Rickey & Robinson (24 page)

Reading from notes, he said that in the days following World War II Negro athletes had reached the top in most major spectator sports. “
Our Sports
aims to corral all the activities of Negroes in sports into
one interpretive medium for the vast Negro audience.” His manner was alive with excitement and enthusiasm. “I’m going to write a column every month. I want you to help me there. I’m a lousy typist. Then I want you to write a story for us under your own byline every other month. And meet with our editors from time to time. We need as many ideas as we can get.” Most of the editors were white. Robinson then mentioned a fee: $150 a month. Since my
Tribune
salary was only $120 a week, Robinson’s offer was a fine supplement. (When I decided to leave the paper a year later, the editor, Whitelaw Reid, offered me a then staggering $10,000 a year to remain.)

Robinson’s enthusiasm was understandable. He would finally be able to get his words and ideas into print, and on a regular basis. My enthusiasm matched his; I was excited to start working closely with a complex, brilliant and heroic man.

But the magazine was doomed from the start. Major advertisers—General Motors, Campbell’s Soup, Philip Morris—discounted the Negro market in those days, and without major advertising a mass-market magazine cannot survive. Jack and I talked that through, and we convinced ourselves that if we published enough powerful stuff we would break that barrier. “I have experience breaking barriers,” Robinson said. We published powerful stuff. The barriers remained.

We ran a piece called “Will There Ever Be a Negro Manager?” The writer, earnest, intense Milton Gross of the
New York Post
, thought Monte Irvin of the Giants and Roy Campanella were excellent candidates. Neither became a manager, although Irvin later signed on as executive assistant to the late commissioner Bowie Kuhn. (Frank Robinson became the first black big-league manager at Cleveland in 1975.) We marched fearlessly into hot-button issues. Was the Yankee organization bigoted? We thought so. They discarded an excellent black Puerto Rican first baseman named Vic Power because a scout reported that Power liked white women. Power played with other American League teams for 12 seasons and recorded a lifetime
batting average of .284. When I encountered Vic in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, in 1973, he was coaching the island’s national amateur team and was happily married to a pretty blonde.

We proposed Satchel Paige for the then all-white baseball Hall of Fame. He made it—18 years later. We challenged the unwritten rule that barred blacks from being jockeys and relegated them to the lesser role of “exercise boys.” That changed during the 1980s.

For the second issue, Robinson urged me to write an article under the title “What White Big Leaguers
Really
Think of Negro Players.” I must have interviewed 50 baseball people. Eddie Stanky, the shoeshine-boy needler, presented quite a different aspect. “My relationship with all the Negroes I’ve played with and managed has been 100 percent pleasant,” he said.

“I would not call asking a big leaguer for a shoeshine notably pleasant.”

“Don’t mind what I say during a game. I want to win and sometimes I get tough. But Robinson does, too, you know. It’s part of baseball.”

Walter O’Malley was particularly interesting. I caught up with him during spring training and he suggested we walk about Dodger-town in Vero Beach. “There’s the dining room,” he said. “Our Negro players and our white players eat side by side. This is Florida, but here you couldn’t tell it is.

“In our barracks here Negro boys and white boys sleep under the same roof. The other day we had some electricians in to fix the lights in our new stadium. They worked a long day. When they were through it was late and I asked them if they wanted to sleep over because Melbourne is a 45-mile drive. They asked me if they’d have to sleep under the same roof as Negro players and I told them, ‘Of course.’ They said they couldn’t. What did I say to that? It doesn’t matter. You couldn’t print it, anyway.”

Although the staff at
Our Sports
dispatched hundreds of copies of
press releases, nobody picked up that story. Nobody at all. It was as if Stanky and O’Malley had spoken in a vacuum. Jack’s column that month, “My Feud with Leo Durocher Is Over,” exploded with vitality and inside stuff. Nobody seemed to notice that story either, except for Durocher, who wrote a thank-you letter to Robinson.

Now we come to the column about Branch Rickey. Here it is exactly as Robinson and I presented it in the June 1953 issue of
Our Sports
. The column was called “The Branch Rickey They Don’t Write About.” It ran under the line “
By Jackie Robinson
.”

“Prejudice” is a word that usually sticks in my throat. But don’t be shocked when I admit to a prejudice of my own.

I’m prejudiced in favor of Branch Rickey, the man who gave me a chance to destroy baseball’s color line. And that’s one prejudice built on more than emotion. It stands on dozens of hard, but pleasant facts.

Emotion enters into it, of course. Admiration and gratitude and a lot of other feelings that are hard to express. Perhaps the best way to explain is to go back to October 1, 1952—the day the Dodgers opened the World Series against the Yankees.

Come back to Ebbets Field with me and look at the 35,000 spectators who filled every seat in the ballpark and every inch of standing room. If you study the countless faces through my eyes, you’ll know just what I mean.

To me there were only two people in Ebbets Field that day who really mattered—my wife, Rae, and Mr. Rickey. It was for Rae and Rickey that I wanted to win the series so badly. The Yankees won, but I’ve been a Dodger for seven years and I know how to take a loss philosophically.

“Wait till next year.” Isn’t that what the philosophy book says? I have a hunch the Dodgers will write a new chapter this October. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Perhaps it seems strange for a Dodger infielder to want to win a World Series from the Yankees for the general manager
of the Pittsburgh Pirates. When you think about it, though, it isn’t strange at all.

In the first place, Rickey’s ties to Brooklyn didn’t end when he went to Pittsburgh at the close of the 1950 season. Most of the Dodgers who played in last year’s series came into their own under Mr. Rickey. Fellows like Roy Campanella and Duke Snider entered the game through his help. Others, like Preacher Roe and Billy Cox, came to Brooklyn and reached their primes under him. Still others, like Pee Wee Reese, were boosted to greatness by an assist from Rickey. The 1952 Dodgers were pretty much his club—certainly more so than the 1952 Pirates. We were his boys and I know he was pulling for us. That’s one reason I didn’t want to let him down.

In the second place, without Branch Rickey there probably would have been no Jackie Robinson in baseball, nor a Monte Irvin or a Larry Doby. At a time in life when most men settle down in rocking chairs, Rickey launched a crusade. He battled until the crusade was a universally recognized success. He succeeded because he had something called “guts”—and even eloquent Rickey couldn’t find a better word for it.

Mr. Rickey, as you know, is a great man with words. Baseball writers who make a living by turning phrases can’t touch him. The first time I met Branch I knew he was a spellbinder. I knew he was sincere too.

In Chicago, summer of 1945, someone said, “There’s a man outside the clubhouse who wants to see you.”

I went over to see “the man.”

“My name’s Clyde Sukeforth,” he said. “I’m with the Brooklyn Dodgers. How are you feeling?”

“Pretty well, thanks. My arm’s a little sore from a fall on the base paths, but I’m okay.”

“I’ve been watching you for a while. Would you mind going out to the infield and throwing a few from short to first?”

“I don’t think I can. My arm is so sore I can’t play.”

“Never mind then,” Sukeforth said.

Then he asked me something I’ll never forget. “Can you
come to New York with me to see Branch Rickey, the Dodger president?”

“Sure,” I said. “Sure.”

I was thinking much more than that one word. I was thinking that this might be a gag, a cruel gag. I didn’t dare think of becoming a Dodger. Hundreds of other things entered my mind, and I was still thinking when we got off the train in New York.

The first time I saw Branch Rickey he was setting up a smokescreen with his cigar. Behind the smoke was a face revealing sincerity.

“Do you think you are capable enough to play baseball in the major leagues?” Mr. Rickey began.

“I don’t know. I’ve only played professional baseball for one year. I don’t know how the Negro Leagues stack up against the minors, let alone the majors.”

Mr. Rickey did not wait to deliver his punch line. “I am willing to offer you a contract in organized baseball. Are you willing to sign it?”

Now I was the one who did not hesitate.

“Certainly,” I said.

Then Mr. Rickey began to speak. He spoke of barriers to be broken and how to break them. He spoke of bigotry and hate and how to fight them. He spoke of great things to be done and how to do them.

He spoke of himself and how his own family had advised him against signing a Negro because at his age the bitterness he’d have to face might make him sick, or even kill him.

He spoke of my future in baseball and of the taunts and insults that would be hurled in my face and the dusters that would be hurled at my head.

He spoke of others who would wait for me to slip so they could say that Branch Rickey had been wrong and that baseball was no place for Negroes.

All this he hurled at me like thunder. And then he asked me if I still wanted to sign.

“Certainly,” I said again.

Looking back now, I think Branch Rickey had a vision of what was to be. What he said would happen did and the method—his method—to progress was the right way and the only way.

“Above all,” he warned me, “do not fight. No matter how vile the abuse, ignore it. You are carrying the reputation of a race upon your shoulders. Bear it well and a day will come when every team in baseball will open its doors to Negroes. The alternative is not pleasant.”

A few months after our first meeting, Rickey announced my signing to the press. In a few more months I was on the Montreal squad.

It was in the International League that I first came to know Rickey’s ability to do the right thing at the right time. He called me just before we went to Syracuse for a series there.

“Someone has informed me,” he said, “that you’re in for a considerable amount of abuse at Syracuse. They intend to bring you to a boil so you can hardly play. The way to beat them is to ignore them.”

I was abused in Syracuse during the following days but I didn’t come to a boil. I had been forewarned so I ignored the remarks and played my game. There were other similar incidents that year. Each time Mr. Rickey called the turn.

The next year—1947—when I was promoted to the Dodgers, Rickey did more than call the turns. I know now—I didn’t know then—that a lot of club-owners ganged up on him and tried to run me out of baseball. He received crackpot letters and a dozen different pressures were put on him. He didn’t yield an inch.

And he did more than that. He spoke to Negro leaders, civic groups and churchmen in every National League city. We both knew that just as we were carrying a great responsibility, so were the Negro fans who came to see me play. Their actions would be watched just as mine were and the I-told-you-so guys were looking for slips. Disorder in the stands was as
deadly as disorder on the field. Working hand-in-hand with leaders of our race, Mr. Rickey did all that any man could have done to let the fans know the importance of their role.

“There will be race riots in half the ballparks,” the know-it-alls were saying. “You mix all those Negroes and whites in the stands when Robinson plays and there’s going to be a blow-up.”

Negroes and whites have been watching me in the majors for seven years but Mr. Rickey laid so careful a groundwork that nothing has blown up on my account. Except, of course, a few ballgames, but that’s the way I earn my money.

I’ve mentioned money and Mr. Rickey in the same paragraph and I guess that prompts a question.

“Is Branch Rickey a tightwad?” I’ve been asked time and again. A writer on one New York paper invented a nickname—“El Cheapo”—for Mr. Rickey and almost every day the sports pages ran stories about his stinginess.

That’s hard for me to understand. With the help of a newspaperman, I did a little research and I learned that the Ebbets Field press club was always well-stocked. Anytime any sportswriter wanted to he could enjoy some fine old Scotch whisky with the compliments of “El Cheapo.” And the liquor wasn’t there to keep Rickey’s throat moist when he was talking at press conferences either. Mr. Rickey does not drink.

In my own financial dealings with Mr. Rickey, I learned he was as fair a man to work for as a ballplayer could ask. My first year with Brooklyn I was paid $5,000, the minimum. Almost all rookies get that. The next year Rickey nearly tripled my salary—jumped it to $14,000. I got periodic boosts after that and when Mr. Rickey left Brooklyn I was well up in the $30,000 class.

President Walter O’Malley and the rest of the current Dodger management are a fine group of men—but they aren’t paying me a cent more than Mr. Rickey did in his last year at Brooklyn. I’m as good now as I was then and I’m older. As a rule, if a player doesn’t slump, he gets raises as he gets older.

Maybe you think my prejudice for Mr. Rickey is influenced by the way he handles money. Pee Wee Reese isn’t prejudiced and he agrees with me.

“They never accuse Larry MacPhail of being cheap,” Pee Wee once told me, “but until I played for Mr. Rickey I never got much of a break in my contract. Larry never made me rich; Mr. Rickey fixed it so I had real income tax worries for the first time.”

Other players second Pee Wee’s opinion. Dodger salaries as a whole are no higher than they were when Mr. Rickey left. In the meantime we’ve won a pennant and the cost of living has gone up.

Along with “tightwad,” “fraud” is another charge I’ve heard hurled at Rickey by people who don’t know any better. Was he a fraud when he stood alone in organized baseball and signed me?