a scrappy big-league infielder for more than a decade, was a graduate of Duke University and a man of strong opinions. He telephoned Rickey Sr. in Brooklyn and spoke in controlled anger. “A large segment of the ballplayers who contribute to the success of major-league baseball are of Southern ancestry or actually live in the South,” Werber said. “To attempt to force them to accept socially and to play with a Negro or Negroes is highly distasteful. You are for some unaccountable reason discriminating against the majority.” Rickey controlled his own anger and thanked Werber for the call.

On November 1, 1945, the
Sporting News
printed a harsh editorial.

MONTREAL PUTS NEGRO PLAYER ON SPOT

In signing John Roosevelt Robinson, 26-year-old Negro native of Georgia, and former all-round athletic star at UCLA, the Montreal club of the International League, through Branch Rickey, president of the parent organization in Brooklyn, touched off a powder keg in the South, unstinted praise in Negro circles, and a Northern conviction that the racial problem in baseball is as far from a satisfactory solution as ever.

In New York, there is a feeling that the engagement of Robinson is, in the main, a legalistic move. Last July 1, there became effective in the state of New York what is known as the Anti-Discrimination Law. This has to do, in part, with the barring of Negroes from jobs and professions.

Rickey virtually admitted the legal facet of the Robinson signing when he said that, before long, every professional baseball club operating in the state of New York would be forced to engage Negroes.

But how? Col. Larry MacPhail of the Yankees, who some time ago wrote a long report on the Negro-in-baseball question to the Mayor’s Committee in New York and Rickey himself, admits there is not a single Negro player with major-league possibilities for 1946. Satchel Paige, of course, is barred by his age. Nor could he afford to accept a major contract, even if he were 10 years younger. Robinson, at 26, is reported to possess baseball abilities which, were he white, would make him eligible for a trial with, let us say, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Class B farm at Newport News, if he were six years younger.

Here, then, is the picture which confronts the first Negro signed in Organized Baseball as a Negro:

(1) He is thrown into the postwar reconstruction of baseball, and placed in competition with a vast number of younger, more skilled and more experienced players. (2) He is six years too old for a chance with a club two classifications below the Double A rating of Montreal. (3) He is confronted with the
sweat and tears of toil, with the social rebuffs and the competitive heartaches which are inevitable for a Negro trailblazer in Organized Baseball. (4) He is thrown into the spotlight, the one man of his race in any league under the jurisdiction of Commissioner Albert B. Chandler, and will be expected to demonstrate skills far beyond those he is reported to possess, or to be able to develop.