Rickey and Robinson

by Harvey Frommer

  A second and potentially more dangerous incident took place a few days later against the Cubs, who were in the process of losing their fourth straight game. Robinson opened the ninth inning with a single and then stole second base. Cub pitcher Bill Lee kept throwing the ball to his shortstop Len Merullo in an attempt to pick off Robinson. The more he threw, the longer Robinson’s lead became. Then, attempting to get back to second base to beat Lee’s throw, Robinson slid between Merullo’s legs. The bodies of the two players became entangled. Merullo was astride Robinson, who lay on the ·ground. Merullo lifted his right leg, and for a moment it looked as if he was going to kick Robinson. The Dodger first baseman jerked his left arm up, as if he was getting ready to throw a punch. Then the two players untangled. There was some glaring, and lots of tension, but no violence.

  “It all seems inconceivable now,” says Monte Irvin. “It’s like a bad dream.” Physical challenges; crude epithets; crank phone calls that threatened to rape his wife, to kidnap his child, to assassinate him; aborted strikes; cold, demeaning stares; pitches aimed at his head; meals eaten alone in hotel rooms; a near nervous breakdown that few knew about at the end of the 1947 season, according to Don Newcombeall of these pounded away at the “badge of martyrdom.”

  “Robby never spoke about the horror stories,” recalls Joe Bostic. “And he didn’t scare easily.”

  “I said to him, six or seven years later at my dining room table in my home in Pittsburgh, ‘It must have been tough, Jackie,’” Mal Goode recalls.

  “‘It wasn’t that bad,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “‘Don’t give me that b.s., Jackie, I sat in the stands.’ “‘Well, I guess I had to expect that, Mal.’

  “He became philosophical about it. He never growled, never groaned. It was hard to get him to discuss what he went through. He was the right man· at the right time. Willie Mays once said to me, ‘I’m glad it wasn’t me. I don’t think I could have taken it.’ Monte Irvin, Hank Thompson, I think they would have taken a bat and killed somebody. I think Jackie’s coming on the scene was a divinely inspired thing. I think he was hand-picked by God Almighty.”

  Duke Snider maintains that he could never have taken the abuse that Robinson took in that :first year and into the second. “Branch Rickey had to select someone who could take it, and Jackie could take it. He dished it out just by ignoring what was hollered at him and done to him. I don’t think that Campy or Newk or Doby could have handled it, or anybody else. It takes a special type of person, a cocky type who can brush off the things done to him. I saw base runners go at him in that :first year when he was playing :first . base. They’d try to step on him, try to cut his leg off.”

  Mack Robinson was never a witness to the abuse his brother had to endure, but he was a passionately involved listener to many of the details, later told to him by Jackie. Never for an instant did Mack think his younger brother would not prevail.

  “I had gone before Jack, and having gone through some of the trials and tribulations of the athletic world, I knew he could do the job,” notes Mack. “It was made much easier because of Mr. Rickey. It was also made much easier because he was raised in California and went to school with a mixed group. Having played in interracial sports all his life, Jack had no fear of the white man. He was accustomed to just going out and playing. You have heard so many black players, like Satchel Paige and others, who have said they could not have done it. Most of those fellows were southerners. They were used to being bossed by the southern white man. Jack had not been bossed and could not be bossed.”

  Part sociological phenomenon, part entertainment spectacle, part revolution, part media event-day after day, the Jackie Robinson story played out its poignant scenes. “Television was a major factor in helping him to succeed,” says Dr. George N. Gordon, a noted communications theorist. “Jack Johnson was edited by photographs and Joe Louis was filtered by radio. But the unblinking eye of TV humanized Robinson. He was not a stereotype; he was an equal with the other players on the field. It was a lesson taught by example, like Ed Sullivan kissing Pearl Bailey. You couldn’t deny his blackness. It was a visible, sustaining show day after day. Television magnified the social event and made it reflective and directed.”

  “I’m the grandson of slaves,” observes Mal Goode. ‘’Not just by history—I knew all four of my grandparents. I spent summers with them when I was a little boy in Virginia. . . . And then to see Jackie Robinson. . . . Maybe we overdo it, but you have to understand why.”

  Caravans came from Jackson, Mississippi, from Memphis, Tennessee, from Atlanta, Georgia. Charter buses carried thousands of blacks from all over the South to witness “the one.” They would travel, whole families, to Crosley Field in Cincinnati, or Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis. They would purchase the souvenir programs and scorecards and eat their home-packed food and marvel at the verve, the skill, the style of the man who broke baseball’s color line. In the late innings of some games, buses would begin loading and an announcement would be made directing the fans to hurry back to their buses. Some would tarry a while longer hoping to see Jackie hit one more time, make one more fielding play, steal one more base.

  Mal Goode recalls what it was like in Pittsburgh. “At a quarter to eleven on a Sunday morning people were piling off the buses and streetcars. They were coming to Forbes Field for a day game. At eleven A.M., an announcement was made on the loudspeaker. ‘We are sold out. There are no more seats.’ When Jackie came into Pittsburgh for a night game, traffic started to build at three in the afternoon. At four, it was crowded in the streets. People were parking their cars, getting off the bus. By six-thirty, you could not get into the ballpark. Pittsburgh at that time was a sorry team, but they came to see Jackie Robinson.”

  It was the same story all over the National League. When the Dodgers played the Cubs at Wrigley Field on the North Side of Chicago, thousands of blacks spilled off the northbound elevated trains and came out of automobiles, five, six, seven, eight in a car. Not many blacks in those days ever congregated in downtown Chicago: fewer still showed up for Cub games at the ballpark on the white side of town. But to see Jackie, they came. By noon, Wrigley Field was swarming with people. Hundreds clustered outside on the street haggling with scalpers for the few remaining tickets. The crowd was a curious collection of whites in casual clothes and blacks in suits-church suits, funeral suits, dress-up suits. They wore freshly starched white shirts and wide, multicolored ties. Many of the blacks had on straw hats, and their shoes glistened with newly applied polish. They had come to celebrate the man who had broken through.

  When the gates to that antique ballpark were closed, more than forty-seven thousand were jammed into a space meant to accommodate ten thousand fewer. They seemed uncomfortable in each other’s presence; it was perhaps the first time many of the whites and blacks had been so close together. There was hardly any eye contact between the races. The whites carried themselves with a casual air. The blacks were dignified, proud, almost as if they were attending a huge church meeting.

  Robinson came out of the on-deck circle in the first inning. Walking with mincing steps, he entered the batter’s box. Long, loud, rhythmic applause filled Wrigley Field, like the kind that occasionally celebrates a great musical performance. Some of the blacks cried openly. Others pounded their hands together, clapping out their pride. Robinson took up his erect stance and Wrigley Field became silent. The Cubs, with Phil Cavaretta, Hank Nicholson, and Andy Pafko, were positioned on the field defending against the Dodger rookie.

  Flailing with tremendous force at the first pitch, Robinson was able to get his bat or just a small piece of the ball. The white sphere jumped high in the air and then back into the seats-foul ball. For the thousands there, it might just as well have been a bases-loaded home run. Guttural basses mingled with soprano voices. The din could be heard blocks away. When Robinson struck out, the “ohhhhhhh” seemed to make him move more crisply back to his seat on the bench in the Dodger dugout.


  “Why doncha go back and pick some cotton, you nigger,” one of the rubes on the Cubs shouted at Robinson. “You’re stinkin’ up Chicaga.” Robinson did not answer. He had heard worse. He was aware of all the blacks in the stands, and he was glad they had not heard the words.

  What was said on the field could not be heard in the stands, but what transpired on the diamond was apparent to all. Positioned at first base, Robinson awaited a throw from Reese. The Cub base runner sped down the line. Robinson’s foot took up just a small corner of the bag. As the runner approached the bag he made a stabbing move with his leg. The instant Reese’s throw smacked into his glove, Robinson jumped aside. He had avoided the spiking, but the hostile act set off loud booing in the stands.

  Mike Royko, now a journalist, was one of the many youngsters who attended a Cubs-Dodgers game on May 18. He caught a foul ball hit by Robinson, but he didn’t keep it. While examining the major-league ball and looking at the scuff mark, Royko heard a voice behind him say, “Would you consider selling it?”

  “I don’t want to. I want to keep it,” Royko told a middleaged black man.

  “I’ll give you ten dollars for it,” the man said.

  Royko could not believe the amount of money he had been offered. There were men in his neighborhood who earned sixty dollars a week and considered it fine wages.

  The amount convinced Royko to make the sale. The black man counted out ten one-dollar bills and handed them one at a time to Royko, who gave him the ball. “Thank you,” the black man said, and he cradled the ball tenderly in his large hands.

  “Since then,” Royko says, “I’ve regretted a few times that I didn’t keep the ball. Or that I hadn’t given it to him free. I didn’t know then how hard he probably had to work for that ten dollars. If that man is still around, and has the baseball, I’m sure he thinks it was worth every cent.”

  For those who watched Robinson in action, it was worth every cent they paid.

  At times, the style with which he played appeared to be a case of trick photography. He was an illusionist in a baseball uniform, a magician on the base paths. The walking leads, the football-like slides, the change-of-pace runs—all were a part of Robinson’s approach to the game.

  In Chicago he twice startled even veteran sportswriters with his tactics during his rookie year of 1947· Once, he scored all the way from first base on a sacrifice by Gene Hermanski. Another time, he sent them running to their rule books after executing one of his unpredictable gambits. In the top of the ninth inning against the Cubs, with the score tied 1-1, he worked the count to three and two and then walked. While the Chicago catcher was disputing the base on balls with the umpire, Robinson loped down to first base, touched it, and then dashed to second and slid in safely. A lengthy argument followed, but there was nothing in the rule book against stealing second base on a walk. Robinson moved to third on a sacrifice, and then a sacrifice fly brought him home. His alert steal won the game for the Dodgers.

  Even when Robinson was caught off base, he was dangerous. Opposing players used to say that trying to catch him was like trying to bottle mercury. The Philadelphia Phillies got a taste of what it was like in one of Robinson’s most dramatic run-down plays at Ebbets Field. Hottempered Russ Meyer was the Philadelphia pitcher. He glared at Robinson, a darter, a darer, a dancer, at third base. Meyer threw, and Jackie was seemingly caught flat-footed, leaning toward third base but unable to get back.

  It was a simple run-down play that the Phillies had practiced over and over again. Two of them covered third base; three of them protected the plate. Back and forth the white ball was thrown as the black man dodged anu wheeled—down toward home plate, back to third. The ball was thrown slowly and deliberately, cutting off the amount of running space. The ball was thrown to the third baseman, Puddinhead Jones, who bobbled it for an instant. An instant was enough. Robinson wheeled and raced for the plate. Jones fired the ball to the catcher, but number 42 had already crossed the plate for another Dodger victory. Meyer swung at Robinson’s face with his gloved hand. There was no racial malice in the gesture; he was just a frustrated pitcher who had had a well-pitched game turned into a loss in the most heartbreaking fashion.

  “I said a few bad things to Jackie,” remembers Meyer, “but I was really angry. The papers the next day showed he was definitely out at home. I was so angry I backed Frank Dascoli, the ump, all the way to the screen at Ebbets Field and got thrown out of the game, fined five hundred dollars, and suspended for a week.

  “The next year I was traded from the Phillies to the Dodgers. Jackie was the first guy up in the clubhouse in Vero Beach. He held out his hand in front of everyone and said, ‘Russ, we’ve been fighting one another-let’s fight the other teams together now.’”

  Robinson’s competitive fury was especially spurred when he thought an opponent underestimated him or did not show the proper respect for his talent. At Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, there were about thirty thousand in the stands for a night game. Close to a third of them were black. The score was tied, 2-2, with Robinson on third base. Fritz Ostermueller was the pitcher. Dancing off the base, Robinson ran down the third-base line about ten yards toward home plate, and then ran back to third. “Then he went down about fifteen yards, and when he ran back he slid into the bag and dusted himself off,” recalls Mal Goode. “Ostermueller probably said to himself, ‘I know that nigger isn’t gonna steal home now.’ He turned his head and went into the full wind-up position. Jackie broke for home and stole it. The same fans who just a few moments before were screaming, ‘Stick it in his ear and knock the black son of a bitch down,’ were cheering. When the shouting died down, a guy who was screaming those negative things about Jackie just before turned to his friend and said: ‘Goddamn, John, niggers shoulda been in baseball a long time ago.’” Robinson’s steal gave the Dodgers a 3-2 victory.

  “The supreme insult to him was if you were a pitcher and walked a batter to get at him,” notes Joe Bostic. “I remember a game at Ebbets Field. Robinson came up after the pitcher had walked a batter intentionally to get at him. The count was two and one. He swung at a letter-high fastball. He swung at it with all the fury and all the venom the years had placed in him. That ball was a line drive that just screamed into the stands-it went in for a home run and it had all his pent-up emotion in it.”

  Toward the end of the 1947 season, a Jackie Robinson Day was staged at Ebbets Field. Rickey was no longer worried about such celebrations being premature. Robinson was now an assured drawing card, rivaling Bob Feller and Ted Williams in the American League. The black pioneer would push Brooklyn’s attendance in 1947 to 1,807,526—the :first of ten straight million-plus years for the Robinsonled Dodgers. With the first tumultuous season virtually in the books, Rickey felt secure enough to allow Robinson to receive the official adulation.

  “I thank you all,” Robinson said over the microphone in his high-pitched voice. He acknowledged the gifts: a brandnew car, a gold pen, a television and radio set, cutlery, silverware, an electric broiler. “I especially thank the members of the Dodgers who were so cooperative and helpful in helping me improve my game.”

  The great dancer, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, stood next to the other Robinson, whose dancing feet had helped boost National League attendance to more than ten million in 1947, then the highest in its history. “I am sixty-nine years old,” Bill Robinson said, “but I never thought I would live to see the day when I would stand face to face with Ty Cobb in Technicolor.”

  Jackie’s and Rachel’s mothers were flown in from California to be at Ebbets Field that day. “The :first time my mother met Mr. Rickey,” Jackie’s sister Willa Mae recalls, “she was thanking him for signing Jack. And he said, ‘Don’t thank me, Mrs. Robinson. I have to thank you. If it had not been for you, there wouldn’t be any Jackie.’” A small, stooped woman, Mallie Robinson stood near home plate and thrilled to the cheers for her son. “That was one of the most touching moments in Jack’s career,” recalls brother Mack, “to see Mot
her right there in the middle of the ceremony and all the accolades.”

  Playing in more games than any other Dodger in 1947, Robinson scored more runs than any other teammate, stole more bases than any other player in the National League, and wound up with a batting average of .297. The Sporting News, once doubtful of his ability, designated him Rookie of the Year. “He was rated solely as a freshman player in the big leagues,” the baseball newspaper said, “on the basis of his hitting, his running, his defensive play, his team value.” It was an extraordinary season for a man playing under unimaginable pressure.

  The Dodgers won the pennant that year. It was the fifth time in six years that a team built by Branch Rickey had captured the National League flag.

  “It occurred to Mr. Rickey,” Dodson recalls, “that with the winning of the pennant, some of the Brooklyn black community leaders might have difficulty obtaining tickets to the World Series. Mr. Rickey inquired of his ticket manager if many blacks would be coming to the Series. ‘Not many, Mr. Rickey,’ the ticket manager responded. ‘I’ve done a pretty good job on that.’ It was a case where· the policy on the top was not understood by those underneath. Mr. Rickey had to get the tickets personally and give them to the black leaders.”

  On September 30, 1947, the Yankees squared off against the Dodgers. It was the first World Series a black man ever played in. “That first game got to me,” recalls Mack Robinson. “I was pulling and groaning and stretching and grunting for every step or slide or swing. I was playing it all right with Jack.”