I Never Had It Made (12 page)

“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.”

That statement was made over twenty years ago, and I have never regretted it. But I have grown wiser and closer to painful truths about America's destructiveness. And I do have an increased respect for Paul Robeson who, over the span of that twenty years, sacrificed himself, his career, and the wealth and comfort he once enjoyed because, I believe, he was sincerely trying to help his people.

 

During the 1949 season there was a tremendous improvement in the closeness of the Dodger team. Racial tensions had almost completely dissipated, and the team cared most about acquiring talented players. The club had been strengthened by the addition of several players, among them Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe. The year 1949 wound up being a truly great one. Once again, we became the National League pennant winners. We lost the series to the Yankees, but it was a hard-fought series.

The year 1949 was also a banner year for me personally because the sportswriters named me Most Valuable Player. I signed a 1950 contract for $35,000, which in those days was a very good paycheck. I was happy as the season ended and happily unaware of the trouble that lay ahead.

VII

The Price of Popularity

T
o our great joy we had another addition to the family in 1950. Sharon Robinson was born on January 13 in Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York. We had finally bought our own home in the St. Albans section of Long Island. There were some modestly priced good-looking homes in our immediate neighborhood, homes that were mainly white-owned. Located in the neighborhood were the Roy Campanellas; Count Basie and his wife, Catherine; Herbert Mills of the Mills Brothers; and others from the entertainment world and field of education.

A movie,
The Jackie Robinson Story,
was to be filmed that year. The producers wanted to make it before spring training, but I had been holding them up until the birth of my daughter. When Sharon was born, I planned to take Jackie out to Hollywood with me while Rachel stayed home with the baby and my mother, who had come East to help us during the last stages of Rae's pregnancy.

Two weeks after I'd been on the set in my unaccustomed role of actor, I confessed to Rachel that not only did I miss her a lot but I wanted to see Sharon and I'd probably learn my script much faster if she came out to join me. When Sharon was just three weeks old, she was en route to Hollywood with her mother. Rae said that our daily life during those few weeks when they rushed to put the picture together in record time, reminded her of my first baseball days. There was a lot of difference, though. Every morning a limousine came to pick up the four of us and we would all spend the day on the lot. Ruby Dee, who played the role of Rachel in the picture, paid a lot of attention to our baby. Jackie had spent a lot of his infant hours on the knees of baseball players, and little Sharon was getting the same kind of treatment from movie stars. That same old
Jackie Robinson Story
is still turning up here and there on television. It was exciting to participate in it. But later I realized it had been made too quickly, that it was budgeted too low, and that, if it had been made later in my career, it could have been done much better.

I left Rachel and the children with her mother and went on to spring training. Often, during that spring training season, I thought about how much fun it had been when Rae and I had Jackie with us during spring training at Vero Beach. He loved that place. He had his own ball then and would play out on the field every day, running back and forth to Rae to get his ration of freshly squeezed orange juice. Ballplayers and some of the fans gave him a lot of attention, and at times he was surprisingly responsive. One day, unknown to Rae and me, he got out on the field and started hamming it up. It was during an exhibition game warm-up and people were throwing money at him from the stands. He was happily giving his fans autographs and before I realized what was going on, he had collected quite a little hoard of change for himself.

Watching little Jackie being so outgoing delighted Rae and me, but at the same time it gave us a sober awareness of the serious problem he would have in asserting himself as an individual. We had heard and read about the conflicts children face whose parents live in the spotlight. We became more aware of the problem each day as Jackie grew older. There are any number of well-intentioned people who inflict problems on the kids of famous fathers. Jackie became a victim of these problems when he was still a very small boy. Almost as soon as he could say his name, people would come up with brilliant statements such as, “Oh, so you're little Jackie Robinson, huh? You think you'll ever be as famous as your father?” Or, “Oh, are you going to be a ballplayer too? You know you'll never be able to do what your daddy has done.”

There were dozens of approaches, all meant to be teasing or affectionate and all chipping away at this little boy's self-esteem. They also convinced him that probably he and I were or should be in some sort of competition.

He was a loving and lovable youngster and sunny in disposition. There was very seldom any outward sign that this kind of thing bothered him. But it did and we knew it did. We knew that when he was very young, he began to feel exploited, to sense that perhaps people were making much of him, not be-cause of himself, but because he was my son.

I recall one instance when his resentment showed. Jackie was about three and we were living in Brooklyn.
Life
magazine was doing a cover piece on the Robinson family. The cover picture was to show Rae and myself sitting on the stoop with Jackie riding around in front of us on his bicycle. Something in Jackie's little boy psyche told him that he should refuse to pose. Nothing was going to change his mind, and, of course, we were not about to tell him he must pose. The picture came out with Rae and me sitting on the step and Jackie on his tricycle with his back to the camera. It was then that Rae decided there had been too much pressure on him and that we would declare a moratorium on any picture-taking of Jackie until and unless he wanted it. Shortly after that, he went through an exhibitionist stage, and we couldn't keep him out of things when the photographers were around.

Jackie certainly seemed to be proud of me, but he had an interesting problem when he was first attending school. We think he was a bit confused as to why I spent my time playing ball and being away from home instead of having a normal job like those of his classmates' fathers who were policemen, teachers, businessmen. Playing ball didn't seem too much like an occupation to him, and his teachers reported that he very seldom spoke about what I did for a living.

He must have been confused also about the kinds of places where we lived as a family. When he and his mother were with me during spring training, he lived in a rigidly segregated atmosphere. He hardly ever saw a white person then. Later, when we moved to Stamford, Connecticut, we lived in a totally white neighborhood. When Jackie was growing up, Rae and I mistakenly tried to shield him from knowledge of racial prejudice. Later when his sister Sharon and his brother David came along, the subject of racial differences was all over television and we discussed it openly as a family.

There was an episode in Vero Beach in 1949 that was symbolic of the kind of ordeal Rachel and little Jackie had to face, mainly in Southern communities. I don't think Jackie was old enough to really understand how ugly and bigoted it was, but youngsters are peculiarly attuned to the stress of parents, particularly when they are as close as Rachel and Jackie were. Some of the annoyances Rachel had to put up with may seem petty, but they were terribly difficult for a proud black woman. In the Vero Beach days black women had their hair done in a black beauty shop in a black neighborhood. Since Rae didn't know the town well—and we were almost always strangers in town—she needed a taxicab because she didn't want to take the chance of getting lost on public transportation. One day, with Jackie, Rae set out for the beauty shop. She saw a taxi stop a few feet away from her and discharge a passenger. She walked over to the cab only to be informed that it was a “white cab.” The driver gave her a telephone number to call to get a “colored cab.”

Rae and Jackie sat on the lawn in front of the main building, waiting for the “colored cab.” After a while, along came a huge bus that was empty except for a black driver. It was dilapidated and had broken windows. As soon as she realized this was the “colored cab” Rae got on the bus. Jackie scrambled along after her, undoubtedly thinking he was about to embark on a remarkable adventure. The “bus” circled and passed the swimming pool where all the other baseball wives and their children were relaxing. They all stared. Rachel, of course, felt humiliated. Jackie, happily innocent, was waving good-bye to the white children and their mothers. The bus let them off at a little shack somewhere in the vicinity of the beauty shop. Rachel was so furious that she vowed they would not take that bus back. There was no place to eat in the vicinity, and when they started back, they set out down a long dusty road. Suddenly, Rachel looked down at our son manfully puffing along, tired, hungry, and probably puzzled, but not complaining. She realized that she was giving vent to her hurt and pride and that little Jackie was suffering for it. She stopped, waited, and, in due time, along came the “colored cab” bus, bringing back the black workers from the village to do the evening meal for the ballplayers and their families. Rae was still pretty angry, and she had to find some way to express herself so she simply did not put any fare in the box.

We were living on an Army base then. It was like being confined to a reservation, and it was the only reason we were quartered along with the whites. That, too, was difficult for Rae. Her relationships with the other wives were tense and uncomfortable for her and for them. She didn't know how to relate to them, and they quite clearly did not know how to relate to her. Certainly Jackie absorbed some of these tensions, and later on we felt it had affected him.

 

The news that Branch Rickey would be leaving the Dodgers at the end of the 1950 season to take over the Pittsburgh Pirates hit me hard. Walter O'Malley, an officer of the corporation, had the first option to buy Mr. Rickey's stock. As soon as O'Malley took over the presidency of the club, he made it clear that he was anti-Rickey. At the time, I didn't know whether O'Malley was jealous of the man or down on him because he had brought integration into the game. All I knew in 1950 was that he seemed to become furious whenever he heard the name Rickey. He knew that I felt very deeply about Mr. Rickey, and, consequently, I became the target of his insecurity. I didn't act like some sorehead who has lost his protector. I didn't need a protector at this point.

O'Malley's attitude toward me was viciously antagonistic. I learned that he had a habit of calling me Mr. Rickey's prima donna and giving Mr. Rickey a hard time about what kind of season I would have. I also learned that O'Malley and some of the other Dodger stockholders had squeezed Rickey out at the end of 1950. They wouldn't sign a new contract for him, and they arranged it so he would have to sell his stock.

My troubles with the Dodger front office in the early fifties—particularly 1951 and 1952—combined with my spirited response on the playing field whenever I felt that either my team or I was being shoved around inflamed the relationship between me and some members of the press.

There were more than a few sportswriters who were willing to sacrifice principle for a scoop. During the 1951 season, for instance, we were losing a vital game with the Braves and all of us were feeling low. Our outlook didn't improve when umpire Frank Dascoli called what we saw as a bum decision against the team. Toward the end of the game, with the score tied, we needed to keep them from scoring and going into extra innings. The ball was grounded to me. I threw it to Roy at home. It seemed to us that Roy had the plate blocked and the runner was out. Nevertheless, Dascoli called him safe. Roy jumped up to protest, and Dascoli immediately threw him out of the game. Our whole team was furious. We let the umpires know it as we walked back toward the clubhouse. Preacher Roe stopped at the umpires' dressing room door and kicked it so hard that he knocked a hole in it. Imagine my astonishment when, that evening, I saw a newspaper with a big page-one headline saying that Jackie Robinson had blown his top and kicked in the door. I called the paper and spoke to the man who had by-lined the story. I told him I could prove the story was a lie and demanded to know how he got this phony information. He hemmed and hawed and finally told me that a private policeman had told him and he didn't have time to verify it with me because he had to make his deadline.

I was pretty angry at this lame excuse. The following day the writer ran a tiny story retracting the lie the paper had used to create such a big sensation. Retractions never catch up with headlines.

The sportswriter who seemed to be doing his best to make me revert to the old cheek-turning, humble Robinson was Dick Young of the New York
Daily News.
Dick and I have had, for a number of years, a strange relationship. I used to think he was a nice guy personally, and I knew he was a good sportswriter. As time went by, Young became, in my book, a racial bigot. My trouble with Dick began right after 1949 when he first warned me that I should refrain from sounding off because I was offending sportswriters like himself. He pointed out that there were a lot of awards and advantages I might miss out on if I antagonized sportswriters since they have a great deal of power. In his way, I believe that Dick was trying to help me at that time. He genuinely did not understand that as much as I liked awards and being popular, these things were not as important to me as my own integrity. When I told Dick this and that I was infinitely more interested in being respected as a man than in being liked, he apparently took it as a personal insult. Although he seemed to stand up for me occasionally in later years, he often seemed to use his column to attack me, and relations between us have often been strained.

Milton Gross proved to me several times that he was a writer with perspective and a sense of objectivity. Once I suddenly found myself in a hassle with Buzzy Bavasi who had become vice-president and general manager of the club after Branch Rickey left. Walter O'Malley had signed a deal that would mean playing a certain number of games in Jersey City. Our team didn't like it because, in order to attract just a little more business, we were being subjected to playing in less than major league conditions. A number of players made angry statements about it and the writers placed the most emphasis on mine. The press made the same old, tired comments, condemning me again for sounding off.

Milt Gross wrote:

 

Anybody else may say anything and it's disregarded. Jackie opens his mouth and everybody rushes to put their feet into it. The tempest evoked by Robinson last week would have been nothing if any other Dodger had said what Jackie did about Walter O'Malley's Jersey City junket. As a matter of fact, they did. There wasn't a Dodger in the clubhouse who didn't pop off as much or more. But it was Robinson who found himself embroiled with a needling newspaperman, exchanging cross words with Bavasi and being falsely accused by another member of the press of wanting to beat up an interviewer as an aftermath of his expression of an honest opinion.