Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball
By Scott Simon
Wiley, 168 pages, $19.95
One of the most portentous confrontations of the civil-rights movement occurred not between two foes but between two allies. It occurred not on the streets or at a lunch counter or at a schoolhouse door but in an office. It occurred not in the era of Martin Luther King but in the era of Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson.
It was 1945, the very month that World War II ended. In the fight for freedom around the globe, America was victorious. In the fight for freedom at home, America was far from glorious. This was still a segregated society, black kept away from white much as children were kept away from germs. In workplaces and neighborhoods, schools and stadiums, there were two nations, one trying to keep the other down and succeeding, the other struggling to rise up and failing to do so.
Now we know that Rickey and Robinson were the heroes of this office-suite confrontation, and we know the basic outlines of the story: Rickey chooses his moment and he chooses his vehicle, Robinson performs skillfully at home plate and among the hometown crowds, baseball is integrated, and new struggles and new breakthroughs await.
But the tension in that room, the drama inherent in it, is an indispensable part of the American story, not only of baseball lore. ” ‘I know you’re a good ballplayer,’ ” says one man to another, adding, ” ‘I’ve got to know if you’ve got the guts.’ “
Robinson asks Rickey: ” ‘Do you want a player who doesn’t have the guts to fight back?’ “
Rickey replies with maybe the most important sentence uttered in 1945 outside the battlefield and the White House: ” ‘I’m looking for a ballplayer with the guts not to fight back!’ “
That exchange is the centerpiece of an extraordinary little book in an extraordinary new series intended to capture extraordinary moments in history. Scott Simon’s “Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball,” one of the volumes in the “Turning Points” series being produced by John Wiley & Sons, captures the turning point inside this remarkable turning point. The result is a page-turner of a different sort, the kind when the reader knows perfectly well how the book turns out.
Here’s another moment, only two pages away. Robinson and Rickey are still sitting in the office. Rickey begins to read from Giovanni Papini’s “Life of Christ”:
” ‘Ye have heard that it hath been said . . . An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil. But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ “
Robinson responded with just the right answer. ” ‘Mr. Rickey,’ ” he said, ” ‘I have another cheek.’ “
It took cheek to say that, to endure what Jackie Robinson endured, to be Jackie Robinson in that time and place. Today we think of him as a hero and a star, and at this distance it might be easy, particularly for white readers, to envy his heroism and his stardom. But they were hard won. They were won with great physical and moral courage.
Simon’s story is invitingly written and brisk. The emphasis is on the heroic years, not on the stardom years. A popular National Public Radio host and essayist, Simon has a good ear and a good eye, and as a radio man he knows the value of trimming the story down, editing out the peripherals, writing to a spare length but not omitting the personality from a piece. He has applied those radio skills to this book with deftness and sensitivity. What emerges is Jackie Robinson, known for the color of his skin but also for the thickness of his skin.
“When he was summoned by history,” Simon writes, “he risked his safety and sanity to give history the last full measure of his strength, nerve and perseverance.”
The story, of course, has its own momentum, but longtime baseball fans more interested in what a man can do with his arms and his legs than what he can accomplish with his heart will be reminded that the most remarkable statistic of Robinson’s career isn’t how many doubles he hit (273) or how many runs he batted in (734), or even how many times he stole home (nine, fewer than the legend suggests). The most remarkable statistic is that Jack Roosevelt Robinson, born at Cairo, Ga., had one at bat at all.
The indignities Robinson suffered in the major leagues are well known. The indignities he suffered on the way there were even more demeaning. None was worse than what Robinson and his new wife suffered in winter 1946, when the man who had just signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers left California to travel east to Daytona Beach, Fla., where the Dodgers then trained.
It started simply enough. The Dodgers figured that the segregated seats and bathrooms of a Southern train or bus could be easily avoided if they simply gave the Robinsons an air ticket. The two flew to New Orleans. There Rachel Robinson, California cool, saw her first “Whites Only” sign.
That was just the beginning. Their departure to Pensacola was delayed, and they were shuttled to a blacks-only hotel infested with cockroaches. (The newlyweds covered themselves with newspapers rather than get under the sheets, one of many small details that make a difference in a small book.)
The couple endured delays and slights at Pensacola, once being ushered off the plane because of “fuel worries” only to see their seats be taken by a white couple. They finally took a bus. While they were asleep on a 16-hour journey they were roused and told to move to the back of the bus. It was not so much a metaphor as the reality of life.
Jackie Robinson had not yet played an inning in the Dodgers organization. He would eventually play, of course, first in Montreal, where he was greeted with warmth (and is still remembered with great affection), and finally making the big jump to the big leagues. It is tempting to say that it hardly mattered that many white newspapers in the South edited out reports of Robinson’s hits and runs, but in fact it did matter.
It mattered, too, that Robinson was jeered, from the stands and from the field. But it also mattered that Robinson won white fans’ hearts and helped change their hearts and minds. Part of the battle to redeem the promise of the Declaration of Independence occurred at second base.
“He chose to bear the daily, bloody trial of standing up to beanballs and cleats launched into his shins, chest and chin, and the race-baiting taunts raining down from the stands, along with trash, tomatoes, rocks, watermelon slices, and Sambo dolls,” Simon writes. “And then, he performed with eloquent achievement and superlative poise. Robinson allowed that hatred to strike him as it would a lightning rod, channeling it down into the rugged earth of himself.”
Jackie Robinson was a baseball hero. He was also more than that. He was an American hero.
