I Never Had It Made (15 page)

Some of the lessons we learned from Jackie's early school experiences helped us to do a little better with Sharon and David. As we got out of the car the first day we brought Sharon to kindergarten, an extremely friendly lady came over to me and said, “I'm Sandy Ammussen. Will your little girl be in kindergarten with my son Chris?” I could tell that Sharon would have at least one little pal in school.

Sharon was the middle child, and during her early years she was apparently unscathed by the identity problem. But Rachel and I learned, after she had become a teen-ager, that she had taken her lumps, too, and somehow managed to keep most of her serious concerns to herself. This is not to say that Sharon did not communicate with us. She did. But she was just such an ideal and perfect child in our eyes and in the opinion of virtually everyone who came in touch with her that she sometimes seemed a little too good to be true. While fathers may be crazy about their sons, there is something extraordinarily special about a daughter. It's still the same—our relationship—perhaps even deeper. Only I understand her better and I'm amazed at some of the crises she faced as a child and later as a young girl without letting us in on them. Everybody thought about our daughter as shy, sweet Sharon. She was shy, but not painfully so. We felt guilty because we let our interest in the boys consume us. Rachel had been brought up with the same family pattern—a girl in the middle of two boys. She was the busy, loving, but not necessarily always happy, mainstay of her family who took care of her younger brother. With a kind of grim amusement, I recall our assumption that Sharon was strong enough to cope well with whatever she was confronted with. We took her development for granted for many years. She rarely signaled distress or called attention to her problems by being dramatic. We didn't know that much about Sharon's problems in childhood until she reached adolescence, and then she began to let us know—by rebelling and refusing to do certain things we wanted her to do. Love for her family was still there even when she became a determined young rebel, but she let us know, in no uncertain terms, that she, too, had strong desires to be an individual and to be accepted as such. Her smooth progress in school had helped to deceive us about her inner conflicts. Sharon remembers, even as a small child, that when she went into a restaurant with me she was aware that the treatment was different and special. She too had the feeling that she was not appreciated for herself.

David was about eighteen months old when we moved to Stamford. I don't think anyone in the family enjoyed our new place more than he did. He was such an active, curious, adventuresome little guy. Rachel had to keep constant watch over him. The builder had left the grounds full of cavernous holes where he had dug up gravel; it looked as if the area had been bombed. It was quite a while before we could get him to grade the big holes, put topsoil over the grounds, and dredge the lake. Meanwhile, David insisted on exploring. We repeatedly warned him never to go too close to the lake or the road and not to play near the holes. He loved to put on his holster with his gun inside, mount his horse (a broomstick), and ride all over the territory where, of course, bad guys and hostile “Injuns” lurked. One day he disappeared for a nerve-racking length of time. When he was finally found, he was sitting, with quiet patience, on the corner of a stone wall, watching for Sharon and Jackie to come home in the school bus. In spite of his warlike equipment, David was a thoughtful, sensible youngster who loved to wander in the woods. He reveled in the grandeur of nature, and he found endless fascination in the mystery of the lake. He would spend hours fishing and swimming. He was always more outgoing than Jackie and we sensed, somehow, that he would not suffer the same identity crisis that had bedeviled his brother from babyhood.

It's possible that by the time David came along, we had found some magic way to blunt the impact of the mixed blessing in my being a celebrity. Or maybe David was different. At any rate, with David's arrival things began to change. Little Jackie, then six years old, and his sister Sharon, three, were as close as they could be. After David made his appearance, everything was still fine. However, when David was big enough to walk and Sharon was big enough to take care of him, she began to love mothering him. She took David over and the two of them would go off to play, ignoring Jackie totally. Jackie's sense of rejection became so obvious that I remember Rachel suggesting to Sharon that she invite her older brother along when she took the baby off to play. This didn't help much. Sharon passionately loved her baby brother and to Jackie, Jr., it must have seemed that David had taken both his parents and Sharon away from him. Jackie retaliated by criticizing the way little David was being raised. He came in the house one day and saw David playing with Sharon and her dolls.

“Humph,” Jackie sneered, “you in here playing with dolls when you ought to be out on the front lawn playing football with the boys.”

David didn't say a word. He put on his hat and snowsuit and marched outside. He had been out there only a few minutes when he came back inside, blood smeared all over his face. Rae didn't know where he had been hurt or how. If he was in pain, he was doing a terrific job of hiding it and he wasn't making the slightest attempt to wipe off the blood. But he announced to Jackie with tremendous triumph, “Well, I guess you're satisfied now.”

The nursery school David was attending was all-white, giving rise to his first questions about the differences between people of different color and concern with inferiority. He wasn't happy about going to school because at first he had no playmates and he missed the freedom of roaming the grounds.

At first David refused to dance in the rhythms class. David's teacher was perplexed. We knew he did enjoy dancing barefoot at home. What we learned from him, however, was that when he did this at school, some of the kids accused him of having dirty feet. Rae and I had an emergency conference with him and explained that there was nothing wrong with his feet. We were brown people, we explained. We reminded him that we couldn't be dirty because we took regular baths. We wouldn't wash our precious color away if we could. He was happy and reassured by this.

He rejoiced in one of those precious childhood friendships with his classmate, Matthew Jamieson. Matt and David were best friends. They liked being together, doing things together. One day someone gave them a dollar. They tore it in half because they liked to share everything.

David and Sharon had remained very close until Dave went to a private elementary school. Sharon was afraid David was becoming a social and intellectual snob and beginning to look down on her. She didn't like the friends he had acquired. Two of his closest friends came from wealthy families in the neighborhood, people who had horses and huge estates. Dave dismissed Sharon's condemnation of him as an indication that she was stupid. When they tried to be friendly together, playing games at the table, he would point out how stupid she was and brag that he was much smarter and caught on to things faster. Inevitably, as in every household with children, there were tensions—and sometimes quarrels—but Rae and I can look back at this period of our lives as an essentially happy one.

IX

The Ninth Inning

T
wo years had gone by since my stormy meeting with Walter O'Malley in 1952. Although he persisted in making irritating anti-Rickey cracks, we didn't have any trouble until we played a game in Milwaukee and our team was infuriated by a decision the umpires made. Back in our locker room, we discussed the decision which had caused Pee Wee Reese to be thrown out of the game. The umpires could hear our conversation since their dressing room was next to ours and the walls in between were not up to the ceiling. Most of the Dodgers were complaining, but the next day I was the only one who received a telegram from Warren Giles, the president of the National League. I was fined $75 for making anti-umpire gestures in the dugout (which most of us had done) and for the things I had said in the locker room. I went to O'Malley and protested. He said he didn't want the matter to get out to the press and gave me the impression that he would look into it. The story did show up in the papers, however, and although I was not responsible for it, O'Malley promptly blamed me. He stayed on my back about that.

Trouble between the Dodger management and me seemed to snowball. Charlie Dressen had been manager of the Dodgers from 1951, and I had the utmost respect for him as a manager. During those three seasons we had been in two world series. However, the Dodger front office had a policy of giving contracts to managers only on a year-by-year basis. After the '53 season Dressen tried to get an extended contract, but the front office would not go along with this and he was fired. Dressen's replacement as I said earlier was Walter Alston. Alston and I started off on an awkward footing because he had a gut conviction that I resented his having taken Dressen's job. In fact, Alston came to me to say he hoped I'd work as hard for him as I had for Dressen. I told him I didn't see any reason why I couldn't, but it was obvious that Alston could not bring himself to believe this. I tried to cooperate with Walter, who was a pretty good guy, but felt, as did others on the team, that he had a tendency to lose his cool under pressure and make some boneheaded judgments during the games. Things went along fairly well until the end of the 1954 season when we began to get into minor hassles and exchange impulsive ill-tempered words. The tension between O'Malley and me, the uncomfortable situation with Alston, the tendency of the press to always hang the rap on me whenever there was dissension in the Dodger ranks—plus, worst of all, the fact that during 1954, the team was doing very badly—meant there was bound to be an explosion. The worst incident occurred at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

Duke Snider had hit a ball into the left-field seats which bounced back onto the field. I thought that the ball had hit one of the fans. The book says that a ball like this is an automatic home run if it clears the wall. The umpire, Bill Stewart, called it a double, apparently assuming the ball had bounced off the wall. I was sure that the whole Dodger team would react as I did. I jumped up and ran from the dugout to protest. Unfortunately, none of my teammates followed me. I became suddenly and angrily aware that Walter Alston was standing at third base, his hands on his hips, staring at me sardonically. His stare seemed to say, “OK, Robinson. You've managed to let all the fans see you. Cut out the grandstand tactics and get back to the dugout.” It was a humiliating moment. I realized instantly that the hothead, umpire-baiting label that had been applied to me so often in recent months would be brought out again. I said a few quiet words to the umpire and walked back to the dugout, feeling like a fool even though I knew my action had been justified.

Later, I became even angrier when someone said, “You should have heard what Walt said when you were out on the field, Jack.”

“If that guy hadn't stood standing out there at third base like a wooden Indian,” I retorted, “this club might go somewhere. Here's a play that meant a run in a tight ball game, so whether I was right or wrong, the play was close enough for him to protest to the umpire. But not Alston. What kind of a manager is that?”

The “wooden Indian” crack got around and Alston heard about it. Naturally, it made matters worse. I suppose it made him even angrier the next day when the newspapers carried pictures of the fan who had been hit by the ball. This proved I had been right and the umpire wrong.

By the end of the 1954 season I was getting fed up and I began to make preparations to leave baseball. I loved the game but my experience had not been typical—I was tired of fighting the press, the front office—and I knew that I was reaching the end of my peak years as an athlete. I felt that any chance I might have had of moving up to an administrative job with the Dodgers or any other team was mighty slim. Had I been easygoing, willing to be meek and humble, I might have had a chance. But in fact this has not changed much even today. There are many capable black athletes in the game who could contribute greatly as managers or in other positions of responsibility but it just isn't happening.

My only hope of finding a job which would be fulfilling as well as financially rewarding seemed to be in private industry. I like to work, and I don't want a dollar I don't earn, so I had to be certain I didn't get sucked into one of those showcase jobs where you are a token black man with no real responsibility other than window-dressing.

My good friend Martin Stone, a lawyer, put out feelers, and during the 1955 and 1956 seasons I was constantly on the lookout for a solid opportunity. However, I'm glad in a way that I at least stayed through the 1955 season because with all the problems I was to have, one of my greatest thrills was in store. But before that, there were troubles.

During exhibition games Alston started making me spend a lot of time on the bench. One day I would play and the next I would sit on the sidelines. There is nothing so unnerving to a player used to steady involvement than sitting on the bench. He loses confidence and his timing becomes unreliable. Being benched disturbed me to the point where I made the colossal mistake of asking Dick Young, the sportswriter, if he had heard anything about my playing that season. Word got out that I had asked Dick the question, and Walter hit the ceiling. He called a team meeting and angrily singled out the players who run to newspapermen with their problems. Alston and I got into a shouting match that seemed destined to end in a physical fight. Gil Hodges kept tapping me on the arm, advising me, “Jack, don't say anything else. Cool down, Jack.”

I listened to Gil because I had a tremendous amount of respect for him.

During the 1955 season I played in approximately two-thirds of the games. My batting average was down. I was doing a poor job in comparison to past seasons. The newspapers began subtly—and some not so subtly—to refer to me as a has-been.

However, despite this the team made it into the world series. It was the fifth series we had been in during my 9 seasons with the Dodgers. (We had been in only a total of 7 since 1905 and we had never won one.)

There was a saying in Brooklyn which everyone has heard about the Dodgers (“the bums”): “Wait 'til next year.” Well, here we were in our seventh world series in fifty years and there was hope that this would be the year, but our fans were also ready to shrug their shoulders and say “Wait 'til next year” if we lost. The way we were playing in that first game—down 6-4 in the eighth inning—it looked like we might have to wait. I was on third base and I knew I might not be playing next year. There were two men out, and I suddenly decided to shake things up. It was not the best baseball strategy to steal home with our team two runs behind, but I just took off and did it. I really didn't care whether I made it or not—I was just tired of waiting. I did make it and we came close to winning that first game. Whether it was because of my stealing home or not, the team had new fire. We fought back against our old rivals, the powerful “Bronx Bombers,” and the series came down to the wire in the seventh game. Podres pitched a brilliant shut-out, and in the sixth inning with men on first and second and only one out Sandy Amoros saved the game with a spectacular running catch of Yogi Berra's fly ball down the left field line. It was one of the greatest thrills of my life to be finally on a world series winner.

The next year my troubles continued. I was benched a lot, my average was down and it was obviously time to leave the game. Two things happened that year which clinched the decision. I met Bill Black of Chock Full O'Nuts. We took to each other and negotiations began for me to become a vice-president in the company when I retired from baseball. Also I was approached by
Look
magazine with a very generous offer if I would give it an exclusive on my retirement story. The time was ripe. However, I was faced with a dilemma. I wanted to be fair to the Dodgers and give them notice of my plans. However, I couldn't talk to anyone about my plans because negotiations with
Look
and Chock were not concluded. If the story leaked to the press, I would lose out on the
Look
story, and if the Chock negotiations broke down, I would face an insecure future with the Dodgers. It was touch and go.

In the end everything happened at once. The day before my signing date with Chock Full O'Nuts and the meeting with the
Look
editors, Buzzy Bavasi left a telephone message that he wanted to see me the next day. I sensed that something was up so I told Buzzy's public relations man, who made the call, that I would be tied up the next day. I didn't want to get into a conference with Buzzy before I had sewn something up for myself. I contacted Bavasi immediately after signing the Chock Full O'Nuts contract to tell him about it. Before I could say anything, he broke the news that he'd been wanting to tell me. The Brooklyn Dodgers had traded me for $30,000 and a pitcher, Dick Littlefield, to the Giants. I was surprised and stunned.

This kind of trade happens all the time in baseball, and it hurts players to realize they can be shunted off to another club without their prior knowledge or consent. My impulse was to tell Bavasi that Jackie Robinson was no longer the Dodgers' property to be traded. But I had to hold out on that because my agreement was to allow
Look
to be the one to break the story. I tried to persuade the Giants front office not to announce the trade for a few days, but since I couldn't explain why, they went ahead and did it. The press practically overran our house in Connecticut, but they got very little out of me. Notes came in the mail from Bavasi and O'Malley. They contained the good old “regrets” business. I appreciated Buzzy's note, but I didn't believe O'Malley meant the nice things he wrote. I took my family to Los Angeles to visit and to keep the press off our backs until the
Look
piece could be printed. Three days before the magazine hit the newsstands, however, the story was out in the press owing to the fact that a few
Look
subscribers had received their copies early.
Look
frantically called us to get back into New York to face the press.

The Giants offered me $60,000 in salary to reconsider. There was so much pressure from fans and youngsters for me to remain in the game that I did have some vague second thoughts. But when Bavasi told the press that I was doing this to get more money out of them, I wouldn't give them a chance to tell me I told you so, and my baseball career was over.

Some of the writers damned me for having held out on the story. Others felt it was my right. Personally, I felt that Bavasi and some of the writers resented the fact that I had outsmarted baseball before baseball had outsmarted me.

The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.