On the essays shelf (yes, there are still more books to excerpt in my vast library. I can’t seem to stop this excerpts-from-my-library project. I started it in 2006!)
NEXT BOOK: Baseball: A Literary Anthology
The following piece, written in beautifully breathless prose – complete with multiple ellipses … describes Jackie Robinson’s minor league debut on April 18, 1946 at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City. It was the first time the color line was broken in baseball. Historic. Jackie Robinson, a second baseman, the child of sharecroppers (so many great game-changing men have been the children of sharecroppers!) had been tearing up the Negro Leagues, although he was a great all-around athlete who had played many sports in high school, including tennis. He excelled in them all. He was that kind of natural athlete. That trajectory continued in college (he eventually ended up at UCLA). He was the first athlete to letter in four separate sports at UCLA. He served in the military during WWII (and was court-martialed for refusing to sit in the back of the Army-requisitioned bus. Interestingly: the Army made it a point to announce that their buses were not segregated but the individual bus driver had a different idea and ordered Robinson to sit in the back. Robinson refused. When the eventual trial went down, Robinson was acquitted by a jury made up only of whites. So there was some sea-change going on … deep down in the culture, perhaps hard to quantify or even point your finger at. At any rate, the experience helped Robinson shore up his character, something that would come in handy when he went to the major leagues and was confronted by racist abuse on a systemic scale. Part of the accusation against Robinson by the bus driver was that he was drunk and disorderly, which was patently untrue. Robinson was a clean-living polite man, by all accounts, and nobody believed that part of the accusation. In any case, he was acquitted but of course the experience left a mark.)
After the war ended, Robinson started playing for the Negro Leagues. The early 1940s saw the beginning of the crack in that color line. It was more an attitude than anything concrete. Major league ballclubs held tryouts for black players (but these were often little more than publicity stunts). But Branch Rickey, the Scripture-quoting general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, actually meant it. He wanted to expand his roster to include black players, and started casting around in the Negro Leagues for a good candidate. He used scouts, and he used a black journalist named Wendell Smith (whose essay is excerpted below) who wrote about the Negro Leagues for a black sports weekly and knew every player’s strengths, weaknesses, temperament. Branch Rickey was very specific: He wanted a good player who had the strong moral character that could withstand the abuse that would come his way. Rickey wasn’t looking to start a race war, and did not want a hotheaded rabble-rousing black man on his team. He wanted someone who could “take it”, and go about his business of playing baseball. Wendell Smith recommended Jackie Robinson, who was known as a good guy, principled, well-mannered, who had faced a lot of abuse already (primarily from his experience in the military that had formed much of his outlook).
Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey
There was a lot of resentment in the Negro League about Jackie Robinson getting his chance in the Major Leagues because everyone knew he was not the best player of all of them. People’s hearts were broken. This is what happens when only ONE person is allowed to succeed at a time. Because to a Negro League player: you knew that if Robinson got his chance, that meant you would probably not get yours. Players’ spirits were broken by this, although they also felt pride too, that one of them was up there in the Majors. So many conflicting emotions: Maybe future generations of black athletes would benefit, but not them, not them. Very sad.
Jackie Robinson started off in the minors, placed with the Montreal Royals. Wendell Smith, hired by Branch Rickey, as well as his own newspaper, followed Robinson around from game to game to game, writing up stories on Robinson, to get the word out, pump up the publicity, “soften” the upcoming moment for the audience. A Major League debut was imminent. Get them dying to see it!
Wendell Smith and Jackie Robinson
Wendell Smith was an interesting guy. He hailed from Detroit (his father was a cook for Henry Ford). Smith excelled in two things: athletics and writing. He went to college at West Virginia State, played sports, wrote for the school paper. After graduation, he got a job at The Pittsburgh Courier, one of the best and most well-known African-American newspapers in the country. He wrote about baseball (among other things), and was an evangelist for baseball to integrate. A lot of his writing was pained and angry, making his point again and again that it was ridiculous and outrageous that black people would pay money to see a sport that excluded black athletes. At times a note of despair came into his writing: “We keep on crawling, begging and pleading for recognition … We know that they don’t want us, but we still keep giving them our money.” The “we” is eloquent and says a lot about Smith’s engaging and personal style. By using “we” he included himself, first of all, but it was an expression, too, of single-mindedness, an expression of a community out there – coalesced, complex, made up of millions of individuals – who all felt the same way. “We” can be cowardly in some writers’ hands: they don’t want to own their own feelings, and fall back on the group. But in Smith’s hands, that “we” is frankly political.
It’s worth it to familiarize yourself with all of Smith’s work, because you can then feel the buildup of excitement as it became clear to Smith that his long-deferred dream was going to come true: a black man would play on a major-league field. The world was going to change. Everything would not be roses/rainbows – but integration, slow as it may be, needed to happen. And so the moment should be celebrated. (You can feel that excitement in the piece below. It is enough to bring tears to your eyes.)
Not only did Jackie Robinson become a superstar, but Wendell Smith made his name on his association with Jackie Robinson. The year after Jackie Robinson’s minor league debut, Wendell Smith got a job at the Chicago American, making him the first black sportswriter with a byline at any major daily paper. He was also the first black member of the Baseball Writers Association. If you haven’t seen the film 42, I highly recommend it. A great and corny (in the best sense) sports movie: a mainstream movie about a black hero. (I’d like to point you to my friend Odie’s piece on 42 and other things over at his site Big Media Vandalism. As a Jersey City resident, the fact that Robinson made his debut at Roosevelt Stadium just down the block was incredibly meaningful to Odie.)
So back to April 18, 1946. The Jersey City Giants played The Montreal Royals at Roosevelt Stadium. In a moment almost too good to be true, Robinson’s first hit was a three-run homer. He also stole two bases. It was a star athlete’s performance, given under extreme pressure – both from the whites who had banked on him – and the whites who hated that he was there in the first place and hoped he would fail, and the blacks in the crowd (and looking on across the nation) who hoped against hope that disaster would not ensue, that Robinson would do them proud. To be able to compete under that kind of mental pressure is extraordinary, and something white players never had to face (although pressure is part of the game of baseball, of any sport – but Robinson had all that OTHER stuff on his head. Not easy to be a symbol! Not easy to have a bunch of people wanting you to either succeed or fail – and then just go up there and do your best and make such a fine showing of it.)
Jackie Robinson greeted at the plate by his teammate, April 18, 1946, Jersey City
There’s a statue of Jackie Robinson, arms in the air in triumph, in Jersey City to this day.
The following piece by Wendell Smith appeared in The Pittsburgh Courier. Listen to that tone of triumph. It’s poetry. It’s beautiful. Here, he describes Robinson running around the bases after his first three-run homer hit. (The ellipses do not represent any cuts in the original text, they are Smith’s own. )
Excerpt from Baseball: A Literary Anthology
Robinson jogged around the bases – his heart singing, a broad smile on his beaming bronze face as his two teammates trotted homeward ahead of him … When he rounded third, Manager Clay Hopper, who was coaching there, gave him a heavy pat on the back and shouted: “That’s the way to hit that ball!” … Between third and home-plate he received another ovation from the stands, and then the entire Montreal team stood up and welcomed him to the bench … White hands slapping on his broad back … Deep Southern voices from the bench shouted, “Yo sho’ hit ‘at one, Robbie, nice goin’ kid!” … Another said: “Them folks ‘at wouldn’t let you play down in Jacksonville should be hee’ah now. Whoopee!” … And still another: “They cain’t stop ya now, Jackie, you’re really goin’ places and we’re going to be right there with ya!” … Jackie Robinson laughed softly and smiled … Johnny Wright, wearing a big blue pitcher’s jacket, laughed and smiled … And, high up in the press box, Joe Bostix of the Amsterdam News and I looked at each other knowingly, and, we, too, laughed and smiled … Our hearts beat just a bit faster, and the thrill ran through us like champagne bubbles … It was a great day in Jersey … It was a great day in baseball!
But he didn’t stop there, this whirlwind from California’s gold coast … He ran the bases like a wild colt from the Western plains. He laid down two perfect bunts and slashed a hit into right field … He befuddled the pitchers, made them balk when he was roaring up and down the base paths, and demoralized the entire Jersey City team … He was a hitting demon and a base-running maniac … The crowd gasped in amazement … The opposing pitchers shook their heads in helpless agony … His understanding teammates cheered him on with unrivaled enthusiasm … And Branch Rickey, the man who had the fortitude and courage to sign him, heard the phenomenal news via telephone in the offices of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbetts Field and said admiringly – “He’s a wonderful boy, that Jackie Robinson – a wonderful boy!”
THEY MOBBED HIM AFTER THE GAME
When the game ended and Montreal had chalked up a 14 to 1 triumph, Robinson dashed for the club house and the showers … But before he could get there he was surrounded by a howling mob of kids, who came streaming out of the bleachers and stands … They swept down upon him like a great ocean wave and he was drowned in a sea of adolescent enthusiasm … There he was – this Pied Piper of the diamond – perspiration rolling off his bronze brow, idolizing kids swirling all around him, autograph hounds tugging at him … And big cops riding prancing steeds trying unsuccessfully to disperse the mob that had cornered the hero of the day … One of his own teammates fought his way through the howling mob and finally “saved” Robinson … It was Red Durrett, who was a hero in his own right because he had pounded out two prodigious home runs himself, who came to the “rescue.” He grabbed Robinson by the arm and pulled him through the crowd. “Come on,” Durrett demanded, “you’ll be here all night if you don’t fight them off. They’ll mob you. You can’t possibly sign autographs for all those kids.”
So, Jackie Robinson, escorted by the red-headed outfielder, finally made his way to the dressing room. Bedlam broke loose in there, too … Photographers, reporters, kibitzers and hangers-on fenced him in … It was a virtual madhouse … His teammates, George Shuba, Stan Breard, Herman Franks, Tom Tatum, Marvin Rackley and all the others, were showering congratulations on him … They followed him into the showers, back to his locker and all over the dressing room … Flash bulbs flashed and reporters fired questions with machine-gun like rapidity … And Jackie Robinson smiled through it all.
As he left the park and walked out onto the street, the once-brilliant sun was fading slowly in the distant western skies … His petite and dainty little wife greeted him warmly and kindly. “You’ve had quite a day, little man,” she said sweetly.
“Yes,” he said softly and pleasantly, “God has been good to us today!”
