Jackie Robinson

"Jackie Robinson was a sitter inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides." 

(Martin Luther King Jr.)

Pitchers threw at his head.  Runners tried to spike him.  Players taunted him.  Fans issued death threats.  The Brooklyn Dodgers Jackie Robinson, despite all of the abuse, turned the other cheek.  It was through his talent on the baseball field, rather than through fighting back, that he earned the respect of the nation.  

Jackie Robinson at UCLA courtesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson#Minor_leagues.

Born in rural Georgia and raised in Pasadena, California, Jackie Robinson faced adversity at an early age when his father walked out on his family.  Robinson excelled as an athlete, lettering in four sports at the U.C.L.A.  He joined the Army where he even learned how to box.  It was during his Army stint that he was reprimanded for sitting beside a white person on a bus.  It would be the first of many reprimands.

Jackie Robinson in the U.S. Army courtesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson#/media/File:Jackie_Robinson_military.jpg.

Brooklyn Dodgers coach Branch Rickey saw promise in Jackie Robinson.  He asked him to sign with his farm team, the Montreal Royals.  He had one question for the athlete:  "Did he have the guts?"  Jackie immediately said yes.  Mr. Rickey qualified the question:  "Did he have the guts not to fight back?"  Jackie promised to keep his temper in check.

Jackie Robinson playing for the Montreal Royals courtesy 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson#Minor_leagues.

In 1947, Jackie broke the colour barrier in major league baseball when he played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers.  It was a historic occasion, but it was the first step in the process of integration.  Travelling with the team, Jackie was sometimes banned from the all white hotels.Some Dodgers voiced formal complaints about a black being on the team.  IN an era when Black sports reporters still sat in the stands rather than the press box, fans booed Jackie.  Some stadiums banned the baseball club they had a Black player on their team.  And Phillies player, and later manager, Ben Chapman called Jackie a "nigger" and told him to "Go back to the cotton fields."  The abuse was so volatile that it made headlines in the New York papers.  

Jackie Robinson poses with Ben Chapman circa 1947, a publicity stunt to prove that Chapman was not a racist courtesy http://seamheads.com/2013/04/20/ben-chapman-and-jackie-robinson/.

However, some individuals stood behind Jackie.  Mr. Rickey continued to support his newest player.  A black sports writer befriended Jackie and followed him from game to game, reporting on his success.  And Jackie's wife, Rachel, was always by his side, giving Jackie a stability that he never had when he was a little boy.  

The Robinsons on their wedding day circa 1946 courtesy http://munaluchibridal.com/throwback-thursdays-the-marriage-of-jackie-and-rachel-robinson-1940s-wedding-fashion/.

Jackie led the Dodgers to a World Series pennant in 1955 and retired two years later, to the disappointment of his loyal fans.  In a shocking twist, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles shortly thereafter.  The times were changing.  

Brooklyn Dodgers win the World Series in 1955 courtesy http://lipulse.com/2015/10/02/celebrating-the-60th-anniversary-of-the-dodgers-world-series-win/.

Jackie worked as an executive at Chock Full of Nuts.  He became the voice of the civil rights movement.  He never hesitated to speak up about what was wrong with America.  He participated in the famous March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream speech in 1963.  Jackie never had the chance to enjoy his retirement.  He succumbed to diabetes and heart disease at the young age of 53.

Jackie Robinson, with wife Rachel on the right and son David on the left, participates in the famous March on Washington in 1963 courtesy 

http://theundefeated.com/features/jackie-robinson-vs-malcolm-x/.

Baseball : Where Memory Gathers

"Baseball, because of its continuity over the space of America and the time of America, is a place where memory gathers." (Donald Hall)

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348561584l/6656790.jpg

Apart from the two years that the Toronto Blue Jays won the Major League championship, I have not been a baseball fan.  However, in recent years, I have discovered a handful of picture books which not only bring baseball, but history, to life (Jackie's Gift, All Star!  Honus Wagner and the Most Famous Baseball Card Ever, Campy:  The Story of Roy Campanella, Willie and the All Stars).  I have realized that the two are interchangeable.  As Donald Hall explains:  "Baseball, because of its continuity over the space of America and the time of America, is a place where memory gathers." (http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/baseball/)

Ebbets Field circa 1912 courtesy http://www.oldnycphotos.com/bbm311.html.

Back in 1909, Charles Hercules Ebbetts bought an old garbage dump called Pigtown.  Three years later he constructed a ball park, Ebbetts Field, the future home of the Trolley Dodgers.  The team had been named for its loyal fans who dodged trolleys on Brooklyn's busy streets.  As Walt Whitman explained, the sport had permeated the city:  "In our sundown of perambulators of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters, playing base, a certain game of ball...Let us go forth awhile and get better air in our lungs.  Let us leave our close rooms...The game of ball is glorious." (http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/baseball/)

As Ken Burns says, "baseball is a powerful metaphor for America".  The changes that the Brooklyn Dodgers have undergone are indicative of the changes the nation has undergone.  Burns points out that baseball touches on:  race, immigration, labor and management, pop culture and advertising, heroes and villains.  

Firstly, let's talk about immigration.  "In the 1930's and 1940's, Brooklyn was a melting pot of immigrants trying to make a buck." (https://books.google.ca/books?isbn=0595314287)  

Roy Campanella, the son of an Italian immigrant, played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  His father used to pedal fruits and vegetables out of his truck.

Baseball is also the history of race.  Number 42, Jackie Robinson, broke the colour barrier when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2013/04/april-15.html).

Former Brooklyn manager Leo Durocher was suspended in 1947 for "association with known gamblers" after being involved in a rigged crap game.

The Brooklyn Dodgers produced its share of heroes including Roy Campanella, who after suffering a terrible car accident, was paralyzed and wheel chair ridden for the rest of his life.  He never gave up, however, and continued to lead a productive life off of the baseball field.

The Brooklyn Dodgers' history culminated with the winning of the World Series in 1955.  However, the joy for Brooklynites was shortlived for the team moved to Los Angeles only two years later.

It's hard to believe the influence that baseball has had on pop culture.  The Glossary of English Idioms Derived from Baseball (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_English-language_idioms_derived_from_baseball) includes dozens of expressions such as:

• Play ball!
• grand slam
• ballpark figure
• to knock it out of the park\batting a thousand
• you're in the big leagues now
• charley horse (1887)
• cover one's bases
• throw someone a curveball
• extra innings
• grandstanding
• step up to the plate

Ken Burns Baseball series proves that baseball truly is "America's pastime".  Comprised of nine "innings", the series includes photographs, drawings, paintings, lithographs and newsreels.  Just as the Civil War series has the "Ashokan Farewell", the Baseball series has "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" a song dating back to 1908.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/po_stmo.shtml

You Give Me the Number and I'll Give You the Guts!

Image courtesy www.wbez.org.

Rob and I just saw the movie "42" last night and we were thoroughly impressed.  Based on the life of baseball great Jackie Robinson, the movie tells the tale of how he broke the colour barrier in professional baseball.  It is a story of a true hero, a hero who endured taunts and death threats, but who never lowered himself to his enemy's level.

Jackie Robinson, the son of Georgia sharecroppers, never knew his father who abandonned the family when he was just a baby.  His mother moved the family to California where Jackie attended UCLA, lettering in not one but four sports.  After a brief stint in the Army, Jackie signed up with the Montreal Royals.  Only a year later, he signed on with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

It was on this date in 1947 that Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier in professional baseball.  He was the first black player to set foot on the field with whites since the 1880's, the time of Reconstruction.  With his arrival came immediate rumblings:  rumblings from Jackie's teammates; rumblings from the opposing team; rumblings from the opposing coaches; rumblings from the crowd; and rumblings in the press.  What was a black man doing playing on a white baseball team?

The movie highlights one particular game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Jackie was up to bat.  While he tried to focus on the pitch, he had a constant barrage of taunts from the Pirates coach behind him.  Not one to hold his cool in the past, and not one to bend easily to Jim Crow laws, Jackie came close to losing it.  Finally, he'd had enough and he ran under the stands, smashing his baseball bat against a cement wall and breaking it into several pieces.

Photo of coach who taunted Robinson who agreed to a posed shot only after pressure from the Phillies owner courtesy wordpress.com. 

It was there that he was met by the Dodgers' owner, Branch Rickey, a Christian businessman.  He reminded Jackie that the road to integration in baseball would not be easy.  He reminded him that like our Saviour, Jesus Christ, he would have to turn the other cheek.    He reminded him that if he fought back, the press would claim that he threw the first punch.  He reminded him that he still had complete faith in him.The best way to fight back would be to play his heart out and win the game.

Jackie didn't give up that day.  He marched back on the field and he played his heart out.  And his teammates started to fight back on his behalf.  One of them stood up to the Pirates coach who had been harassing Jackie.  The Dodgers ended up winning the game.

But it wasn't the end of the fight.  Jackie endured many death threats in the coming months.  He was run out of town in Florida during spring training.  And he was denied entry into hotels where the other team members stayed.

Jackie often wondered why the Dodgers owner, Mr. Rickey, signed him in the first place.  Why was he willing to field the inevitable questions that the media would direct his way about signing a black baseball player?  Why was he willing to put up with the fights that broke out in the locker room over the fact that one of the team's players was black.  Why was he willing to put up with the team being turned away from hotels simply because one of its players was black?

Photo of Mr. Rickey courtesy 4.bp.blogspot.com. 

At first, Mr. Rickey claimed that he was strictly a keen businessman with a good eye for talent.  But later he revealed that when he was young, he met a young black baseball player like Jackie, but he didn't do enough to help him.  He vowed that if he had the opportunity again, he would help the next black baseball player who came into his life.

Bit by bit, Jackie's teammates accepted him as a full fledged member of the team.  Bit by bit coaches saw the incredible talent that he possessed.  Bit by bit, crowds started to see the promise in the young baseball player.  And bit by bit the media discovered what a legend in the making Jackie was.

Photo courtesy www.americaslibrary.gov. 

One journalist in particular took Jackie under his wing and looked out for him as he travelled from town to town.  He would make sure that Jackie had lodgings since most of the hotels would not accept blacks.  The journalist had a unique perspective since he too was black.  Just as Jackie had been refused entry into the white baseball teams at first, so too was this journalist refused entry into the white press box.  He sat in the stands with the fans and typed on a typewriter perched on his lap.

Jackie was not just a hero on the baseball field.  He was also a hero at home.  While his father ran out on him, he vowed that his children would know him, and know him well.  He and his wife raised three children and he was married until the day he died in 1972.  His baseball number, 42, is the only number to be permanently retired from the sport.  As Jackie had said to Mr. Rickey when he signed him:  "You give me a number on my back, and I'll give you the guts."  Thank you, Jackie, for your courage!

Photo courtesy www.findingdulcinea.com.

*First published in 2013.

Wendell Smith Recommends Robinson to Rickey

When Jackie Robinson played, he turned an upside down nation right side up. (Roger Rosenblatt)  

The movie 42 features a man who sits in the stands at Ebbetts Field with his typewriter in his lap, furiously typing away names, dates and stats.  He is not a baseball player; he is not a manager; he is a journalist -- a black journalist.  That is why he sits in the stands rather than in the press box.  He is on a mission -- to desegregate the game of baseball.

Wendell Smith played baseball back in the 1930s.  In fact, he won the American League championship game in 1933.  A scout in the stands, so impressed by Smiths play, spoke to him after the game:  I wish I could sign you, but I cant, he said.  He signed the opposing pitcher, a white, instead.  Smith vowed then and there that he would help to get the first black player into the major leagues.

He would reach his goal, however, with a typewriter, not with a ball and glove.  Smith was hired by the Pittsburgh Courier, the most influential black newspaper in the country.  He highlighted the names of 20 black players that he felt were good enough to make it in the big leagues.  His suggestions were also published by the Communist paper The Daily Worker.  Despite his comprehensive pieces, Smith was rejected by the Baseball Writers Association of America due to his colour.

In 1938, Smith polled the big league players in a Pittsburgh Hotel lobby and discovered that 75% were not opposed to integration on the baseball field.  However, owners were not hiring them; all that is, except, Branch Rickey, head of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Smith approached Rickey and told him how impressed he was with a young black player named Jackie Robinson.  In 1947, Rickey, who had also vowed to help get the first black into the major leagues, signed Robinson.

It was Smiths job to be in charge of Robinsons travel and lodging arrangements while he was on the road, given that he was not allowed to eat and sleep at the same hotels as the white players. Something as simple as a black using a restroom at a gas station was cause for conflict in the Jim Crow South.  Smith helped smooth over those rough early days in Florida during spring training. Robinsons teammates did not accept him right away, nor did the fans.  But Rickey and Smith backed him up, and Robinson delivered with the bat and with his feet.  As Roger Rosenblatt explained:  "When Jackie Robinson played, he turned an upside down nation right side up."

http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2012/05/bessemers_andre_holland_comes.html