I Never Had It Made (13 page)

The sorry conclusion must be that honesty in baseball is no longer a virtue and Jackie's reward will be that he re-mains a target for the agitators who, unfortunately, include a number of men in my own business.

Dick Young was responsible for starting another rhubarb with O'Malley. Young printed a report about some young Dodger players who had allegedly discussed me negatively in a few of the Brooklyn drinking spots. Dick was not even on the scene when these conversations supposedly took place, and somebody apparently brought a story to him which he promptly presented to the public. His article indicated that these players were unhappy with me because I was too “aggressive” in protesting plays and that I acted “as though I was running the team.”

Dick's article gave O'Malley another opportunity to go around criticizing me. But I knew what O'Malley's problem was. To put it bluntly, I was one of those “uppity niggers” in O'Malley's book.

I responded normally when some newspaper reporters asked me what I thought of churches and synagogues being bombed in the South in protest against the Supreme Court ruling on school desegregation. I said that the people who would bomb a church had to be sick and that our federal government ought to use every resource to prosecute them. The writer interviewing me made me feel very sad when he claimed that Roy Campa-nella had observed that the way to prevent such incidents was for blacks “to stop pressing to get too far too fast.”

Campy was, after all, a father, just as I was. If I had a room jammed with trophies, awards, and citations, and a child of mine came to me into that room and asked what I had done in defense of black people and decent whites fighting for freedom—and I had to tell that child I had kept quiet, that I had been timid, I would have to mark myself a total failure in the whole business of living.

Another incident pointing up differences between Campy and me involved the Chase Hotel in St. Louis. I took a stand and said I was tired of having special, Jim Crow living arrangements made for me while white players slept in the air-conditioned Chase Hotel rooms. That made the hotel back down, and they announced that from then on, I could stay with the team. Roy told me he didn't want to stay at the Chase. He said it was a matter of pride since they hadn't wanted him in the past.

I told him that he had no monopoly on pride, that baseball hadn't wanted him in the past, but that he was in it now. I added that winning a victory over the Chase Hotel prejudice meant we were really becoming a team—members would all be treated equally. Also, now that we had broken the barriers at the Chase, other blacks, not in baseball, who wanted to stay in a decent hotel would begin to find acceptance.

I'll never forget Campy's answer to all of that.

“I'm no crusader,” he said.

That was the kind of attitude a Dick Young—and many other whites—approved of. During a conversation in which Dick Young and I were trying to define our differences, Dick said, “The trouble between you and me, Jackie, is that I can go to Campy and all we discuss is baseball. I talk to you and sooner or later we get around to social issues. It just happens I'm not interested in social issues.”

I told him that I was and added that if I had to stop saying anything to him about race relations or discrimination against black people or injustices in the game, then we'd probably just have to stop any serious discussions.

“I'm telling you as a friend,” Dick insisted, “that a lot of newspapermen are saying that Campy's the kind of guy they can like but that your aggressiveness, your wearing your race on your sleeve, makes enemies.”

“Dick, we might just as well get this straight,” I answered. “I like friends just as much as other people. But if it comes down to the question of having a choice between the friendship of some of these writers and their respect, I'll take their respect. I know that a lot of them don't like me because I discuss things that get in the way of their guilt complexes, but I'll bet you they respect me.”

“Personally, Jackie,” Dick persisted, “when I talk to Campy, I almost never think of him as a Negro. Any time I talk to you, I'm acutely aware of the fact that you're a Negro.”

I tried patiently to explain that I want to be thought of as what I am, that I am proud of my blackness, proud of the accomplishments of black people.

“If you tell me that when you think of me, you think of a whining, cringing, handkerchief-head standing before you with his hat in his hand expressing eternal gratitude for the fact that you only had nine little digs in yesterday's story when you could have had ten, that's one thing,” I replied. “If you think of me as the kind of Negro who's come to the conclusion that he isn't going to beg for anything, that he will be reasonable but he damned well is tired of being patient, that's another thing. I want to be thought of as the latter kind of Negro and if it makes some people uncomfortable, if it makes me the kind of guy they can't like, that's tough. That's the way the ball bounces.”

I knew that my message didn't get through to Dick; either that or it was a message he wasn't willing to accept. I was sorry he felt he had to compare Campy and myself, but I did feel strengthened in my convictions because of the approval I received from the black press which had been in my corner from the very beginning of my career. A. S. “Doc” Young, for instance, who is one of the most brilliant black sportswriters in the country, sized up the Robinson-Campanella situation like this:

 

Background for this feud is found in the differences in personalities between these two stars. Campy is a Dale Carnegie disciple who believes in “getting along” at all costs, in being exceedingly grateful for any favor or any deed interpreted as a favor.

Jackie, on the other hand, is an aggressive individualist who is willing to pay the price and, once having paid it in full, does not believe that effusive thank you's are a necessary tip.

Campy believes Jackie owes baseball everything. Jackie knows that baseball was ready to put the skids under him without his knowledge after having lived handsomely on him for years. Jackie knows that baseball never has been overly concerned about its unpaid debts to all the great Negro players who lived from 1887 to 1945, without a mere look-in on organized ball. . . . I like both players and I'm sorry this kind of thing must come up.

I liked what Doc had to say because I thought he was trying to be fair. He wasn't tackling Roy or calling him an Uncle Tom. He wasn't hitting me as some kind of troublemaker. He was just saying we were two different people with two different points of view. I am glad to say that I never had a personal quarrel with Campy. I have always respected him, and I regard him as a guy worthy of great admiration. Our friendship was one thing that many white writers didn't want to see.

Joe Reichler of the Associated Press reported a supposed Campanella remark which he said Roy made early in his career, during an altercation with an umpire in which the fierce Jackie Robinson was involved. The supposed remark was: “I like it up here. Don't spoil it.” The implication was that Campanella was happy to be in the major leagues after so many years of struggling in the Negro leagues, and he didn't want anything to jeopardize his chances of remaining there.

 

All the attention I was getting from the press seemed to compound O'Malley's antagonistic attitude toward me. I found out just what kind of person Walter O'Malley was in 1952 when he called me on the carpet for not being able to show up at exhibition games owing to the fact that I had been injured. He asked Rae to come along with me to his office. She had never become involved with matters concerning me and the team except for our own discussions at home. But that day I saw Rae really lose her temper.

Rae sat there fuming as O'Malley charged me with being unfair to the fans by missing the exhibition games, and while he was getting his complaints in, he indicated that I had no right to complain about being assigned to a separate hotel. A separate hotel had been good enough for me in 1947, hadn't it?

That burned me up. I told O'Malley that if he thought I intended to tolerate conditions I had been forced to stand for in the past, he was dead wrong. I added that it seemed to me that if the owners had a little more guts, black players wouldn't have to be forced to undergo so many indignities. I said that I resented being suspected of pretending to be injured and that my injuries could be easily checked with the trainer. I observed that he seemed more interested in the few extra dollars to be gained out of exhibition games than in protecting the health and strength of his team for the season.

It was then he called me a prima donna and said I was behaving like a “crybaby” over a sore leg.

That's when Rachel's rage broke. She started off saying she felt she had to express herself. She said she resented my being called a prima donna.

“I've seen him play with sore legs, a sore back, sore arms, even without other members of the team knowing it,” Rachel declared. “Doing it not for praise, but because he was thinking about his team. Nobody worries about this club more than Jackie Robinson and that includes the owners. I live with him, so I know. Nobody gets up earlier than Jackie Robinson to see what kind of day it's going to be, if it's going to be good weather for the game, if the team is likely to have a good crowd. Nobody else spends more time worrying about Pee Wee Reese's sore foot or Gil Hodges' batting slump or Carl Erskine's ailing arm. Jack's heart and soul is with the baseball club, and it pains me deeply to have you say what you just said.”

Rachel was just warming up.

“You know, Mr. O'Malley,” she continued, “bringing Jack into organized baseball was not the greatest thing Mr. Rickey did for him. In my opinion, it was this: Having brought Jack in, he stuck by him to the very end. He understood Jack. He never listened to the ugly little rumors like those you have mentioned to us today. If there was something wrong, he would go to Jack and ask him about it. He would talk to Jack and they would get to the heart of it like men with a mutual respect for the abilities and feelings of each other.”

Then, I told O'Malley that I could have made a lot of legitimate complaints about the crummy hotel we were living in and about a number of other things. “It doesn't strike me as fair to have people who are sitting in comfort in an air-conditioned hotel lecture me about not complaining,” I said.

O'Malley abruptly changed his tune. He began to apply the soft soap, telling us he had meant no harm and pleading with me to “just try to come out and play today.”

He backed down because he had found out he couldn't bully us. O'Malley never really let up. He continued to make anti-Rickey remarks that he knew would get under my skin, and he knew, because I had told him, that I would always be loyal to Mr. Rickey.

My troubles continued. In 1953 I had unwittingly detonated an explosion. I appeared on a television program:
Youth Wants to Know,
moderated by Faye Emerson. During the show, where members of the studio audience ask unrehearsed questions, one young lady asked me if I thought the Yankees were discriminating in their hiring practices. It was a loaded question because the Yankees, at the time, had a lily-white team. I replied that the Yankee players were tops in my book as sportsmen and good guys. However, since I couldn't duck the real thrust of her question, I added that I thought the Yankee front office was discriminating against blacks and pointed out that they were the only team in New York which had not hired even one.

I had no idea—and I am sure that girl never dreamed—that her innocent question and my candid reply would cause all hell to break loose. The next day headline stories were published. A Cleveland writer tried to take me apart in an article in which he described me as a “soap box orator” and a “rabble-rouser.” Many hate letters, a lot of them anonymous, came into our club attacking me. When Commissioner Frick sent for me, I anticipated a strong verbal rebuke and possibly disciplinary measures. I was ready, however, because I had said what I meant. I told the commissioner as soon as I faced him that I would repeat what I had said to anyone who asked me the question again. If the Yankees were so concerned, why didn't they answer in the only convincing way they could, by hiring some black players?

The commissioner surprised me. He said he was not trying to protect or defend the Yankees. He merely wanted to get to the bottom of the matter because to do so was his responsibility. He agreed when I said that he might do well to request the script of the show and see what I had actually said. When we finished our talk, Commissioner Frick made a statement which I will never forget.

“Jackie,” he said, “I just want you to know how I feel personally. Whenever you believe enough in something to sound off about it, whenever you feel strongly that you've got to come out swinging, I sincerely hope you'll swing the real heavy bat and not the fungo.”

Without that kind of support from some of the people in baseball who had power, I could not have made it, no matter how well I performed, no matter how loyal black people were. I am well aware that there were countless other whites, not as well-known or influential, who were in my corner.

I remember the fans in Montreal who rocked the Louisville team by giving them a tremendous booing in retaliation for the way Louisville had heckled me when I played there. Those same Canadians made life for Rachel and me comfortable and warm with affection. They spared no effort in showing me that they were proud that I belonged to their home team. They were not black people.