Robert B. Parker’s Double Play

Bent for Blood at Ebbets Field

Do you remember when a gun for hire almost shot Jackie Robinson at Ebbets Field from behind the dugout on the first-base line? Of course, you do. How could you forget a moment like that? Everybody was there: Dixie Walker, Ralph Branca, Clyde Sukeforth, Eddie Stanky, Pee Wee Reese, and Spider Jorgensen. They all saw it. Hilda Chester and her cowbell along with the Dodger Sym-Phony saw it, too. They saw the man in the short-sleeve Hawaiian shirt pull a pistol from his lunch bag and point it at Jackie Robinson.

If you’re having a hard time remembering, let me refresh your memory. After the shooter aimed his pistol, but before he got a round-off, he was shot twice, possibly three times, by unknown gunmen.1 He slumped over dead on the first-base dugout and Jackie continued to play baseball unharmed. The guardian angel shooters were never caught, but nobody really looked that hard for them. The real bad guy was dead and they were the unsung heroes.

Still having a difficult time placing the aforementioned actions? One reason might be because none of it ever happened. Although, given the climate of our country at the time of Robinson’s major-league baseball career, and the well-documented history of death threats against him, this kind of violence is not that far-fetched. But no, in reality, there was no man in a Hawaiian shirt bent on assassinating Jackie Robinson only to be foiled in the final seconds. This was all from the mind of author Robert B. Parker and contained within the pages of his exciting novel, Double Play.

Getting to know Mr. Parker

When one thinks of Robert B. Parker, if they know anything about him, they don’t typically think baseball writer. You’re not going to find his image next to W.P. Kinsella’s, or his smiling mug sandwiched between Roger Angell and Bill James. You are much more likely to find Parker’s list of related searches populated by Elmore Leonard, Dean Koontz, and Raymond Chandler. He was a writer of fast-paced fiction, mostly of the mystery/detective genre, who also had a deep love of baseball, which is evident in the pages of Double Play.

Parker was born on September 17, 1932, in Springfield, Massachusetts. He attended Colby College in Maine where he earned a bachelor’s degree. Following his graduation, he served in the U.S. Army and fought in the Korean War. Shortly after the completion of his service, he was married to Joan Hall. They were married for 53 years, until his death, and had two sons, named David and Daniel.2

After the Parkers were married in 1956, it was time to get down to the business of starting and supporting a family. While Parker’s dream was to be a writer, he needed a steady income. So he joined corporate America as an editor and technical writer working in advertising and insurance. Robert quickly tired of the corporate life and decided to head back to college and pursue a teaching career that would also permit some writing time on the side. He graduated from Boston University with a Ph.D. and began teaching at Northeastern University, where he put his writing plan into action.3 In 1973 his first novel, The Godwulf Manuscript, was published.

The Godwulf Manuscript was the first of his Spenser novels; he eventually wrote over 30 books in the series. It was the Spenser novels that put Parker’s name on the map, bringing him wealth and critical acclaim. He went on to release two other best-selling series and many other stand-alone novels, all of which saw great success, including the western Appaloosa, which was made into a movie starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen. In total, Parker wrote nearly 70 books before his death on January 8, 2010.4 He suffered a heart attack and was found at his desk. He had been working on a novel when he passed.

Double Play

Robert Parker was well into a successful writing career when Double Play, one of three of Parker’s novels published in 2004, was released. Double Play was a break from the norm for Parker and a nice change of pace for readers who had tired of the previous 30 Spenser novels.

The critical response to Double Play was overwhelmingly favorable. Publisher’s Weekly went so far as to state that “Parker…has never written so spare and tight a book; this should be required reading for all aspiring storytellers.”5 The Kirkus book review took it a step further saying that “the talk is electric, the pacing breakneck, the cast colorful and empathic. After a couple of so-so efforts, Parker flat out nails it here.”6 It is safe to say that Parker critically saved his career with Double Play by writing a “deeply felt and intimately told memory tale.”7

The plot of Double Play follows a typical, sometimes referred to as “Parkeresque,” novel. The chapters are three to four pages long with short paragraphs and a simplistic, blunt, Hemingway-like writing style. The central character of the book is Joseph Burke, an ex-Marine who took “five .25 caliber slugs”8 to the chest at Guadalcanal, which sent him to a hospital and put him out of commission for nearly a year. While laid up, Burke’s wife left him, leaving behind a deeply scarred man. But, being the supremely trained killing machine that he is, Burke is not only physically tough, but also mentally, and he develops a protective exterior to guard his psychological wounds. He finds that the best medicine is to not care about anything.

But, even those who don’t care need money to survive, so Burke looks for a job doing what he knows best, which is being a tough guy. Initially, he tries his hand at boxing, following the advice of a fellow Marine that he served with, but sees little success other than a black eye and a headache. He then becomes an enforcer in the underworld followed by a bodyguard for a spoiled heiress (who he falls for). This path eventually leads him to Branch Rickey who needs someone to protect his new rookie. The rookie is, of course, Jackie Robinson.

Shortly after their meeting, and Rickey’s hiring of Burke as Robinson’s bodyguard, Jackie and Burke run into some trouble at a restaurant owned by a low-level mobster. They are grabbing a bite to eat after a doubleheader against the Giants and the mobster, Mr. Paglia, offers a bottle of champagne to Robinson. Robinson respectfully declines the bottle, but in the process offends Mr. Paglia. It is this confrontation that ultimately sets up much of the action in the story and the dramatic attempted assassination of Robinson at the close of the book. And while the physical drama of the story keeps the reader turning the pages, it is numerous emotional storylines that are the real meat behind Double Play.

 

There are a few different arcs taking place in Double Play. The first is that of Burke. We learn about his backstory from how he met his wife, his injury, his descent into being an emotional recluse, and his eventual salvation in the arms of the aforementioned spoiled heiress. The second storyline is that of “Bobby.” The storyline of Bobby is completely separate from the rest of the book. The Bobby chapters, of which there are 10, are printed in italics and obviously reflect the experiences of a 16-year-old Parker (whose first name is Robert or Bobby). During the Bobby chapters, Parker discusses his love of baseball, his concern over racial tensions, and seeing Jackie play at Ebbets Field while “sitting among Negroes, between two heavy black women.”9 The Bobby chapters are a way for Parker to tell his story and reflect on why he felt the deep need to write a book about Robinson in his voice.

The third storyline is Jackie Robinson. Robinson doesn’t “physically” enter the book until chapter 17 when he is introduced to his intended bodyguard, Joseph Burke, by Branch Rickey. “Robinson came in wearing a gray suit and a black knit tie…[and] moved as if he were working off a steel spring.”10 Burke and Robinson don’t necessarily hit it off, but they don’t dislike one another either. There is a guarded quality about their first interaction that remains for some time. Initially, it is obvious that protecting Robinson is just a job for Burke, but as he gets to know Robinson that changes. Throughout their time on the road, eating meals, and staying together in Black hotels, Burke experiences the day-to-day racism that Robinson must endure. It is through these experiences that Burke develops an understanding of the Black experience.

We also follow the historical Robinson who is surrounded by numerous Dodger greats, both players and personalities. But most important is Robinson’s character and the moral center that it provides in the novel. His temperament gives the reader a barometer to which all others are judged including Robinson’s bodyguard, Burke.

Ultimately Robinson and Burke learn to trust each other and make it through a jungle filled with racism and violence, culminating in the shootout at Ebbets Field with the Hawaiian-shirted gunman. Following the squelched assassination attempt, Burke realizes, because of his time with Robinson, that he does care about living. His protective exterior is broken down and he allows himself a chance at love.

And while Burke has experienced the sweetness of redemption, Robinson has all the while been a normal guy just trying his best to make his way in the world and at the same time changing the course of history and opening the door of civil rights.

Parker, Jackie and What They Mean

Parker grew up an out-of-place Dodgers fan in New England. He was born during the Great Depression and was 9 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Until the advent of World War II, he grew up during FDR’s New Deal, which helped the country out of the Great Depression. When World War II engulfed the nation and the world in a violent struggle between good and evil everything changed for Parker. His idyllic, prosperous childhood was gone in an instant. It is through Double Play, and more specifically the Bobby chapters, that Parker expresses his sorrow for days past. By reliving, through Bobby, his final nice summer days before the war in 1941, he sets the elegiac tone for the book.

While the Bobby chapters are contemplative and dreamlike, the rest of the book is written with a sense of urgency, almost like Parker was trying to bring back what was lost from before the war and his New Deal childhood. It is through Robinson, Parker’s hero following World War II, that Parker tries to recapture, or save, what has been lost. If Parker can rescue his postwar hero, Jackie Robinson, in the pages of Double Play maybe he can preserve a piece of his prewar childhood.

While Parker attempts to recapture what was once lost through Jackie Robinson, he also puts Robinson in great peril throughout the book. Robinson is hunted both physically and mentally throughout Double Play. Both Robinson’s fictional story and the real-life events that he experienced are a microscopic reflection of what African American people have experienced in this country since they were forced to come here in chains. And while the physical chains are gone, the immaterial chains are just as strong, or stronger, than they were in 1619 or 1947. Robinson was hunted in real life, and the pages of Double Play, as African Americans are still hunted to this day on the streets of their own country. It is a somber thing to say, but sometimes it seems that not much has changed since Jackie Robinson took the field 75 years ago.

BENJAMIN SABIN is a baseball writer and editor for Last Word On Sports, editor-in-chief of Cheap Seats Press, and a baseball card artist. He enjoys keeping score at ballgames and prefers sauerkraut on his dogs. He is a proud SABR member since 2017.

 

Notes

1 Robert B. Parker, Double Play (New York: Berkley Books, New York, 2004(, 239.

2 https://www.bookreporter.com/authors/robert-b-parker

3 https://robertbparker.net/author

4 https://robertbparker.net/author

5 https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-399-15188-0

6 https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-b-parker/double-play/

7 https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/books/crime-594946.html

8 Parker, Double Play, 1

9 Parker, Double Play, 273.

10 Parker, Double Play, 98.