Rickey & Robinson

by Roger Kahn

  Dixie Walker was a marvelous ballplayer, a fine defensive right fielder with a strong arm and, when it came time to bat, a picture swing. He thrived on clutch situations and, as Brooklyn fans warmed to him, he won the National League batting championship in 1943, hitting .357.

  Dixie and I met in 1976 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, where he was working as batting coach and had just finished giving tips to Dusty Baker, later a prominent manager, and Steve Yeager, later a convert to Judaism. Baker was black and Yeager was white. Coach Walker did not seem to notice any difference.

  Walker approached me and asked if we could drink some wine together after that night’s game. Baseball is a world of beer and the wine suggestion surprised and pleased me. Walker turned out to be an oenophile and we sipped a marvelous Margaux. He told me of a recent trip to England, where he had journeyed to seek out family roots, and he spoke vividly of the Salisbury Cathedral and the flowering gardens of Devonshire. Not, clearly, basic baseball talk. Then Walker got to the point of our meeting. “I organized that petition in 1947 not because I had anything against Robinson personally or against Negroes generally. I had a wholesale hardware business in Birmingham and people told me I’d lose my business if I played ball with a black man. That’s why I started the petition. It was the dumbest thing I did in all my life and if you ever get a chance sometime, write that I am deeply sorry.”

  I used Walker’s remarks in my 1993 book, The Era, but the New York Times (and others) ignored my Walker reporting and didn’t get around to covering this vital story for another 17 years. I am surely not the only soul who misses the New York Herald Tribune.

  Times columnist Harvey Araton did a workmanlike job with Maury Allen’s book on Walker, but followed up with a tendentious blog under the headline: “Does Dixie Walker Deserve Scorn or Sympathy?” Of course he deserves both, but the point of his experience is more complex than Araton understood. Ol’ Dixie changed and grew, moving from segregationist outfielder to integrationist batting coach. As he aged, Walker grew in understanding and compassion. During a lifetime a man can indeed be modified. (I recall here Robert Frost’s witty observation: “I never dared be radical when young, for fear it would make me conservative when old.”) Shakespeare’s commentary was matchless. “One man in his time plays many parts.”

  Robinson never grew close to Walker. “I think in 1947,” he told me, “I was on base three times when Walker hit a home run. But I never stopped at home plate and offered a hand. Why not? I thought Walker would not take my hand. Then we would have had the beginnings of an incident.”

  Again not getting the point, Araton wrote in the Times that Robinson refused to shake Walker’s hand as a protest against bigotry. The Times error here misses many things, including the fact that for all his fiery nature, Jack never was a vengeful man.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  RICKEY SCHEDULED EXHIBITION GAMES between the Dodgers and Montreal at Ebbets Field on April 9 and 10. “My plan,” Rickey told me, “was to have Durocher say to the newspapermen that all he needed to win the pennant was a good first baseman and that Jackie Robinson was the best first baseman in sight.”

  As pointed out earlier, on April 9, Commissioner Chandler arbitrarily suspended Durocher for the remainder of the year “for conduct detrimental to baseball.” Chandler never explained his decision. Durocher had some friends who were gambling men. He was himself a high-stakes poker player. His adulterous affair with the Mormon actress Laraine Day created a sex scandal that delighted the tabloids. The Brooklyn Catholic Youth Organization threatened to boycott Dodger games if the libidinous Durocher continued to manage. “The Catholic Church,” someone remarked, “never boycotted Mussolini or Hitler. Just Leo Durocher.”

  It is impossible to paint Durocher in soft colors, but the sheer arrogance of Chandler’s decision and his czarist refusal to discuss his reasoning would cost him his job. In 1951, after one term as commissioner, he was dismissed and replaced by Ford Frick. He reacted with rage. “It was really those New York drinking bastards from Toots Shor’s that did me in,” Chandler wrote me. “Like those friends of yours, Red Whiskeyhead Smith and Frank Whiskeyhead Graham.”

  In Brooklyn, Rickey had to find a manager. On April 19, while a search was under way, Arthur Mann, Rickey’s deputy, walked through the Ebbets Field press box distributing a news release. It read: “Brooklyn announces the purchase of the contract of Jack Roosevelt Robinson from Montreal. He will report immediately. [Signed] Branch Rickey.”

  Jimmy Cannon of the New York Post stood up and slowly walked to a seat occupied by Lester Rodney of the Communist Daily Worker. Intensely and sincerely Cannon said, “Congratulations.”

  TWELVE

  RECESSIONAL

  The tumult and the shouting dies; The Captains and the Kings depart. . . .

  —RUDYARD KIPLING

  THE LAST-MINUTE PROMOTION, AND RICKEY’S unbending frugality, created an immediate housing problem for Robinson. As soon as Jack joined the Dodgers, Rachel and the baby, now four months old, flew from Los Angeles to Idlewild (now JFK) Airport, where Jack met them and took them to his quarters. These were a single room in a commercial hotel called the McAlpin that rose 25 stories tall at Herald Square, Broadway and 34th Street, a neighborhood dominated by the Empire State Building and Macy’s department store. “It was basically a miserable setup,” Robinson told me.

  The three were crammed into a single hotel room, no kitchen. Rachel bought a hot plate to warm the baby’s formula. She set up a makeshift clothesline in the bathroom where the baby’s diapers could dry. “There was room service,” Robinson said, “but I couldn’t afford it; Rachel and I had to take turns getting our meals in a cafeteria down back of the hotel. She brought little Jackie to Opening Day at Ebbets Field and he caught cold. Then the switch in water from California to New York upset his stomach. So there we were trying to make do in a single room with very little money and a sick baby.”

  “What was Rickey paying you?” I asked.

  “The minimum. All rookies got the minimum. Five thousand for the season. That did not go very far in New York City.

  “We liked to take the baby outside in his carriage, for fresh air, but this wasn’t one of those easy walks in a park. Thirty-Fourth Street. Busses. Trucks. Noise. Exhaust fumes. All part of my family’s welcome to the major leagues.”

  As we have noted, Robinson’s Opening Day in Jersey City had been a glittering triumph. That was not the case on April 15, when the 1947 season began in Brooklyn. The Dodgers took on the Boston Braves, who led with their ace, Johnny Sain, a master of the breaking ball and a 20-game winner that year. Newspapers reported “a sprinkling of black fans” in the stands, but the game did not sell out. The paid attendance was announced at 25,623, which meant there were about 6,500 empty seats. (The all-white Yankees, playing that same date in the stadium, drew more than 39,000 fans, and Aqueduct Racetrack, with an undistinguished card, attracted 27,306. Historic though Robinson’s Brooklyn debut was, it was no better than the third most popular sporting event in New York City that chilly April day.)

  Nor did the newspapers respond appropriately. Their big baseball story continued to be the banishing of Leo Durocher. Arthur Daley’s column in the New York Times was typical. “The little man who wasn’t there would have been proud of his Dodgers yesterday,” Daley began. “Leo Durocher was missing.” Daley did not get around to mentioning Robinson until his eighth paragraph and the reference was less than flattering. “The debut of Jackie Robinson was quite uneventful, even though he had the unenviable distinction of snuffing out a rally by hitting into a double play. His dribbler through the box in the fifth might have though gone for a safety, but shortstop Dick Culler, playing in on the grass, made a diving stop, threw to second for a force while prostrate on the ground and Connie Ryan nailed the swift Robbie at first for a dazzling twin killing.”

  Hitless though Robinson was, he still played an important role in the game, which Brooklyn won, 6 to 3. With a man on first and Br
ooklyn losing by a run in the seventh inning, Robinson deftly bunted toward first base. Earl Torgeson, the Braves’ lanky first baseman, fielded the bunt. Then his hurried throw toward first base hit Robinson on a shoulder and carried into right field. This could have been scored a base hit, but was not. Whatever, the error placed Dodgers at second and third. When “Pistol Pete” Reiser lined a double to left, both runners scored, Robinson with the run that put the Dodges into the lead.

  Afterward a reporter asked Robinson if tension explained his failure to hit safely.

  “Not at all,” Jack said.

  “What was it then?”

  “Try Johnny Sain’s curveball.”

  The next day Robinson dragged a bunt against a left-handed pitcher named Glenn Elliott. That became his first major-league hit. His batting picked up markedly when the Dodgers moved to the Polo Grounds in Manhattan for a weekend series against their traditional uptown antagonists, the New York Giants.

  In Durocher’s absence, Rickey appointed the crafty Maine man Clyde Sukeforth as Dodger manager pro tem. But Sukeforth preferred life as a scout and coach and troubleshooter to the heavy day-to-day responsibility of managing. He turned down the permanent appointment. Rickey next contacted Joe McCarthy, who had enjoyed great success managing the mighty Yankee teams of the 1930s. McCarthy was also famous for his Ten Commandments of Baseball Success. These were:

  1. Nobody ever became a ballplayer by walking after a ball.

  2. You will never become a .300 hitter unless you take the bat off your shoulder.

  3. An outfielder who throws in back of a runner is locking the barn after the horse is stolen.

  4. Keep your head up and you may not have to keep it down.

  5. When you start to slide, SLIDE. He who changes his mind may have to change a good leg for a bad one.

  6. Do not alibi on bad hops. Anyone can field the good ones.

  7. Always run them out. You never can tell.

  8. Do not quit.

  9. Try not to find too much fault with the umpires. You cannot expect them to be as perfect as you are.

  10. A pitcher who hasn’t control hasn’t anything.

  Now almost 70 years old, retired in Buffalo and fighting alcoholism, McCarthy also declined the Brooklyn job. In California Casey Stengel, then managing the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League, told reporters that he really didn’t want to go back to Brooklyn, where he had broken in as an outfielder 36 years before. But was Stengel actually asked to return to Flatbush? Rickey would neither confirm nor deny that rumor. A plus would have been Stengel’s popularity with the press. A minus was his attitude toward Negroes. He was managing the Yankees in 1955 when the gifted black catcher Elston Howard joined the team. After a while Stengel complained, “With all the fast jigaboos there are in the world, why do I get stuck with a slow one.” To make a point that may already be obvious, Stengel would not have been an ideal manager for Jackie Robinson.

  Rickey felt increasingly discomfited. He had a strong team with a pioneering black man but here in the first week of this dramatic season the strong team and the pioneering black were playing without a permanent manager. That way could lead to chaos. Approaching desperation, Rickey wired a crony, 62-year-old Burt “Barney” Shotton, in Lake Wales, Florida. “Come to Brooklyn at once. Tell nobody. Say nothing.”

  Shotton had played outfield for the Cardinals and the Browns during Rickey’s St. Louis days. In the early 1920s, when Rickey was field manager of the Cardinals, his own bristling religiosity let him suit up only six days a week. Barney Shotton stepped in on the Christian Sabbath. He became known as Rickey’s “Sunday manager.” Shotton later managed seven days a week but without notable success in Philadelphia and Cincinnati.

  Surprised when Rickey offered him a golden apple, Shotton quickly accepted with one proviso. At his age he would not be comfortable getting into uniform. He would manage wearing street clothes and a Dodger cap. Under the rules of baseball, this limited his range to clubhouse and dugout. Once a game started, he could not walk onto the playing field to talk to a pitcher or to argue with an umpire. Agitated, Rickey accepted Shotton’s condition and the new man, a virtual unknown in the New York area, began to settle in. Over the next four years the Dodgers won two pennants and Shotton is widely regarded as a success. “His calm demeanor,” someone has written, “provided the quiet leadership the Dodgers needed.” But, particularly in his effect on Rickey’s career, Old Barney Shotton was a nothing less than a disaster.

  Dealing with the press, now the media, is a significant aspect of major-league managing. There are daily press conferences before and after games, as well as individual interviews. No fewer than 10 newspapermen covered the 1947 Dodgers every day. Keeping this journalistic gumbo soup below the boiling point was difficult.

  Like Rickey, Shotton had been an Ohio farm boy, but he lacked his boss’s education and sophistication. He thought it was funny to address Harold Rosenthal of the Herald Tribune as “Rosenberg.” Harold was not amused. He took to calling Shotton “that Jew-hating old son of a bitch.”

  Dick Young was increasingly powerful at the Daily News, which had amassed that staggering circulation, more than two million copies a day. Young demanded special treatment in many ways, including being slipped exclusive news leaks. Shotton offered Young no deference or any leaks. Without realizing it, the new manager faced a crouching tiger.

  After Dodger pitching had folded, costing the team a game, Young began his story with that brilliant angry lead: “The tree that grows in Brooklyn is an apple tree and the apples are in the throats of the Dodgers.” Young told me he meant not everybody, but the pitchers, specifically Ralph Branca, were choking. Open warfare now existed between the Daily News and the Brooklyn Dodger management. Calculating, ambitious Walter O’Malley began using the conflict as a hammer to weaken Rickey’s position with the other Dodger trustees. “This fellow Young is damaging our investment,” O’Malley said many times. “How long can we allow this to go on?”

  Why then didn’t Rickey arrange a private meeting with Young? A man-to-man talk and some flattery might have softened a reporter whose ego stretched from Borough Hall at least to Canarsie. But Rickey regarded Young as a vulgar, uneducated lout, certainly not his equal in any way. “To meet with Young,” he told me, “I would have had to go down in the gutter with him and I’m not good at that, going down in the gutter.” As Rickey spoke, his face turned harsh. His eyes showed hatred.

  The tabloid warfare persisted until the scheming O’Malley gained control of the team in 1950 and drove Shotton and Rickey out of town. (“O’Malley,” Rickey pronounced subsequently, “is the most devious man I ever met.”) As the new overall boss, O’Malley made a shrewd deputy, Emil “Buzzie” Bavasi, vice president in charge of the Dodgers. The other vice president, Fresco Thompson, would run the farm system, which numbered as many as 22 teams.

  Buzzie Bavasi had a prime directive: Mollify the Daily News and Rowdy Richard Young.

  Bavasi took Young shopping and bought him sportswear. He found Young a rent-controlled apartment within walking distance of Ebbets Field. He offered a variety of news leaks. When not axe grinding, Young was a very good reporter. The news leaks made him seem even better than he was.

  Bavasi’s crowning accomplishment was setting up Young with a pretty, bucolic woman in Vero Beach, the shapely star of a local bowling team. Young was married, but the Vero Beach beauty quickly became his mistress. Soon she was making trips with the team, all expenses paid by the Dodgers. In a highly emotional episode Young said to me, “I’ve played around a lot in my time and now God is getting even. He’s made me fall in love. But I can’t marry her, now or ever. My wife is Catholic and she won’t give me a divorce.” While taking the mistress to bars and bed, and spending happy nights in hotel rooms, Young never again criticized Dodger management until that startling day in 1957 when a team spokesman announced that the ball club was being moved to Los Angeles.

  For the most part Robinson kept c
lear of the tabloid feud. Young never became his champion. “He is too swelled-headed for me,” said Young, who himself obviously was no exemplar of modesty. Rather than the press, a first focus for Robinson was the establishment of relationships with his white teammates. He said, “I don’t anticipate trouble. I’ve been on teams with whites before.” But his overall reception was not enthusiastic. Spider Jorgensen, the rookie third baseman, had played with Robinson in Montreal and became friendly. Reese at first was courteous but distant. Eddie Stanky greeted Robinson warmly because, he said, “We all gotta pull together as a team.” But Carl Furillo would not speak to Robinson. He told Lester Rodney, “I just don’t like playing with no niggers.” Others, such as Dixie Walker and the veteran pitcher Hal Gregg, tried to ignore Robinson’s presence. In the locker room and in the dugout there was zero small talk between Jack and other members of the team.

  The shower room at Ebbets Field had no individual stalls. After the games, the players stripped naked and stood under individual nozzles soaping themselves. At first Robinson did not enter the shower room until the last white player had left. Then one day in late April, Al Gionfriddo, a stumpy reserve outfielder from Pennsylvania, said, “Hey, Robinson. You’re as good as anybody else. Come on and take a shower with me.” With that simple, forceful statement from an obscure backup player, the shower-room color line in Brooklyn vanished.

  Hugh Casey, the big relief pitcher from Georgia, was a curious case. He spent some time with Robinson, offering pointers on covering first base, but he went absolutely wild during a poker game. The Dodgers were traveling to Boston by train and Reese made it a point to invite Robinson into Pullman car cards. Casey lost repeatedly and began muttering. Then suddenly he reached across the table, placed a large white hand on Robinson’s head and rubbed. “Jackie, man,” Casey said. “Am I in lousy luck today! Got to change my luck, boy. Back home in Georgia when my poker luck ran bad, I’d jes’ go out and rub me the tits of the biggest, blackest nigger woman I could find. You’re the closest thing around here to a nigger lady, even though you got no tits.”