Rickey and Robinson (19 page)

Always unpredictable, Durocher goaded the Dodgers. Campanella was brought up from St. Paul. The club became more cohesive and started to win. “Now we’ll see about resigning,” crowed Durocher.

While Durocher never did resign, Rickey made his “availability” known to New York Giant owner Horace Stoneham. On July 16, 1948, Durocher crossed town to become the manager of the “Jints”—the Dodgers’ archrivals. It was one of many paradoxical personnel shifts the master trader had orchestrated during his long career. In another odd move in 1948, Rickey, who was impressed by an announcer broadcasting an Atlanta Crackers game, traded Cliff Dapper, a catcher on the Montreal Royals, to Atlanta. Dapper became the Atlanta manager, and the announcer, Ernie Harwell, joined the Dodgers.

Burt Shotton came back to manage the Dodgers, and Robinson, who had been below par with Durocher as manager, began to round into form. “It may have seemed to Leo,” Robinson reflected later, “that I was goofing off for him and giving all I had for Shotton.” The return to his 1947 playing form was actually due to Robinson’s return to his previous season’s playing weight, but Durocher bore a grudge.

The fierce Robinson and the fiery Durocher became the flash points in the frenzied rivalry between the Dodgers and Giants and their supporters. “They used to really go at it hot and heavy,” remembers Irvin. “Durocher used to put his hands on the side of his head and yell out that Jackie was big-headed, swell-headed.

“One time Jackie went too far in answering back as far as Leo was concerned. ‘I may be swell-headed, Leo, but at least I don’t use my wife’s perfume,’ Jackie yelled.” It was a not-too-subtle reference to Durocher’s lavish use of sweetsmelling cologne.

“They both wanted to go at it. Leo saw red. Jackie saw red. They were both being restrained by their teams. They wanted to fight and fight right then. After that incident, there was a real, deep feud between them,” notes Irvin.

The 1948 Dodgers finished in third place. Robinson’s staggering start had been too much of a handicap. Rickey was able to take satisfaction in the pennant Clay Hopper won at Montreal, and the St. Paul pennant captured by Walt Alston. The two wholly owned Dodger minor-league affiliates met in the playoffs. It was only the second time in baseball history that such a match-up took place. Montreal, powered by Don Newcombe, was the victor. Bobby Bragan, another Rickey reclamation project, piloted Fort Worth all the way to the Little World Series but lost to Birmingham. A third Triple-A minor-league franchise was established in Hollywood with Bob Cobb, owner of the Brown Derby restaurant chain, and Vic Collins. In 1949, Hollywood, with its new working agreement with the Dodgers, won its first Pacific Coast League pennant since 1931.

Robinson finished the 1948 season with a .296 batting average and eighty-five RBis. Seven times he was hit by pitches to lead the league. Once he was thrown out of a game. With Robinson and Campanella entrenched in the Dodger lineup, and with Newcombe poised to join them, those same club owners who had called Rickey complaining, “You’re gonna kill baseball bringing that nigger in now,” were now calling to ask, “Branch, do you know where I can get a couple of colored boys like Jackie and Campy and Newk?”

Chapter Ten

Changing Roles

In 1949, in his third year with the Dodgers, Jackie Robinson the black pioneer became Jackie Robinson the ballplayer. No longer the lone black face on the baseball diamond, Robinson could at last show his superlative skills without the constant pressure of representing an entire race. The wraps came off, and he made use of every skill he possessed to let the flash and fire come through.

Branch Rickey knew how important it had been for Robinson to bank the competitive fires inside him. More than anyone else, Rickey knew how much Robinson had taken in his first two years. The time had come to let Jackie loose from the restraints Rickey had imposed on him. As Rickey later observed, “I realized the point would come when my almost filial relationship with Jackie would break with ill feeling if I did not issue an emancipation proclamation for him. I could see how the tensions had built up in him in two years, and that this young man had come through with courage far beyond what I had asked; yet, I knew that burning inside him was the same pride and determination that burned inside those Negro slaves a century earlier.

“I knew also that while the wisest policy for Robinson during those first two years was to turn the other cheek and not fight back, there were many in baseball who would not understand his lack of action. They could be made to respect only the fighting back, the things that are the signs of courage to men who know courage only in its physical sense. So I told Robinson that he was on his own. Then I sat back happily, knowing that, with the restraints removed, Robinson was going to show the National League a thing or two.”

“There was always an understanding that the two of them had,” notes Rachel Robinson. “Jack would go along with the progra,m for a limited time. As he began to feel more and more in control of the situation, as he proved himself as a ballplayer, he knew it was time to be himself. It was hard for a man as assertive as Jack to contain his own rage, yet he felt that the end goal was so critical that there was no question that he would do it. And he knew he could do it even better if he could ventilate, express himself, use his own style.”

In spring training in 1949, Robinson reported in excellent shape, primed for the new season. He had learned a lesson in 1948 about watching his weight and keeping in condition during the off-season. “They’d better be rough on me this year,” he told a reporter, “because I’m sure going to be rough on them.” The statement accentuated Robinson’s new verbal ferocity and resulted in his being called in by Commissioner Ford Frick. A bit miffed because he did not feel a white player would have been singled out for the same statement, Robinson explained to Frick that he was no longer going to turn the other cheek, that if insults and threats were hurled at him, he was ready to give them back.

His new aggressiveness first surfaced in an incident with Dodger rookie pitcher Chris Van Cuyk. The six-foot, fiveinch two hundred-pound hurler threw several fastballs at Robinson’s head during an intra-squad game. The two shouted at each other, and nearly came to blows. Fortunately, other players got between them and calmed things down. The two incidents were signals, though, that number 42 was now finished with the “turn the other cheek” attitude that he had faithfully labored under for his first two seasons.

Now secure that his “experiment” had succeeded and that blacks were an accepted fact of baseball life, Rickey scheduled a three-game exhibition series against the Atlanta Crackers despite threats of racial violence. Dr. Samuel Green, grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, maintained that it was illegal for interracial baseball to be played in Georgia.

Rickey, who had avoided confrontations before, was furious and adamant. “The games will go on,” he told reporters. “They have been scheduled, and the Dodgers will play!” Nearly 50,000 came out to see the three games. When Robinson came to bat in the first game, it was the first time that a black man had batted against the Atlanta Crackers. Most of the 15,119 fans, black and white, stood up and cheered. In the Sunday game, nearly 14,000 blacks came to the park. They overflowed the segregated section of the stands and stood a dozen deep in the outfield. There were no incidents. Robinson, who had not known what to expect, and had worried about snipers in the stands, was relieved. He was delighted to have played in an integrated contest in the state of his birth. “I wouldn’t trade shoes with any man in the world,” he said after the series ended. “I always had the feeling that a sports fan is a sports fan anyplace in America.”

Now unburdened, Robinson’s many talents unfurled day after day. Beginning a string of six straight .300 seasons, Robinson led the league in batting (.342) and stolen bases (37). He was second in RBis (24) and hits (203). He was third in slugging percentage (.528), runs scored (122), and triples (12). He was fourth in doubles (38) and fifth in total bases (313). He also pounded 6 home runs and led all second basemen in double plays. At the end of the season he was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player.

George Sisler, Rickey’s old University of Michigan protégé, was the man the Mahatma picked to tutor Robinson. Robinson gave him credit for his improved play in 1949. “First he taught me to hit to right field instead of pulling everything,” said Robinson, “and then he taught me to play the ball as it was hit.”

Sisler’s direction polished Robinson’s hitting and fielding. Other skills were innate. As a runner, he had an explosively quick start, acceleration bred into his muscular body from his days as a track star. He was able to move from a standing position and by his second or third step streak ahead in full flashing stride. He had an inborn ability to study a pitcher’s movement and spot a weakness or flaw. He had the ability to run full speed to the next base and look back without losing speed. He was a clever and calculating slider, adept at leaning or positioning his body to avoid the infielder’s tag.

“Robinson was the only player I ever saw who could completely turn a game around by himself,” remembers Hall of Farner Ralph Kiner. “His ability to run the bases, to intimidate the pitchers, to take the extra base, to hang in there under the worst kind of pressure made him antagonize the opposition to the benefit of his own team.”

Some of his opponents began to feel anger, envy, and frustration. In one game where the Dodgers were leading the Phillies by a big score, Robinson came to bat. “Stick one in his ear,” screamed Schoolboy Rowe from the Philadelphia dugout.

“That’s a fine thing to say with the score the way it is,” Robinson snapped at the Philadelphia catcher. At the end of the inning, the catcher reported what Robinson had said to Rowe.

“If he has anything to say,” barked Rowe, “tell him to say it to my face.”

The next time Robinson came to bat, he turned full face to the Phillie dugout. His loud, shrill voice repeated the earlier remark. Rowe charged out of the dugout toward Robinson. Players from both teams raced out and stepped between the two angry men. It was just one incident in a tenyear career, but it illustrated, in Stan Lomax’s phrase, “Robinson’s ability to get under the skin of the opposition, to make them chafe and become unsettled.”

In July of 1949, Jackie Robinson became an internationally known figure; his name and his picture were featured in newspapers all over the world. He had become an adversary of Paul Robeson.

Robeson had issued a statement that, speaking as a black man, he knew that American Negroes would not fight on the side of the United States in a war against the Soviet Union. The statement was made in the climate of strained Cold War relations between America and the USSR.

Growing up in Princeton, New Jersey, Robeson recalled how whites pushed blacks off the sidewalk. Later, as captain of the Rutgers football team, he was subjected to the humiliation of having to sit on the bench when his colle.ge played southern teams. A Phi Beta Kappa law student, he ran into discrimination when he sought employment with white firms. He became a noted singer and again found that he was discriminated against and forced to stay in segregated housing while on road tours. In 1931, Robeson left the United States and settled in England and later moved to the Soviet Union to educate his son. He became a controversial fighter for civil rights and a staunch supporter of what he believed was the “freedom and dignity of the Communist cause.”

Congressman John S. Wood of Georgia sent out invitations to prominent blacks requesting that they testify before the House On-American Activities Committee to “give the lie to statements by Paul Robeson.” Robinson was one of those who received an invitation.

Ironically, it was Robeson who had met with Commissioner Landis back in 1943 requesting that blacks be permitted to play major-league baseball. And it was Robeson who had carried a placard as a member of the “End Jim Crow in Baseball” committee in 1945 and picketed the New York Yankees’ season opener. Robinson’s decision to testify was made with a certain amount of ambivalence, but he finally felt certain that what Robeson had said demanded a response.

Robinson’s speech to -the House Un-American Activities Committee was made on July 18, 1949. It hit hard at the point that one black person speaking in Paris did not speak for an entire race. Robinson concluded his speech with these words:

“I can’t speak for any fifteen million people any more than any other person can, but I know that I’ve got too much invested for my wife and child and myself in the future of this country, and I and other Americans of many races and faiths have too much invested in our country’s welfare, for any of us to throw it away because of a siren song sung in bass.

“I am a religious man. Therefore I cherish America, where I am free to worship as I please, a privilege which some countries do not give. And I suspect that nine hundred and ninety-nine out of almost any thousand colored Americans you meet will tell you the same thing.

“But that doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop fighting race discrimination in this country until we’ve got it licked. It means that we’re going to fight it all the harder because our stake in the future is so big. We can win our fight without the Communists, and we don’t want their help.”

Robinson’s speech drew unanimous raves. Newspaper headlines proclaimed: “An American Speaks” . . . “Negro Loyalty” . . . “True Hero” . . . “Jackie Bats . 1000 in Probe of Reds” . . . “The Right Slant” . . . “World Proud of Robinson” . . . “VFW Cites Robinson.”

A
New York Daily News
editorial on July 20, 1949, entitled “Quite a Man, This Robinson,” was typical of the favorable press reaction: “We imagine Monday, July 18, 1949, will go down in Jackie Robinson’s memory book, if he keeps such a thing, as a red letter day. Mr. Robinson is the far-famed Negro second baseman of the Brooklyn Dodgers ball team. On this particular Monday, he went to Washington. . . . More than likely there was some press agentry involved, but for all that Mr. Robinson made a powerful and moving statement of his views.”

“Mr. Rickey was consulted by Jackie,” recalls Dan Dodson, “for help with his speech. . . . Mr. Rickey gave Jackie a speech draft which was very rough and contained words in it like ‘a person could not be horse-whipped.’ I tried to change the pattern of it to use a slightly different approach. Then Mr. Rickey suggested that another black would be most helpful for what Jackie had to say. Jackie got his own counsel from Lester Granger of the Urban League and others. The speech he finally came up with did not include any of the material I or Mr. Rickey had presented. It turned out to be a better statement than ours.”

Years later, in 1960, however, Robinson saw the Robeson controversy differently. “I have grown wiser and closer to painful truths about America’s destructiveness,” he said. “I do have an increased respect for Paul Robeson. In those days I had much more faith in the ultimate justice of the American white man than I have today. I would reject such an invitation [to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee] if offered now.”

But in 1949 Jackie Robinson was the pioneer, the star of stars. With each season that passed, the grandson of a slave became one of the most famous men in America. His voice, his walk, his batting stance, his name, and what he represented were part of American history’s messenger and the future’s legacy. Gradually, he seized the opportunities to capitalize on his fame.

Robinson’s first-year salary with the Dodgers was $5,000, raised to $12,500 in 1948. In 1950, he was paid $35,000—the top salary to that point in Dodger history.

In those early years you could purchase a television set from Jackie Robinson in Rego Park, Queens. He worked during the off-season for salary and commission three nights a week at the Sunset Appliance Store. It was reported that the Robinsons owned a sixteen-inch television, and that threeyear-old Jackie Jr.’s favorite programs starred Howdy Doody, Mr. I. Magination, and Farmer Gray.

Robinson tried a stint as a sports commentator for radio station WMCA in New York City, and opened the Jackie Robinson Department Store at III West 125th Street in Harlem. It was an outlet for “good-quality clothes with Jackie’s name on the label,” notes Irving Rudd.

There were commercial tie-ins, with Jackie Robinson jackets that sold for $6.95 and caps that cost 98¢. One could also buy Jackie Robinson polo shirts, sports shirts, and teeshirts. He endorsed Borden’s Evaporated Milk and Bond Bread. A black trailblazer on the playing field, he was also the first black sports star to be conspicuously featured in the consumer marketplace.

After Robinson’s glorious 1949 season, screenwriter Lawrence Taylor wrote a movie script for
The Jackie Robinson Story.
It was rejected by several studios. No one was willing to take a chance on a film with a black hero. EagleLion finally picked up the project and sent a copy of the script to Branch Rickey. He pledged cooperation if the script were revised to include more of the hardships that Jackie had endured.

Everyone agreed that no one could play the role of Jackie Robinson as well as Robinson himself. Three weeks of production time were alloted for the low-budget film. Near the end of the production schedule, they shot day and night. “The way they had me running bases,” Robinson recalled, “I never had any spring training in which I worked any harder.” Rickey was cooperative but adamant that his star ballplayer not miss a single minute of spring training.