Posted
on January 31, 2014
Jackie Robinson is one of the most famous baseball players in history.
For
one thing, he was really good. In ten seasons, he played in
six World Series, and he contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World
Championship. He was selected six years in a row to play on the All
Stars, and he got the first MLB Rookie of the Year Award and a
National League Most Valuable Player Award. He was inducted into
baseball's Hall of Fame.
Another
reason Robinson is so famous is because he broke the “color
barrier.” Before Robinson signed on with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the National League had no black players; black baseball players
were consigned to the “Negro leagues.”
And
Jackie Robinson lived in the town I grew up in, Pasadena, California,
from age one until he he went away to college at UCLA. He attended
the same high school as my sister (but years and years before she did, of
course), and he attended the same junior college as my parents!
Of
course Robinson faced racism
and discrimination. I always assumed he was one of those guys who let
all that stuff roll off his back – I thought that was maybe why he
was the one chosen to break the color barrier – but in fact, Robinson
was assertive in the face of racism. As a young man, he had a few run-ins with police
officers; for example, Robinson once spoke up for a black friend who
was being detained by police for no apparent reason. Robinson's
questioning of the officers resulted in him being arrested and
getting a two-year suspended sentence. Later, while Robinson was in
the U.S. Army during World War II, he boarded a military-commissioned
bus line that was supposed to be integrated. The bus driver, though,
asked Robinson to sit in the back. Robinson refused, and the bus
driver had military police take him into custody. Robinson told the
investigating duty officer that the questions he and his assistant
were asking were racist, and eventually Robinson had to face court
martial hearings for “insubordination during questioning.” It's a
good thing that he was found innocent by a panel of nine officers
(who were all white, by the way), but the hearings alone were enough
to derail his military career.
Pro
Ball
I
didn't know that Robinson first tried pro ball in football. When World War II interrupted his football
career before it hardly began, he ended up going into baseball. He
played in the Negro leagues but wanted to play in the Major Leagues.
Unfortunately, the first tryout he attended, for the Boston Red Sox,
was a farce; instead of having an actual chance at a spot on the
team, the tryout was designed to humiliate Robinson and the other black players who
tried out.
Branch
Rickey from the Brooklyn Dodgers chose Robinson (even though he
wasn't the best player in the Negro leagues) to join his club and
break the color barrier. But Rickey asked Robinson to face the racial
slurs and hate speech that would surely be hurled at him without “rising to the bait,” without
fighting back. Rickey asked Robinson to turn the other cheek.
Once
Robinson made that commitment, he became a part of the Dodgers' farm
club, the Royals, and soon, in 1947, he was called up to the Big
Leagues. Of course, there were a lot of problems. Hotel owners and
Parks and Public Property directors stood in the way of integrated
games. Some Dodger players hinted that they would rather sit out than
to play with a black man. Some players on opposing teams complained
about having to play with him, or even threatened to go on strike. Some of the ballplayers
and managers called Robinson racial epithets.
And
I'm sure you've heard or figured out that some baseball fans yelled all sorts of
ugly words at Robinson. He also received hateful hate mail like these anonymous, cowardly notes.
But
there was also a lot of positive attention, too. Dodgers manager Leo
Durocher said that he didn't care if a player was yellow or black or
striped like a zebra; if he said that player was in the game, he was
in the game. Many white players and newspaper reporters thought that
integrating baseball was great. Robinson's teammate Pee Wee Reese
said, “You can hate a man for many reasons. Color is not one of
them.” And Reese showed physical support by putting his arm around Robinson when people were yelling racial slurs at him.
I was surprised to read that a 1947 poll (taken the year that Jackie Robinson broke the
color barrier) picked Robinson as #2 most popular man in the United States,
behind only Bing Crosby.
And of course since then his awards and recognition, his legacy and legend, have
only grown!
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