Opening Day

by Jonathan Eig

  Beginning with game four, Shotton had dropped Robinson from second to third in the batting order, the spot usually reserved for the team’s best all-around hitter. The move had something to do with Reiser’s injury but also with Robinson’s performance thus far in the Series. In the first inning of game six, Stanky singled to left, Reese singled to center, and Robinson singled to left, loading the bases. The next batter, Walker, hit a routine double-play ball. Rizzuto fielded it, stepped on second, and got out of the way of the charging Robinson as he threw to first. On a close play, the man going from first to second is supposed to slide in hard to break up the double play, but this one wasn’t close. The ball was out of Rizzuto’s hands long before Robinson arrived, Walker out by a mile. But Robinson barreled in anyway. In fact, he veered from the base path, crouched low, and threw a nasty body block on the Yankee shortstop, who was one of the game’s smallest men. Rizzuto flew like he’d been hit by a speeding truck. As he lay writhing on the infield dirt, Robinson picked himself up and ran off the field, never looking back. After DiMaggio, Rizzuto was the Yankees’ most important player, a quick and nimble infielder whose elegant defensive play saved countless games for the Yanks. He was the team mascot, too, the butt of the best pranks, everybody’s little brother. Because he was so small and vulnerable, Rizzuto’s teammates made a habit of retaliating when a runner tried to take him out. The next batter would get beaned, or the opposing team’s shortstop would get torpedoed on a close play at second base. Rizzuto wasn’t badly hurt. He only had the wind knocked out of him. A couple of innings later, Robinson apologized to the shortstop. The Yankees never retaliated.

  The Dodgers got two runs in the first inning of game six and two more in the third when Reese, Robinson, and Walker all doubled, knocking Allie Reynolds from the game and bringing on Karl Drews, a rookie who had appeared in only thirty-four games in the majors to that point. In the bottom half of the inning, the Dodgers’ starter, Vic Lombardi, also got in trouble, allowing two runs on a double, three singles, and an error before Ralph Branca came on in relief. Again, Branca failed, giving up two more hits and adding two more runs to Lombardi’s ledger, as the Yankees tied the score, 4–4.

  In the sixth inning, Edwards singled, Furillo doubled, and Lavagetto, pinch hitting yet again, this time for Jorgensen, hit a fly ball to Berra in right field, deep enough to drive in a run. Then Shotton called for another unlikely pinch hitter—Bragan, the backup catcher, who had played in only twenty-five games and scratched a mere seven hits all season. No one was more surprised than Bragan himself. As he sprinted in from the bullpen and grabbed a bat, he could barely calm his nerves. He felt as if his knees were knocking as he walked toward the plate. He settled down when he reached the batter’s box, and on a two-two pitch, the great Joe Page threw a curveball that didn’t curve. Bragan blasted it to left for a double, scoring Furillo. When Shotton sent Dan Bankhead in to run for Bragan, Bankhead became the second black man ever to play in a World Series. In the grandstand, Bragan’s father didn’t notice that his son had been lifted for a pinch runner, and when he saw the long-legged Bankhead rounding third on the next play, he was astonished at how fast Bobby ran. When the inning ended, the Dodgers led, 8–5.

  All the pinch hitting and pinch running forced Shotton to improvise. In the bottom of the sixth he sent Hatten out to pitch, Lavagetto to third, and Al Gionfriddo to left. “What’s that little Italian’s name?” he’d been asking all year long of Gionfriddo. But even after asking, he would go right on ignoring him, and only the most adoring of Dodger fans would have recognized him—in or out of uniform. Over the course of a season, a full-time outfielder might haul in 300 or 350 fly balls. Gionfriddo had seen only about thirty. Why he hadn’t been sent to the minors no one knew. Now, as he trotted across the Yankee Stadium outfield, Gionfriddo took in its dimensions. The fence was short in the left-field corner, but it stretched far and deep toward center field, “a good drive in a Buick,” as he put it years later. He was fast, but, still, it was an awful lot of ground to cover.

  Hatten got into trouble right away. Allie Clark lined to short, Stirnweiss walked, Henrich fouled out, and Berra lined a single. Up stepped DiMaggio representing the tying run. The Yankee slugger had already hit two homers in the Series. He’d also been walked five times, a statistic speaking to the great fear he instilled in Brooklyn’s pitchers. From the dugout, coaches waved Gionfriddo toward the left-field line, figuring that DiMaggio would probably pull the ball. The outfielder did what he was told, but he felt uneasy about it. Between Gionfriddo in left and Furillo in center lay a swath of grass large enough to graze a herd of cattle.

  With a graceful swing and a sharp crack, DiMaggio sent the ball flying precisely where Gionfriddo had feared, deep into the gap between left and center, toward the Dodger bullpen 415 feet from home plate. Gionfriddo put his head down and began to run. As he approached the fence, he glanced over his right shoulder to locate the ball. It wasn’t where he thought it would be. He had almost overrun it. Suddenly, he was unsure where he needed to go and how to get there. He altered course, spinning his body from right to left and thrusting his gloved right hand out wide of his body. His hat flew off his head. The ball was fast approaching the low chain-link fence that separated the Dodger bullpen from the outfield when Gionfriddo’s glove intercepted it. Nothing in his life had ever felt so good as that thwack of horsehide on leather. As DiMaggio, galloping around the infield, saw extra bases turned into an out, he reacted as no one had ever seen him react before. In frustration, he kicked at the dirt near second base. “I guess I hit a few harder in my career as a ballplayer,” he said after the game, “but right now I can’t remember when.”

  It was a stumbling, bumbling play. Even Gionfriddo admitted he’d been lucky. But it was witnessed by three million or so on television; DiMaggio punctuated it with a long-legged kick; and it set up a decisive seventh game. Also, in the days before instant replay, it was widely assumed that Gionfriddo had robbed DiMaggio of a home run. Photographs and newsreel footage show the ball probably would not have cleared the fence. Even so, if it wasn’t the greatest of all World Series grabs, it would at least be remembered that way for a long time. In many ways, it captured perfectly the spirit of this herky-jerky, ugly-beautiful competition. As the Yankees and Dodgers prepared for the season’s final game, the men in the press box were still calling this one of the worst—if not the worst—World Series ever played. Of course, they were also calling it one of the most—if not the most—entertaining. There were long, lousy games filled with endless dropped balls and bad throws, and yet there were moments of pure magic, too. Most magical of all were the Dodgers, a crazy-quilt outfit of underachievers, a bunch of misfits who when the season began didn’t even want to play together, now one game from becoming champions of the world. As such, noted an editorial in the Times, “They are more uniquely American than any other sports team we can think of at this moment.”

  As he awaited the seventh and final game, Wendell Smith filed a report with the dateline “PRESS BOX, YANKEE STADIUM, NEW YORK.” It was his way of letting black readers know that he was now a fully accredited member of the traveling press, no longer relegated to the grandstands, and entitled to all the same privileges as his white counterparts. Just as Smith had helped Robinson get ahead, Robinson had returned the favor. Smith’s coverage of Robinson’s rookie year helped him secure a job with the Chicago American, making him the first of the prominent black sportswriters to leap from the black press to the white. Though he was on the brink of a new career, he continued filing stories for the Courier during the World Series. Just now, click-clacking proudly in the press box, he reminded his readers that Robinson was hitting .304 in the Series, tied for the team lead in hits, and playing errorless—at times even glittering—defense at first base. “Whether the Dodgers win or lose now,” he wrote, “this much is certain, they couldn’t have done it without Jack Roosevelt Robinson.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “AND THE WORLD SERIES IS
OVER!”

  After much uncertainty, Shotton settled on Hal Gregg to pitch the seventh game, hoping the pitcher could repeat the success he had had in game four. For the Yankees, Spec Shea took the ball for the third time. Neither pitcher lasted long. In the top of the second, after hits by Hermanski, Edwards, and Furillo, Shea was done, replaced by Bill Bevens, who allowed a double to Jorgensen before pitching out of the jam. The Dodgers jumped to a 2–0 lead.

  The Yankees got one run in the bottom of the second when Gregg allowed two walks followed by a single to Rizzuto. In the fourth, Gregg got in trouble again and gave away the Dodger lead. With the score tied at 2–2, Hank Behrman climbed to the mound. He walked Stirnweiss and gave up a run-scoring single to Henrich. The Yankees still had the bases loaded with two outs when Berra came to the plate. His team leading by a run, Berra had a chance to make everyone forget his lousy defense and his .167 batting average. He took a mean swing and hit a bullet to the right side of the infield. The ball looked like it would get through for a two-run single, but Robinson stabbed at it and made a terrific stop, flipping to Behrman at first for the out. After four innings, the score was 3–2 in favor of the Yanks.

  Harris by now must have been tired of the pesky Dodgers and their relentless attack on his middling pitchers, so he summoned the only reliable man he had in the bullpen: Joe Page. Nearly given up as a hopeless case back in the spring, Page had emerged in 1947, under the influence of DiMaggio, as a star. From 1946 to 1947, while pitching roughly the same number of innings, he had increased his strikeouts by 50 percent. More important, he had reduced the number of earned runs allowed all season from fifty-four to thirty-nine. Without Page, the Yankees might still have won the pennant, but they probably would have lacked the dominant aura. He had helped a bunch of green starting pitchers escape disaster all season long. Now he was being asked to do it one last time.

  It was not unusual in the 1940s for a manager to bring in his best reliever in the middle of a game and to ask him to go four or five innings. The matter was complicated somewhat in this instance, though, by the fact that Page had already pitched eight innings in three games during the Series. A day earlier, he had been hit hard. Still, the sight of the big lefty climbing onto the mound soothed the rest of the Yankees.

  The Dodgers, and Bragan in particular, had hammered Page’s curveball in game six, so Page made up his mind to throw no curves at all this time. His fastball was his best pitch, even with a tired arm, and that’s what he intended to use. Stanky was the first to face him, grounding out to short. Reese followed with a fly-out to Berra, and Robinson hit one hard but right at Henrich in left. And so it went, fastball after fastball, inning after inning. Page did throw a curve to Dixie Walker and a slider to the pinch-hitter Gil Hodges, but those were the only exceptions. His fastball wasn’t exactly humming, but he was hitting his spots, throwing strikes, and the Dodgers were managing nothing but weak swings. With each pitch, Page became more convinced that he was on the verge of something special, that this was a game he would remember all his life.

  Headed into the ninth inning, the Yankees led 5–2. They stood three outs away from the championship. Yankee Stadium was awash in sunshine, the grandstand glowing, fans warm and happy. A rumble of appreciation rose from the crowd as the inning began. A spectacular season and a World Series of fantastic thrills were nearing their end. The crowd thundered again as Page threw his first pitch and Walker tapped it to second base for an easy out.

  Miksis came up next and hit a single to center, the first hit all day against Page. In the Brooklyn dugout, players stood on the steps, praying for one more miracle.

  At three-forty-nine, Page threw one last fastball. Bruce Edwards swung and hit a sharp ground ball to Rizzuto. Rizzuto flipped the ball to Stirnweiss, and Stirnweiss threw it across the diamond to McQuinn in plenty of time.

  “It’s a double play!” Yankee announcer Mel Allen told his radio audience. “And the World Series is over!”

  As the Yankees burst onto the field to celebrate, the Dodgers slipped quietly off. Branch Rickey put his arm around Shotton’s shoulder and walked him to the clubhouse. Robinson, coming down the ramp from the dugout to the locker room, took a baseball out of his glove and bounced it gently against the ceiling, a neat trick to avoid making eye contact. After the players were all inside, Rickey closed the door and spoke to the team for about fifteen minutes. He said he was proud. He said the men had accomplished a great deal. He said he expected the Dodgers to be even better in 1948. But he made no mention of their greater triumph, their acceptance of Jackie Robinson. This wasn’t the time or place to speak of moral victories. “We got beat by a darn good ball club,” he said.

  When Rickey finished, the men began moving about quietly, shuffling slowly in and out of the shower, popping open cans of beer, lighting cigarettes, and packing their gear. Happy Chandler entered the locker room and asked Robinson and Bankhead to pose with him for a picture. Red Barber walked in, too. The broadcaster shook hands with Shotton, then Reese, Robinson, Walker, and Casey, wishing them each a good winter.

  A few minutes later, the doors opened and the newspapermen rushed in. They found Robinson sitting on the stool in front of his locker, shirt off and pants still on, a scuffed-up baseball in his right hand.

  “We lost,” he said. “We got no alibis. We’ll get them next year.”

  The players put on their street clothes, collected their wallets and watches, and said their last good-byes. Their lives had changed from April to October. Outside, the nation was changing, too. A great movement was on its way, glimpsed in 1947 like the morning’s first shaft of sunlight. It started in Brooklyn, but it didn’t end there.

  As Robinson prepared to leave, something happened that eased the pain he felt over losing the World Series. One by one, his teammates approached his locker. They shook his hand and congratulated him on a great season. They told him he played a fine game of ball.

  EPILOGUE

  On a warm October day, the Robinsons packed their bags and stepped out of their cramped apartment on MacDonough Street. Yet this was no time to rest or rejoice. Jackie had received countless invitations for appearances—at fundraisers, testimonial dinners, athletic events—and he had accepted as many of them as he thought he could handle. His biggest commitment was a four-city vaudeville tour, beginning with a week at the Apollo in Harlem, followed by a week at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C., another week at the Regal in Chicago, and, finally, a week at the Million Dollar Theater in Los Angeles.

  Robinson neither sang nor danced. His sense of humor, like the alien space ship spotted over the desert in New Mexico earlier that summer, remained wholly unconfirmed. He had no business in vaudeville, but the money was too good to resist: three thousand dollars a week plus a percentage of the gate. He was twenty-eight, almost twenty-nine, and knew that professional athletes enjoyed short careers. He also knew that Branch Rickey never paid players a nickel more than he had to. So he dedicated himself to a dizzying whirl of money-making schemes. Wendell Smith went to work writing Robinson’s autobiography. Producers in Hollywood began plotting scripts for a B movie with the athlete in a starring role. And, to fill in the gaps, Robinson agreed to play a few exhibition baseball games.

  The star of the show stepped hesitantly to the stage for his theatrical debut. The show in Harlem attracted big crowds, but the critics hated it. Robinson stood before the audience in suit and tie for about eight minutes, answering prearranged questions from the famous black actor Monte Hawley. Every night, the questions and answers were virtually the same. “Everyone on the team treated me swell,” he said at one point. It was like his column for the Pittsburgh Courier, only duller. Some musical numbers and comedy sketches rounded out the show, but they didn’t help. One critic said the main attraction seemed “disgusted and ashamed.” The dignified image Robinson had worked so hard all season to establish, another newspaper writer commented, crumbled before the audience’s eyes. In Chicago, where Robinson played to less
-than-packed houses, Fay Young of the Defender watched the act and, afterward, counseled Robinson to stick to baseball.

  On tour, Robinson attended one honorary banquet after another. He would eat a big dinner, receive a trophy, say a few words, then sit down for dessert. He never refused dessert. Before the season began, Rickey had warned that the black community would ruin Robinson by smothering him with praise, and now they were proving the Mahatma once again prescient. The off-season had barely begun, and Robinson’s waistline was already expanding.

  The four-city tour did not include Jack Jr., who had gone back to Los Angeles with Rachel’s mother after the World Series. Jack and Rachel enjoyed the peace of the open road, the luxury of uninterrupted sleep, the thrill of undivided attention. But by November, as they wrapped up their engagements in Chicago, they phoned Rachel’s mother and heard that the baby was on the verge of walking. They raced home. “We’d pull off the road,” Rachel said, “and Jack would tell me, ‘We’ll sleep a few hours.’ Then I’d feel the car moving.” Jack Jr. didn’t wait, taking his first steps the day before his parents arrived.

  Jackie and Rachel moved in for the winter with Rachel’s older brother. Robinson filled his days with golf and his nights with more award banquets while waiting for his movie to start filming. Once again, critics in the black press jumped on him, questioning why the nation’s leading symbol of integration would agree to appear in an all-black film. But the answer was obvious: a $14,500 payday. The movie never got off the ground, however, leaving Robinson with enough time for one more business venture. Early in 1948, he took his vaudeville act on the road again, this time through the South, where he stayed in private homes, and where his hosts tried to impress their honored guests by serving up their finest dishes. For breakfast, he usually ate big plates full of eggs, potatoes, and grits. For lunch and dinner, there was pork, fried chicken, biscuits—and more desserts. “We ate like pigs,” Robinson recalled. By the time he joined the Dodgers for spring training in March, he weighed about 230 pounds, at least thirty pounds heavier than his playing weight at the start of the 1947 season.