by Jonathan Eig
The long-term consequences of the Garagiola-Robinson spat were less predictable, and beyond the imagination of anyone involved. In 1984, a Chinese-born American named Bette Bao Lord published a slender book of fiction intended for young readers. She called it In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. The autobiographical story describes Shirley Temple Wong’s passage from China to America, and her adjustment to life in Brooklyn in 1947. Shirley doesn’t know English and makes few friends—until she discovers Jackie Robinson and baseball, and learns that America really is the land of opportunity. If Robinson can find acceptance among the Dodgers, Shirley decides, then she can manage to fit in at Public School Number 8. A staple of elementary-school classrooms, In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson has been read by countless hundreds of thousands of children. The book, which singles out Garagiola for his attack on Robinson, has haunted the former ballplayer since its first publication, establishing him as a bigot in the minds of a generation that never saw him play and never heard his enchanting television and radio broadcasts. When Garagiola’s grandchildren read the book, they were stunned, asking him, “Was that you, Papa?” Why had he hated Jackie Robinson, they wanted to know.
“Look,” he said recently, his voice breaking at times, “Jackie was a firebrand. Even in ’47, he was a competitor. You’re fighting for the pennant, and who cares what color he is. . . . He said something to me. I said, ‘Why don’t you just hit!’ And then here comes Sukeforth. I’ve lived with this thing unfairly. It was a little bit of jockeying to break his concentration, that’s all. . . . It wasn’t even an argument. . . . You just don’t know the grief and aggravation this has caused.”
The Dodgers went on to win the game, and two of three in the series. Robinson went 6-for-13 with three walks and a stolen base in the three games. Again and again, he made life miserable for the Cards. In the final game, the Cardinals were threatening with two out in the eighth inning. Robinson chased after a twisting foul pop. When he reached the lip of the Dodger dugout, no more room to run, he hurled his body down the steps and stabbed at the ball with his glove. As Robinson leaped, so did his teammate Branca, leaving his seat on the bench. The ball plopped into Robinson’s glove just as Branca reached Robinson. Branca threw his arms around Robinson’s waist and tackled him on the infield grass, preventing what might have been a nasty tumble onto the concrete floor of the dugout.
As the Dodgers jogged off the field, they rushed around to congratulate Robinson on one of the season’s great catches, and to praise Branca for another. No one was more impressed with Branca’s grab than Robinson. Six months earlier, he wasn’t sure anyone would have cared enough to break his fall.
• • •
The rest of the road trip, through Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, felt like a coronation tour. “Hail to Those Dodger Bums!” the Post declared in its headline of September 15. Dick Young wrote that Robinson’s clutch play down the stretch had wiped out the “last bit of passive but ever-apparent resentment” some teammates showed toward the black ballplayer. “With each valuable contribution by Jackie, in almost every money game on this decisive Western swing,” the writer continued, “the barrier of precedent dwindled and the warmth of acceptance grew to the point, where, today, it can be at last honestly said: Robinson is a member.”
The trip brought one more accolade: The Sporting News, baseball’s bible, named Robinson the recipient of its second Rookie of the Year award. The newspaper, which earlier in the season had only grudgingly accepted integration, now bragged of its progressive approach. “In selecting the outstanding rookie of 1947,” wrote J. G. Taylor Spink, “The Sporting News sifted and weighed only stark baseball values. That Jack Roosevelt Robinson might have had more obstacles than his first-year competitors, and that he perhaps had a harder fight to gain even major league recognition, was no concern of this publication.” Even so, the newspaper did not quite attain a perfect state of colorblindness: “He’s ‘Ebony Ty Cobb’ on Base Paths,” read the second deck of the story’s headline.
Meanwhile, Time magazine began putting together a cover story on Robinson. Brooklyn fans made plans for “Jackie Robinson Day” at Ebbets Field, with gifts that would include a new Cadillac sedan, a television console so heavy it required four men to carry, a portable radio, a gold pen and pencil set, a gold watch from Tiffany, an electric broiler, a set of cutlery, and a check for $168 to help defray the taxes on all the gifts. Plans were being made for a Jackie Robinson movie and a Jackie Robinson vaudeville show. Off-season banquets honoring the athlete were in preparation across the country, organizers hoping that if the trophies and accolades were large enough the great man might be induced to appear in person. On top of all else, the Harlem Globetrotters extended an offer of ten thousand dollars for Robinson to play with the team in the off-season.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve had one man in the league who has an upsetting effect on every infield whenever he gets on base,” said Charlie Grimm, manager of the Cubs. “Robinson makes ’em all squirm. After all, he takes such a good lead that you got to make a play for him. You’ve got to try and pick him off. He sets up the play himself and there’s no choice but to make him take back a step or two.” Grimm compared the Dodger rookie to Johnny Leonard Roosevelt Martin, better known as “Pepper” during his playing days with the Cardinals in the 1930s, another fellow who “just loved to get on base for the confusion it would create.”
All the attention and accolades coming Robinson’s way were nice, wrote Jimmy Powers in his newspaper column, but what Robinson really deserved was a bigger payday from the Dodgers. If Branch Rickey loved his first baseman as much as he claimed, Powers wrote, the boss would nullify his $5,000 contract and write a new one for $25,000. Even then, Robinson would be a bargain. By Powers’s estimate, the Dodger rookie had sold at least $100,000 in tickets.
In 1947, the Dodgers pulled 1.8 million fans into their snug little park, more than any team in the history of the National League had attracted to that point. On the road, they drew even more—almost 1.9 million, which was also a record for the league. Yet while Powers and many others assumed that the bulk of the credit belonged to Robinson, it’s not entirely clear they were right. Big crowds followed Robinson everywhere he went in 1947, but they also showed up in the places he didn’t. As researcher Henry Fetter has noted, while attendance for Dodger games both home and away increased 10 percent from 1946 to 1947, attendance for National League games not involving the Dodgers increased 19 percent. It’s possible that Robinson brought new waves of fans to the game and that those fans embraced all the action, not just Dodger games, but there was probably more to it than that. What likely happened is that the strong economy gave fans extra spending money, and they chose to splurge on baseball because it was not too great an indulgence, well within the working man’s budget, and because the National League had a lot of evenly matched teams in 1947, which meant fans in almost every city held out hope long into the summer that the home team might win a pennant. And there was one more thing: Baseball made people feel good. It connected them with simpler times, and now, with Robinson on the scene, it also offered them reassurance that the country was capable of adapting to the changing world.
Even so, Robinson’s rookie year marked the start of a steady slide for Brooklyn baseball. No matter how well the Dodgers played in the years ahead, never again would the team approach the level of popularity it enjoyed in 1947. Brooklynites were loading their cars and moving to Long Island. They would always love Dem Bums, but in the years ahead they were much more likely to love them from out in da burbs. Then came television, and suddenly fans had one more reason not to go back to Brooklyn. Nineteen-forty-seven would long be remembered as a season of beginnings, but it was a season of endings, too.
• • •
It was Friday morning, September 19, when the Dodger train sighed to a stop on Track Thirteen at Pennsylvania Station, half an hour late. Three thousand fans were there to greet the team. “Our Bums will ma
ke bums of the Yankees,” read the banner held aloft by one of the flock. The Dodger Sym-Phony was there, blowing horns and rattling drums. Brooklyn borough president John Cashmore took advantage of the moment to announce that the following Friday, September 26, would be Brooklyn Dodger Day, with a big parade, a pep rally on the steps of Borough Hall, and gifts for all of the team’s players and coaches. The Dodgers were home. Brooklyn was all set to celebrate its first pennant since 1941.
“There’s no use going across the East River today to look for Brooklyn,” Arch Murray of the Post wrote. “It isn’t there. It’s floating dreamily on a puffy, pink cloud, somewhere just this side of Paradise. Flatbush is reeling in mass delirium. Canarsie is acting like on an opium jag. The Gowanus is flowing with milk and honey. Because Next Year finally came.”
As the Dodgers stepped down onto the train platform along Track Thirteen, some of the less recognizable players mixed with the crowd and escaped, their hats pulled over their faces. Not Robinson. As he walked toward a phone booth, eager to call his wife, some five hundred people—most of them men, most of them white—moved with him. He took off running, got to the phone booth ahead of the crowd, and slammed shut the accordion door. When he finished his call, half a dozen policemen rescued him, forming a circle, and, like the front line of the UCLA football team, clearing a path. Robinson took off for the IND subway line, where several pursuing fans begged for the privilege of paying his five-cent fare. At last, he reached his train and climbed aboard. And, still, dozens of giddy admirers trailed him. They squeezed into his subway car, their destination of little matter, happy enough just to be along for the ride.
Robinson didn’t mind. The Dodgers were winners. He was going home to his wife and son.
“I’m tickled silly,” he said.
TWENTY
SHADOW DANCING
Robinson had no trouble sleeping now. The early-season anxiety that had caused him to gnash his teeth and toss in bed had passed. He drifted off every night to the whisper of Jack Jr.’s short breaths and woke most mornings to the same pleasing sound. As he waited for the World Series to begin, Robinson, for the first time all year, seemed to relax. When the Dodgers paraded through Brooklyn, he rode in a convertible, waving to the crowds lined up along Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street and smiling confidently. When the motorcade reached Borough Hall, only the two most popular men on the team—Robinson and Walker—were invited to address the enormous gathering, estimated at more than one hundred thousand. Robinson smiled again, assured the fans that the Dodgers would beat the Yankees, and quickly stepped away from the microphone.
Mallie Robinson flew in from Los Angeles to watch her son play in the World Series. So did Rachel’s mother, Zellee Isum. Neither woman had seen Robinson play big-league ball, neither had been to New York, and neither had been on an airplane. They held hands as they soared east. Also arriving in time for the Series were Jackie’s sister, Willa Mae; his brother Mack, the former Olympian; five of Mack’s friends; and Jackie’s former pastor and mentor, the Reverend Karl Downs. Jackie and Rachel had no room for guests in their apartment, so the mothers stayed with Florence and Lacy Covington in their big brownstone on Stuyvesant Avenue, a short walk from their children and their grandson.
At last, Jackie and Rachel had babysitters—a sudden abundance of them, in fact—and they took advantage. The Dodger players and their wives organized a couple of parties before the start of the World Series. Though the Robinsons had been excluded from the team’s social events earlier in the season, they were invited now. The rest of the Dodgers couldn’t ignore them anymore, and Jack and Rachel felt enough a part of the group that they wanted to share the celebrations.
Rachel Robinson had not grown up in the world of athletics. All of it was new to her. Now she was watching top athletes at the peak of their games, poised at what promised for some to be a defining moment. The intensity of the emotions fascinated her. Significant money rested on the outcome of the competition. The winners of the Series would get about $5,800 each, the losers $4,000. For men making $5,000 or so a year, it might mean the difference between an apartment and a house, between living with one’s parents and moving out, between working at a gas station and owning one. But it was more than the money that electrified the air at these Dodger parties and at practices leading up to the competition with the Yankees. For the players, there was a sense that they were each about to do something bigger than they’d ever done, something that would mark them for life and forever link each one of them to the others.
• • •
Hotels all over the city were booked solid as men and women from around the country funneled into New York. For black fans, Harlem’s Hotel Theresa became the hub. Fay Young of the Chicago Defender, prowling in search of stories, jotted down the names of 134 prominent black out-of-towners who’d arrived at the hotel in time for the first game. There were Negro-league baseball executives from Chicago, a doctor from Mississippi, an attorney from Detroit, a college president from Florida, a police detective from St. Louis, and on went his list. Eighteen Cadillacs were parked outside the hotel, Young reported, nine bearing southern plates. Not since the heyday of Joe Louis had the Theresa seen such action. Scalpers were getting $30 or more for tickets with a face value of $6 each, and $10 for standing-room tickets originally priced at $4 each—“all to see this great boy Robinson in action.”
In the black newspapers, the contest between the Dodgers and Yankees was often described as a contest between Jackie Robinson and the Yankees, which sounded a lot like David and Goliath. Given the scale of the mismatch, such a description was not entirely unfair. The Yankees were the most intimidating team in baseball, especially come October. The mere sight of the Bronx Bombers in their pinstriped uniforms trotting out onto the grass at jam-packed Yankee Stadium frightened opposing teams, putting them at a disadvantage before the first pitch.
Shotton warned his Dodgers before the Series not to buy into the Yankee hype. Ruth, Gehrig, and Combs would not be suiting up, he assured his players, only Joe DiMaggio and an assorted cast of supporting characters named Stirnweiss, Lindell, and McQuinn. These Yanks were solid, but Old Barney saw no reason to get worked up. “Why, we could put on the Yankee shirts ourselves,” he said.
All season long the Dodgers had defied expectations. They’d beaten the Cardinals, picked by the experts as baseball’s next dynasty. They’d fought off the Giants, the most powerful home-run-hitting team in history to that point. They’d acquitted themselves nicely against the Braves’ great hurlers Spahn and Sain. And on top of everything else, they’d served as lab rats in a sociological experiment unlike anything the game had ever seen—and lived to tell about it. If ever a team deserved to be called champions, Shotton said, it was the Dodgers. He not only predicted victory, he very nearly assured it.
But almost every one of the writers analyzing the Series seemed certain the Yankees would make quick work of the Brooklynites. “The New York Yankees should win the World Series from the Dodgers in five games,” wrote Rud Rennie of the Herald Tribune. “With luck and good pitching, they may win in four straight and get it over with.” The newspapermen were hard-pressed to find even one category in which the Dodgers had an edge, although some of them did mention that the Dodgers were good at drawing walks—in other words, standing there and not swinging the bat.
Brooklyn’s biggest weakness by far, as it had been all season, was pitching. Branca was the staff ace, but he was a fastball pitcher whose fastball was good, not great, and he had a reputation for losing his composure at critical moments in big games. What’s more, the twenty-one-year-old righty had shown signs of tiring at season’s end. The writers said he was the sort of pitcher a disciplined team like the Yankees would destroy. Then there was little Vic Lombardi, who had neither an overpowering fastball nor a dangerous curve and got by instead on cute stuff, trying to outsmart opponents. The Yankees were an experienced bunch, and not easily outsmarted. Dodger pitcher Joe Hatten was another question mark. T
hough he won seventeen games, he left everyone scratching their heads about how he’d done it. He had no great arm and no great guile. That left Hank Behrman (sent from Brooklyn to Pittsburgh in an early-season trade but returned to the Dodgers as damaged goods, his throwing arm apparently shot), Clyde King, and Rex Barney to tame the Yanks. No doubt the Dodgers would rely heavily on their reliever Hugh Casey. But Casey, after a brilliant year in 1946, had struggled through much of 1947 and complained of fatigue down the stretch. Also, no one knew how he would respond upon revisiting his most traumatic baseball moment, a calamitous loss to the Yanks in game four of the 1941 Series.
To the Yankees, Robinson represented the wild card. Reese might slap a lot of base hits and perhaps steal a base or two. Dixie Walker might bang a few doubles off the wall. But only Robinson could take over a game, so the players and managers spent a great deal of time talking among themselves about how to contain him. “Only one thing remains to make 1947 the most memorable year in Jackie Robinson’s life,” wrote Leonard Cohen of the Post. “If he can help the Dodgers win the World Series from the Yankees next week, his cup of happiness will be filled to overflowing.” Pitchers were reminded that the Dodgers’ flashy rookie was much more destructive on the bases than at the plate. When Robinson danced on the base paths, pitchers lost their composure and nervous catchers called for a steady diet of fastballs. And a steady diet of fastballs made even Spider Jorgensen look like Ted Williams. Whatever you do, the Yankee pitchers were urged, don’t walk Robinson. Make him hit his way on base. Don’t put a loaded gun in the enemy’s hand.
