Opening Day

by Jonathan Eig

  Dodger fans of a certain age, looking back at the glory days of Brooklyn baseball, tend to describe Ebbets as a field of dreams, a place where the stands were always packed, the spectators eternally friendly, where raucous fans shouted out with joy, where cowbells clanged and marching bands oompahed deliriously, a place of pure baseball magic. It wasn’t always so. Ebbets Field was a gem, to be sure. In a crowded city of concrete and brick, it startled fans with its humble beauty. Fans who had only listened to games on radio or watched on black-and-white TVs were shocked when they walked through a congested neighborhood into the cool, dark shadows of the ballpark’s tunnels, and then emerged to see the brilliant green diamond shining before them. But the romanticists tend to forget that many of those fans also emerged to see a lot of empty seats. In the 1930s, the team attracted an average of only eighty-five hundred fans per game, which meant that nearly three out of four seats were vacant. Attendance improved after the war, but by 1947 there was already a sense that the Brooklyn way of life, characterized as much as anything by the Ebbets Field experience, was breaking up. Black families were moving in and white families were looking for a way out, looking in particular toward Long Island. Soon, a massive push toward suburbia would be underway. The values associated with life in Brooklyn, where you knew your neighbors, saw the same people every day at the bus stop, ran a line of credit at the neighborhood butcher shop, and met friends at Ebbets Field for an afternoon game and tried not to drink so much beer that you spoiled your dinner, would seem quaint, replaced by a growing sense of materialism, by a quest for an American dream that meant a two-car garage, a backyard with a swimming pool, and the occasional drive on the highway to some massive ballpark surrounded by a parking lot.

  Nineteen-forty-seven marked the zenith for Ebbets Field. Black and white fans would fade as Brooklyn’s middle class dissipated. Never again would so many gather to cheer their Bums. Ten years later, the team would pack up and move to Los Angeles, leaving fans bitter and betrayed, as if a hole had been carved in the borough’s heart. For decades fans would nurture a sweetening collection of shared memories—almost enough of them to offset the hurt. But the truth, difficult for many to accept, is that Brooklyn left the Dodgers long before the Dodgers left Brooklyn. It began in 1947. Jackie Robinson packed Ebbets Field like never before, but his arrival signaled a cultural shift that foretold the destruction of Brooklyn’s lyrical little ballpark.

  • • •

  On June 5, in front of 27,000 fans, Robinson homered, singled twice and stole his eighth base of the year, leading the team to a win over the Pirates. Five days later, when he homered again, the public address announcer informed the crowd that Robinson’s family was sitting behind home plate, and the crowd rose to give Rachel and Jack Jr. a special cheer. The day after that, playing before a crowd of 18,000, including 700 orphans, 5,000 schoolboys, and 2,000 Ladies Day “fanettes,” all of them admitted free of charge, Robinson went 4-for-4, with two singles, a double, and a triple, raising his average to .301.

  Dick Young of the Daily News said the excellent performance was a sign that the pressure on Robinson was easing. The Brooklyn Eagle said the first baseman was “in the charmed circle to stay.” Fans, black and white, were learning to recognize his tics—the way he held his bat high and wiped his hands on his pants between pitches, the way he seemed to swing down on the ball, as if to pound it into submission. Robinson’s steady play was keeping the Dodgers in the pennant hunt, and it even earned him his first endorsement opportunity. Bond Bread, which used many of New York’s top athletes in its newspaper ads, reportedly offered him five hundred dollars to pose for pictures that would run in some of the city’s newspapers. But Robinson had promised Branch Rickey he would not make any endorsements, not just yet anyway.

  On June 12, the Dodgers left town for their second road trip of the season, beginning this time in St. Louis. If there were any signs of resentment among the Cardinals for the way the media had handled the story of their alleged strike, none showed. In fact, Wendell Smith outdid himself in congratulating the Cardinals on their kindness toward Robinson. “The St. Louis Cardinals aren’t only good ballplayers,” he began his story from St. Louis, “but they’re good guys as well.” He continued: “It was as though they were trying to show him they aren’t the villains they appeared to be earlier in the season.”

  Smith reported that the Cards went out of their way to make chit-chat. Eddie Dyer, the team’s manager and an insurance salesman in the off-season, was serving as the first-base coach, where he had a lot of time for small talk. Dyer told Robinson that he’d seen him play once with the Monarchs and he’d been impressed even then. After Robinson banged a solid single to center, Dyer greeted him the next inning with his congratulations. He pointed to the big crowd of black people in the bleachers and said, “Boy, if you’d hit a home run today those people out there would go crazy.”

  In another game, when Robinson slid into second on a close play, he and Marty Marion got tangled up. “Did I spike you, Jackie?” the shortstop asked. Robinson said no. “I got new spikes on and they’d cut pretty deep,” Marion said. “I’m glad I didn’t.”

  Joe “Ducky” Medwick, the Cards’ veteran outfielder, took Robinson aside to offer him advice at one point in the series. “Listen, Robinson,” Medwick said, “you’re a much better hitter than you appear to be. ’Course, you’re doing alright, but you could be doing better. You’re too tight up there at the plate. For goodness’ sakes, loosen up and hit that ball. If you do, you’ll burn up this league, Jack.”

  Smith noted that Musial and Garagiola were friendly, too. Of course, the Cards might have been in a benevolent mood with Robinson because they were tearing the rest of the Dodgers limb from limb. St. Louis swept the four-game series, outscoring Brooklyn, 31–8. Robinson, writing in his column, said that the four games sent a clear message that the Cards remained the team to beat in the National League. Most of the writers covering the Dodgers agreed. One of them, apparently without irony, compared the four-game sweep to the collapse of the Roman empire. For the Dodgers, the only highlight was a ground ball by Carl Furillo that somehow rolled up the sleeve of shortstop Marty Marion and got lost in his shirt. Not even old Burt Shotton had seen that trick before.

  “Shotton’s team as now constituted isn’t a pennant contender,” Harold Burr wrote in the Brooklyn Eagle. “The youth movement in Brooklyn has backfired badly and must be abandoned temporarily.” The youth movement, however, had largely been brought on by injuries. Not only was Reiser out, but Walker was missing time with a sprained wrist and Bruce Edwards was on the bench nursing a bruised throwing hand. Their replacements, Cookie Lavagetto, Duke Snider, and back-up catcher Gil Hodges (“just a boy who doesn’t know what a curveball is,” according to Branch Rickey), were not getting the job done. At one point, when Snider complained about being made to bunt when he preferred to swing away, Shotton sent him back to St. Paul for a taste of the minors. It was an important moment for the team. It sent the signal that Shotton, for all his patience and calm, was not to be trifled with.

  Reiser was not yet ready to play, but he had recovered enough to travel with the team. “I ache all over and now I’m having those dizzy spells I had in ’42 all over again,” he said. Nevertheless, Reiser decided to skip an appointment to see his doctor in Baltimore and stay with the team as it headed for Chicago. One day in Chicago he felt well enough to shag fly balls in the outfield before the game. The sight doubtless gave his teammates hope that Reiser would soon return—until, unbelievably, he collided with one of those teammates and knocked himself silly again.

  • • •

  With the lineup depleted, Robinson became more aggressive. Maybe he didn’t know that the Cubs and Dodgers had bad blood, or maybe he did and didn’t care. A year earlier, the two teams had brawled viciously. Cubs shortstop Lennie Merullo got a bad black eye when Stanky grabbed him in a bear hug and Reese punched him in the face. The next day, before the game, Merullo approached Reese a
nd challenged him to go at it again, threatening to break his neck in a fair fight. While Merullo was making his threats, Dixie Walker snuck up behind and threw a punch to the shortstop’s head, connecting solidly. Merullo chased him, tackled him, and punched him in the face, knocking out one tooth and breaking another. New York City police officers were assigned to sit in the dugouts during the game to prevent further incidents.

  A year later, tempers remained sore, and, now, Robinson wasn’t helping. In the second game, he went from first to third on a sacrifice bunt and then scampered home when the catcher threw the ball into the outfield. It was the sort of play, equal parts speed and guts, for which he was developing a reputation.

  The next day, with the Dodgers down 1–0 in the sixth, Robinson opened with a walk and began hopping around at first base, taking a big lead, trying to distract the Cubs’ pitcher Johnny Schmitz, who had been mowing the Dodgers down with ease before surrendering the walk. Each time Schmitz prepared to throw, Robinson skittered farther from the bag. Three times Schmitz threw over there trying to catch him. When Schmitz finally did deliver a pitch, it “didn’t have much strength,” according to the Daily News, and Reese ripped it for a game-tying triple. The News said Robinson deserved half the credit for Reese’s drive. The Times said Robinson’s antics were a “great annoyance,” and “Schmitz obviously was hampered.”

  In the next inning, Schmitz still seemed rattled. He walked a batter. The catcher, Clyde McCullough, threw late to second base on a sacrifice bunt. The close play sparked a sharp argument between shortstop Merullo and the umpire at second. Then Robinson singled to load the bases, “which made the Cubs feel madder,” wrote Dick Young, “because anything Robby does of a commendatory nature burns up the Confederate opposition.”

  In the ninth, with the score at 5–1 in favor of the Dodgers, Robinson stole second and went in standing up. Now Merullo was ready to explode. He may have been justified in his anger, to an extent, since Robinson had little reason to swipe the base with his team leading by four runs in the ninth. Before the next pitch, the Cubs’ pitcher threw to second, trying to catch Robinson off the bag. Merullo came in from behind, grabbed the throw, and slapped a tag hard on Robinson. “I was on the bag, but I kind of leaned forward to put the tag on him,” he recalled years later. “I tagged him once in the face. Then his legs flew up and hit me in the shoulder and I tagged him again. He got up with fire in his eyes. He was mad. He could’ve eaten me up if he wanted to. He just gave me that look, like, ‘I’ll take care of you later.’ I didn’t say anything to him. . . . We were all told to avoid any possible reaction because it was a black boy playing for the first time. . . . I was very, very conscious of it. All of us ballplayers were conscious of it. They were going to be stepping on him at first base, swinging their arms out and trying to knock the ball out of his hands. They did that to everyone, but not the same way. You had to be careful. You could not start a riot.”

  Merullo, already on the Dodger enemy list, came very close to sparking another fight. In the dugout, the Dodgers rose from the bench and began cursing the Cubs’ shortstop, warning him that he’d pay for mistreating Robinson.

  Years later, Merullo said he had no problem with Robinson, no problem with black players in the major leagues, no problem at all. He hated everyone who wore Dodger blue, he said; that was all.

  • • •

  On June 24, in Pittsburgh, the Dodgers and Pirates were tied, 2–2, in the fifth before another massive crowd. Branch Rickey removed his coat as he watched his team play, feeling good about the way his misfits were hanging in there, and no doubt delighted that there was no powerhouse team emerging in the National League. One of Rickey’s castoffs, Fritz Ostermueller, the pitcher who had hit Robinson on his last trip to Pittsburgh, was on the mound again for the Pirates. Ostermueller was known around the league as “Old Folks,” not so much for his age, which was thirty-nine, as for the slow, labored manner in which he pitched. He rocked back and forth, bent himself at the waist “like a Mohammaden on his prayer rug,” as The Sporting News said, rotated his left arm like a windmill, and only then undertook the critical but necessary action of actually throwing.

  After giving up a two-run homer to Pee Wee Reese in the second inning, Ostermueller shut down the Dodgers on one hit. Then, in the fifth, Al Gionfriddo worked a walk and Robinson followed with a grounder to third. Gionfriddo was out at second, but Robinson, hustling to avoid a double play, reached first on the fielder’s choice.

  Ostermueller had told his teammates before the game that he wasn’t going to let Robinson take advantage of his slow delivery. He was going to watch him like a hawk. As Robinson crept away from first, taking his lead, Ostermueller looked at Robinson and Robinson looked back. But before Robinson had a chance to try swiping second, Furillo singled. Robinson went all the way to third.

  Walker stepped up to the plate next. As Ostermueller went into his windup, Robinson danced down the third-base line, trying to distract the old pitcher, hoping he would balk, or perhaps throw one to the backstop. Robinson’s instincts for base-running were superb, but he was also an intelligent player who understood the game’s subtleties. Now he recognized that he had a slow-moving lefty on the mound and that the slow-moving lefty had a lot to worry about: runner on first, runner on third, dangerous hitter at the plate, close game . . .

  The first pitch was a ball. So was the second. On the third pitch, a called strike, Furillo took off and swiped second base. The Pirates could have walked Walker to load the bases and set up the force play but decided not to. As Ostermueller went into his elaborate windup yet again, he might have paid less attention to the runners. Now that Furillo was on second, there was no chance of a double steal. Even if he walked the batter, it wouldn’t hurt him all that much.

  When Ostermueller threw, Robinson began running, head down, arms pumping, dirt flying behind him. This time, he didn’t stop. He ran straight down the line toward the plate. At some point, he peeked at the catcher to see where he was set up and where the ball was headed. He prepared to throw his body into a slide. From the dugout and the grandstand, it dawned on people in a sudden flash what was happening. Robinson was stealing home!

  The ball thwacked into Dixie Howell’s mitt as Robinson slid toward the plate. The catcher grabbed the ball with both hands and pivoted in Robinson’s direction, trying to make the tag. Too late. Robinson’s foot was wedged under Howell’s mitt. Robinson had his first steal of the plate. He’d also scored the go-ahead run, which would prove to be the game-winner.

  The crowd roared. Branch Rickey leaned back and laughed as “the boy he had emancipated streaked for the plate and made it with a long slide,” the Brooklyn Eagle reported.

  In the years to come, the steal of home would become Robinson’s calling card. He would pull off the trick nineteen times in his career, enough to put him in the top ten on the all-time list, though well behind Ty Cobb’s record of fifty-four. But for Robinson, it wasn’t the quantity that counted so much as the style.

  Buddy Johnson and Count Basie paid tribute to Robinson’s steals of home in their hit song, recorded in 1949:

  Did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball?

  Did he hit it? Yeah, and that ain’t all.

  He stole home.

  Yes, yes, Jackie’s real gone.

  Did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball?

  Did he hit it? Yeah, and that ain’t all.

  He stole home.

  Yes, yes, Jackie’s real gone.

  Jackie is a real gone guy.

  The play meant a great deal to Robinson, and even more to his fans. It spoke of both the fearlessness with which he carried himself and the fear he inspired. In the ninety-foot race to home Robinson put himself forth as both a team player and an individual, an insider and an outsider, a man playing by the rules yet boldly bending them to his will. While Branch Rickey had curbed Robinson’s natural aggressiveness with the gag order, he couldn’t curb Robinson’s killer instinct on the field, and n
othing symbolized that instinct better than his brazen thefts. The steal of home was his special weapon, the switchblade in his pocket.

  • • •

  Wendell Smith made no mention of Robinson’s accommodations on the team’s second long road trip. It would appear that most, if not all, of the hotels had begun welcoming the entire Dodger team. Teammates who were interviewed years later would recall Robinson coming and going from the hotels and reading newspapers in the lobbies. They remembered Robinson’s presence during card games played on hotel room beds. But they failed to recollect meals shared, which probably meant that Robinson continued to dine alone, or with Smith. The hotels were admitting him now, but in all likelihood they had made it clear that they still preferred not to have him in their restaurants.

  Allan Roth was the team’s newly hired statistician, a fanatic where baseball’s numerology was concerned, and fairly passionate about racism and anti-Semitism, too. Just thirty-four years old and Jewish, Roth, too, was a rookie and an outsider among the Dodgers. While packing neckties at his uncle’s factory in Montreal a few years earlier, Roth had begun analyzing patterns in baseball statistics. He became fanatical about the hobby, developing methods to determine how well a certain hitter matched up against lefties and righties, how well he hit in day games compared to night, whether he hit better on weekdays or weekends, and much more. Long before the notion became widely accepted, Roth concluded that on-base percentage mattered more than batting average, and he made a believer of Branch Rickey, who hired him as baseball’s first full-time numbers cruncher. Roth attended every Dodger game in 1947, charting every pitch and noting in his ledgers whether it was a fastball or curve, high and inside, low and outside, or down the middle, where it was hit, and who fielded it. He sat just left of the Dodger dugout and passed index cards to Burt Shotton throughout each game, alerting him to matchups that might prove helpful to the Dodgers. Shotton became a believer. In later years, Roth would tell his family about his encounters with Robinson in 1947. Roth kept no personal diary, recording only baseball statistics as the season went along. But as best his family could tell from his stories, his friendship with Robinson, like that of all others with the team who knew the rookie in 1947, did not go deep.