Rickey and Robinson (14 page)

As Irvin points out, other owners had the chance to sign black players but didn’t. “The Homestead Grays of the Negro Leagues used the ballpark of the Senators when Washington was on the road,” Irvin recalls. “Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard were on the Grays. Today they are both in the Hall of Fame. They also had Roy Partlow, a fine left-bander, and Raymond Brown, a right-handed pitcher who hurled just like Red Ruffing. The Senators were at the bottom of the league, and those four players on the Homestead Grays were all at their peak. Josh was the equal of the Babe [Ruth]. Buck was just like Lou Gehrig. They used to draw big crowds—thirty-five thousand, forty-five thousand.”

His scouts suggested to Clark Griffith, the owner of the Senators, that he sign those four players. “They would have played for nothing,” says Irvin.

“But Griffith was a southerner. When faced with the idea of signing the four black players, all he could think was ‘Where would they stay? How would they travel? Where would they eat? How would the other players feel about it?’ That was the way of life back then and the way people thought,” Irvin concludes. “It took Branch Rickey to come up with the answers, to do it.”

Out of the limelight and away from the swirl of controversy from November 1945 to January 1946, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella played winter ball in Venezuela. Robinson was the shortstop; Campanella was the catcher-outfielder as their black All-Star team won eighteen of the twenty games it played. “Jackie and I roomed together,” Campanella recalls. “We were able to get real close and have a lot of discussions about the situation. And Jackie would say, ‘I just want a chance to play, and I think I can handle the worst of it.’ “

Robinson told reporters that he was ready for what he knew would be a difficult ordeal. “I know I am heading for trouble in Florida next March when I must train with Montreal. I don’t look for anything physical. I really believe we’ve gotten beyond that in this country. I know I’ll take a tongue beating, though. But I think I can take it. I’m due for a terrible riding from the bench jockeys all around the International League circuit if I am good enough to play with Montreal all summer. I know about the riding white players give one another, and I’m sure it will be much worse for me because I am a Negro. They’ll try to upset me and they’ll have plenty of material, but we got that also in our league and I am prepared for it. These days keep reminding me of something my mother told me when I was a little kid. She told me that the words they say about you can’t hurt you. And when they see that, they’ll quit saying them. I’ve had plenty of nasty things said about me from the stands, especially in basketball, where you can hear everything they shout. I never let it get to me. I think it made me play better. I’ll always remember what my mother taught me, and I think I’ll come through.

“Joe Louis has done a great thing for our race. Without being conceited, I think I can say that I am going in with a much greater advantage than Joe had. . . . Therefore, I have a much greater responsibility.

“I think I am the right man to pick for this test. There is no possible chance that I will flunk it or quit before the end for any other reason than that I am not a good enough ballplayer. . . . That is the only thing I can be mistaken about now.”

Robinson was the first black player signed to a contract to play in organized baseball. Rickey also signed the second, the third, the fourth, and the fifth, as America eagerly anticipated its first springtime peace in four years. John Wright, a twenty-seven-year-old pitcher, was signed in February 1946, following his discharge from the navy. On March I, Campanella received a telegram advising him to report to the Brooklyn Dodger main office by March 10—“very important,” the telegram said. It was signed “Branch Rickey.”

“I got right back,” Campanella recalls, even though the message came in the middle of the winter ball season. “I just got right out of there and lit out for New York. I signed up. The papers said I got a bonus. I got nothing except a salary of a hundred and eighty-five dollars a month to play with the Brooklyn Dodger farm team at Nashua, Class B.”

Roy Partlow, pitcher, age thirty-seven, and Don Newcombe, pitcher, age nineteen, were also signed. The monthly salary for the five black pioneers was a grand total of $r ,Boo. Robinson received the most, $6oo a month. Campy was making the least.

The main man, though, was Jackie Robinson. Married to Rachel on February ro, 1946, the young man with his bride headed for spring training in Florida and the “trouble ahead” that Rickey had warned about. When they boarded the plane in California for Daytona Beach, Mallie Robinson presented them with a shoebox filled with fried chicken and hard-boiled eggs. At first they protested, explaining that they were just going to Florida, not to a wilderness. Then, not wanting to hurt Mallie’s feelings, they took the shoebox with the home-cooked food along with them.

The American South, with its signs reading “For whites only” and “For colored women,” its segregated drinking fountains, its layer upon layer of Jim Crow laws, was a shock to the Robinsons. When they arrived in New Orleans to get a connecting flight to Daytona Beach, they were bumped onto a later flight by the airlines. Informed that the law banned their eating at the New Orleans airport—they could only take food out-the man on the first steps of his mission to break baseball’s color line became enraged. It accomplished nothing. The contents of the shoebox—succor provided by Mallie, who might have anticipated such a scene when she prevailed on them to take the food—eased their hunger if not their rage.

When they resumed their journey, they were bumped off a plane at Pensacola, Florida, “for military priorities, so they said,” Robinson noted. Determined not to waste any more time, the Robinsons boarded a bus to Daytona Beach. Although there were empty seats up front, they were forced to stay at the back of the bus—the Negro section. Jackie breathed the Florida air that mixed with the carbon monoxide fumes of the bus and thought about the adventure that loomed ahead and the price he knew he would have to pay.

On April 18, 1946, a new world quality enveloped the early spring day at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was opening day of the International League season. It was opening day for Rickey and Robinson. After all the months of picketing and letter writing, of debate and dissent, Jack Roosevelt Robinson—a black man—would be playing second base for the Montreal Royals, the first of his race ever to play organized baseball.

Robinson had endured the hostility of that other country that was the American South. He had endured it and prevailed. As the Royals moved north, trouble ahead came daily. In Deland, Florida, a scheduled game between Montreal and Indianapolis was held up for almost an hour. It was claimed that electricians were at work repairing lights, even though the scheduled game was a day game. In Jacksonville, a city official padlocked the ballpark, canceling a game between the Jersey City Giants and the Montreal Royals. He claimed that public property could not be used for mixed racial competition. In Richmond and Savannah, too, games were canceled.

“I didn’t realize it was going to be this bad,” said Rickey. “Next year we11 have to train out of the country.” Despite all the hardships, Robinson’s play delighted the Mahatma. He admired the attitude, the aggressiveness, and the talent of this proud black man. To avoid confrontations over segregation, Rickey arranged lodging in private homes for Robinson and John Wright, also on the Montreal roster.

Jersey City was not Richmond or Savannah. The seating capacity for Roosevelt Stadium was twenty-five thousand, but on this dramatic day it was standing room only. Mayor Frank Hague, who was scheduled to throw out the first ball, declared the day a half-holiday. Many New Yorkers made their own holiday, taking the day off and traveling through the Hudson Tubes to witness Robinson’s debut. Two bands, a tumbling acrobat, and hundreds of reporters and photographers added to the already electric atmosphere.

When Robinson made his first appearance on the field, the integrated crowd stood up and cheered. He played second base and batted second in the Royal lineup as Montreal blitzed Jersey City, 14-1. Robinson rapped out four hits in five trips to the plate, with three singles and a 335-foot homer. He scored four runs, and batted in four runs. He stole two bases. His dancing, taunting leads flustered Jersey City pitchers into committing two balks. When the game ended, it took the delighted rookie more than five minutes to reach the comparative safety of the dressing room. Squealing, adoring fans mobbed his path. Even Montreal manager Clay Hopper was delighted. Hopper, who hailed from Mississippi, had protested the assignment of Robinson to Montreal, and had once asked in all seriousness, “Mister Rickey, tell me—do you really think a nigra’s a human being?”

In the Montreal clubhouse, a reporter asked Robinson to evaluate his situation. “Mr. Rickey has tried to foresee all the difficulties I would encounter.” The voice was low but direct. “I have tried to follow his advice. I can thank Mr. Rickey that I am playing in the International League. I will give it all I have.”

With Robinson on the scene, almost a million fans came out to see the Montreal Royals in 1946, setting a new minorleague record. Some Baltimore players objected to Jackie’s presence and made it clear that they would not play against Montreal. International League president Frank Shaughnessy sent them a telegram: “If you don’t take the field . . . you will be suspended from baseball for the rest of your life.” They took the field.

No minor-league ballplayer has ever attracted the kind of national attention that was focused on Jackie Robinson. Wendell Smith, sports editor of the
Pittsburgh Courier,
traveled along with Jackie. “Wendell’s reports and stories,” notes Mal Goode, “added one hundred thousand a week to the paper’s circulation.” Special charter trains came from Chicago to see Robinson perform with his Montreal teammates at Buffalo. Mter virtually every game, swarms of kids and their parents begged for autographs.

“We had rented a home in the French Canadian sector,” recalls Rachel Robinson. “We were stared at on the street. We had very little privacy. Those kids were always trailing after us; they became an adoring retinue.” John Wright, the black pitcher who was placed on the Montreal roster by Rickey, lasted only until May, when he was demoted to Three Rivers, Quebec, in Class C ball. Pitcher Roy Partlow replaced Wright on the Montreal roster in May, but he didn’t last either and was also sent down to play at Three Rivers.

“John Wright,” Robinson observed, “had all the talent in the world as far as physical abilities were concerned. But John couldn’t stand the pressure of going up into this new league and being one of the first. The things that went on up there were too much for him, and John was not able to perform up to his capabilities.

“In a number of cities,” Robinson later said of that first season with Montreal, “we had very little pressure. But there was always that little bit coming out. It wasn’t so much based on race. But because John was the first pitcher, every time he stepped out there he seemed to lose that fineness, and he tried a little bit too hard. He tried to do more than he was actually able to do, and it caused him to be less of a pitcher than he really was. If he had come in two or three years later when the pressure was off, John could have made it in the major leagues.” At the end of the 1946 season, Wright was released by the Dodger organization and went back to play with the Homestead Grays.

Robinson at one point nearly gave in to the pressures that ruined the chances of Partlow and Wright. Montreal won the International League pennant, but near the end of the season Robinson’s reserve wore out. “My nerves were pretty ragged,” he recalled. “I couldn’t sleep, and often I couldn’t eat. I guess I hadn’t realized I wanted to make good so badly. I sort of went to pieces.” At Rachel’s urging, he went to see a doctor, who was concerned that Robinson might have a nervous breakdown. The doctor advised a brief rest. The rest was for one day. Robinson was concerned that if he won the batting title, people would claim he stayed out to protect his average.

He came back to lead Montreal against Louisville in the Little World Series. The Royals dropped two of the first three games to Louisville in Louisville. The Montreal fans were upset by the harsh treatment Robinson had received in Louisville, a border city, and Montreal sportswriters reported the abuse and racial epithets heaped on Robinson by Louisville players and fans. “Hey, nigger, go on back to Montreal where you belong,” one fan had screamed. “Get out of here, nigger,” another shouted, “and take your coon fans along.”

The Royals swept three games in Montreal to win the Little World Series. The Royals’ fans defended their beloved Jackie Robinson by booing and taunting every Louisville player. After the final out that clinched the Royal triumph, Montreal fans surged onto the playing field and mobbed Robinson. They lifted him onto their shoulders and paraded him around. When he finally was able to get to his feet, he made a frantic dash to the safety of the clubhouse. “It was probably the only day in history that a black man ran from a white mob with love instead of lynching on its mind,” one reporter observed.

With the season over, Robinson could take pride in his accomplishments as a Montreal Royal. His ·349 batting average led the league, as did his .985 fielding average and his 113 runs scored. He added forty stolen bases. Montreal manager Clay Hopper, who had balked at having a black man on the Royals, told him, “You’re a great ballplayer and a fine gentleman. You’re the greatest competitor I ever saw. It’s been wonderful having you on the team.”

Back in New York, the pressure was intensifying for Rickey to bring Robinson up to the Dodgers. On the night of February 5, 1947, Rickey spoke to three dozen black leaders. The meeting was arranged by the executive secretary of the Carleton Branch of the YMCA, Herbert T. Miller. The only whites present were Rickey, his assistant Arthur Mann, Dr. Dan Dodson, and Judge Edward Lazansky, a close friend.

Rickey opened his after-dinner remarks with greetings, and then launched into the fifth step of his well-orchestrated plan: a speech aimed at insuring the complete understanding and backing by the black community of his program to break baseball’s color line. “Someone close to me,” he said, “remarked that I did not have the courage to tell you what I want to tell you; that I didn’t have the guts to give this speech and ·that you people wouldn’t be able to take it. I believe all of us here have the courage. I have a ballplayer named Jackie Robinson. He’s on the Montreal team. He may stay there . . . he may be brought to Brooklyn. But if Jackie Robinson does come up to the Dodgers, the biggest threat to his success, the one enemy most likely to ruin that success, is the Negro people themselves.” Rickey was aware of an uncomfortable stirring in the audience, but he pressed on with conviction.