It’s an intimidating number, and I haven’t even begun to read all of those books and articles. In fact, it would be silly to say I’ve even tried. What I will do here is explore the various writings about Robinson that have passed through my library over the sixty years since a copy of his My Own Story turned up.2 My treatment will be biased; I’m a lifelong New York Giants fan, for whom Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers were always “the enemy.”

Jackie Robinson was undoubtedly a more complex human being than the mythic figure he has become. Even such serious academic historians as Eliot Gorn and Warren Goldstein seem to oversimplify his case in the following statement from A Brief History of American Sports.

For if the Jackie Robinson saga was a sports-world version of the early stage of the Civil Rights movement—restrained, self-sacrificing, aiming for justice and reconciliation, idealizing integration—the story of Muhammad Ali is just as powerfully rooted in the Black Power and black separatist movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s.3

Jackie never seemed restrained, particularly on the basepaths, to this Giants fan: He was a menace. I suspect that Gerald Early’s characterization of Robinson as “a complicated and admittedly often disturbing and unappealing man” is the truer one. Early’s essay “Jackie Robinson, Amiri Baraka, Paul Robeson, and a Note on Politics, Sports, and the Black Intellectual” from Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture is well worth reading for its portrait of Robinson, for its summary of Baraka’s views (for Baraka, Robinson was “the Frank- enstein’s monster of American racial pathology”),4 and for his mention that Martin Duberman’s “exhaustive” biography of Paul Robeson5 contains material on Robinson. Another essay on Robinson appears in Early’s The Culture of Bruising, in which he compares Robinson and Willie Mays.6

Jackie Robinson in his autobiographies tended more and more to acknowledge his own complexity. I used to own a paperback copy of the 1948 My Own Story (as told to Wendell Smith), undoubtedly given to me then by some rabid Dodger fan. I never would have bought it myself. Now I’m glad I have read it, even though it minimizes (but does not erase) the difficulties Robinson encountered through his first year in the majors. The mood of Robinson’s Baseball Has Done It (edited by Charles Dexter), interviews with African American major leaguers, is both combative and celebratory, as the title suggests.7 The title of Robinson’s 1972 autobiography, I Never Had It Made, suggests an emphasis on conflict.8 There’s an edition from Ecco Press currently available in bookstores.

It’s no coincidence that some of the best books ever written on the subject of baseball have Jackie Robinson as their subject. Roger Kahn’s solemn and operatic The Boys of Summer seems as vivid and substantial now as it did when published in 1971.9 The boys of summer are the Jackie Robinson Dodgers, and “the dominant truth of the Jackie Robinson Dodgers was integration.”10 Robinson himself “bore the burden of a pioneer and the weight made him more strong.”11 Robinson’s own ruin involved both the death of his first son and his own physical disintegration. Kahn finds himself shocked “to realize I was slowing my own pace so as not to walk too quickly for Jackie Robinson.”12 Quite probably the best academic study of any aspect of baseball is Jules Tygiel’s Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, available in a Vintage paperback.13 Tygiel sets Robinson’s career in the contexts of the Negro Leagues, Major League Baseball, and American culture at large. Several essays on Robinson, ancillary to Baseball’s Great Experiment, are gathered in Tygiel’s Extra Bases.14 Kahn’s Memories of Summer contains more material on Robinson.15

Over the years Robinson’s life has been the subject of several biographies. Arnold Rampersad’s Jackie Robinson: A Biography is thorough, exhaustive, comprehensive, and well written.16 It will prove one of the essential works on Robinson. Rampersad was well prepared to write Robinson’s life, having produced fulsome biographies of black intellectual and literary figures W. E. B. DuBois and Langston Hughes, the latter in two volumes. In addition, Rampersad helped Arthur Ashe with his autobiography Days of Grace, so he was already familiar with the intersection of sport and race.17 Finally, the Robinson family was enthusiastic about his writing the biography, and family papers and family members were available to him. Jackie’s family is a particularly strong presence in the book, as they were in his life.

Of the book’s seventeen chapters, two deal with his college career and the sports he participated in there and seven deal with his baseball career—one on the Negro Leagues, one on his year with Montreal, and five on his seasons with the Dodgers. The five other chapters probably constitute the largest amount of space devoted to a baseball player’s life subsequent to his playing days. The reason for this is the way Rampersad chooses to present Robinson, not simply as a baseball player but, as the author puts it, “someone chosen for a great task.”18 Late in the book Rampersad gets it all into a single sentence. “In 1947, black and handsome, athletically gifted but also cool and astute in his play, stoically enduring insult and injury, Robinson had revolutionized the image of the black man in America.”19 Rampersad’s Robinson is Martin Luther King’s Robinson. King calls Robinson “a pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road of Freedom. He was a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.”20 Like few other ballplayers—perhaps only Babe Ruth—Jackie Robin- son has significance far beyond his ball playing, and Rampersad keeps his focus on this.

Robinson’s daughter Sharon has published Stealing Home (HarperCollins, 1996), a memoir of the Robinson family, focusing on their lives beyond his ball playing.21 She subordinates Robinson the ballplayer to his life’s mission, “which began with integrating Major League baseball [and] continued in other areas after he retired.”22 Sharon Robinson speaks of her father as being more interested in public service and the civil-rights movement than in his various business enterprises.

She spends very little time on Robinson’s baseball career. Stealing Home is a family story, about being black and growing up with a celebrity father in the 1950s and 1960s. There is, however, a memorable passage in which Sharon Robinson reveals her sense of the importance of her father’s pioneering in baseball. On their property in Stamford, Connecticut was a lake on which the children and their friends would skate during the winter. It was Jackie’s job to “test the ice.” Armed with a shovel and broomstick, he would slowly make his way to the deepest part of the pond. Watching him, his daughter senses his bravery. “He was as brave then as when he entered baseball, a feat it took me years to appreciate. It dawned on me only gradually what it meant for him to break the baseball color line, the courage it took for him to enter uncharted, and dangerous, waters. He had to feel his way along an uncleared path like a blind man tapping for clues. That was Jackie Robinson. And that was my dad—big, heavy, out there alone on the lake, tapping his way along so the ice would be safe for us.”23

Though these two books are clearly the place to begin, there are several other biographies of Robinson that reward reading. Arthur Mann’s The Jackie Robinson Story24 is particularly interesting, because it was written so close to the events themselves, by a participant in at least some of them. The book’s thesis is that Robinson’s triumph is “not a triumph of Negro or white. It was a triumph of baseball.”25 Baseball itself is the hero of Mann’s story. Mann writes of Reese and Robinson that “this was the Branch Rickey dream come true, and the only thing he ever tried to prove: that real baseball playing transcends all theories of class, race, religion, color, and politics. The play is indeed the thing, and success on the sporting field has to spring from skill alone and the amalgamation of all skills for the good of the team.”26

Carl Rowan’s 1960 biography of Robinson, Wait Till Next Year: The Life Story of Jackie Robinson, takes another tack entirely, its title surely ironic. The book’s authors are listed as “Carl T. Rowan with Jackie Robinson,” and many passages in the book are in Jackie and Rachel’s own words. Writing at the start of the civil-rights movement, Rowan concludes that “future generations will remember [Robinson] not as the baserunner who worried pitchers to their doom, but as the proud crusader against pompous bigots and timid sentinels of the status quo—another symbol of a new Negro American.”27

Race continues to be prominent in two biographies published in the 1980s, Harvey Frommer’s Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier28 and Maury Allen’s Jackie Robinson: A Life Remembered.29 Though largely superseded by Rampersad and, in Frommer’s case, by Lee Lowenfish’s Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman,30 both books are still valuable because they make extensive use of interviews. Allen’s book, particularly, is full of quoted material from interviews. A third biography, David Falkner’s Great Time Coming, focuses on the public Robinson, as Falkner was denied access to the family and archival material, and has the distinction of being the first biography to look extensively at Robin- son’s life after his retirement from baseball.31

Scott Simon’s Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball 32 addresses Robinson’s first season with the Dodgers. The focus is on the tribulations Robinson experienced leading up to and during that first year. Simon puts Robinson’s difficulty quite simply: for him, the baseball diamond was “not simply a playing field” but a kind of war zone where the fight for racial equality occurred.33 Robinson’s story as Simon presents it is “a heroic American legend,” Robinson himself, blind and dying at age 53, “a martyr for the cause of racial integration.”34 Distinguished by its brevity, Simon’s book is the second volume of Turning Points, a series featuring “preeminent writers offering fresh, personal perspectives on the defining events of our time.”35 Simon acknowledges predecessors in his enterprise “with much more complete volumes,” mainly Rampersad and Tygiel.36 He confesses in his epilogue that “there is no need for a new chronicle about Jackie Robinson’s arrival in major league baseball. But it has been my privilege to try to tell one.”37 Nevertheless, his version is as readable as it is brief.

Something of an anomaly among these books is Joseph Dorinson and Joram Warmund’s Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports, and the American Dream.38 Dorinson and Warmund have edited a selection of papers from a 1997 academic conference on the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University commemorating Robinson’s major-league debut fifty years earlier, but their interest goes beyond the strictly academic. They describe the collection as a “heady mix of journalism, scholarship, and memory,” its authors as “scholars, sportswriters, journalists, ballplayers, and baseball fans.”39 These many voices “describe conditions prior to Robinson’s arrival, offer new perspectives on the events surrounding the integration of baseball, present reminiscences of the era, explore the impact of his breakthrough, and assess how far African-Americans have traveled in Robinson’s wake.”40 It’s a nice complement to Rampersad’s monumental biography, its many authors sometimes happily disagreeing.

Perhaps the most interesting section for SABRites is “Measuring the Impact on Baseball.” This section begins with an essay by David Shiner arguing that Robinson’s appearance “challenged the dominant conception of offensive strategy in white baseball at the time.”41 He brought over from the Negro Leagues a style of play that combined speed and power. Samuel Regalado’s essay shows how the player pool expanded enormously after Robinson’s appearance, including not only African Americans, but players from Central and South America.42 Finally, Lee Lowenfish’s essay details the machinations among the Dodgers’ owners that enabled baseball’s expansion to proceed.43

Robinson’s life, though, is inextricably tied to the history of the city of Brooklyn, and it’s not just that his body is buried there. Frederic Roberts’s essay “A Myth Grows in Brooklyn: Urban Death, Resurrection, and the Brooklyn Dodgers” engagingly considers the meanings of the connectedness of the team and the city.44 Several novels do this as well. Every Dodger fan should have a copy of Philip Goldberg’s This Is Next Year, a chronicle of Brooklyn in 1955, on his or her bookshelf. Ballantine Books published a paperback edition in 1991.45 Jay Neugeboren’s Sam’s Legacy is, among other things, a portrait of Brooklyn in the early 1970s with its “changing neighborhoods.”46 The Dodgers are a faint but unmistakable presence in the book, and the nature of “race” a major theme. The protagonist in the course of the novel has to emotionally adjust to the fact that his father has left Brooklyn to retire in—take a wild guess!—Los Angeles. So far as I know, the only edition of this book is the 1974 hardcover from Holt, Rinehart and Winston. For a scary look at Brooklyn in the 1980s, try Thomas Boyle’s crime novel Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.47 The Dodgers are still a presence, in fact more of a presence than in Sam’s Legacy. In Only the Dead Know Brooklyn, the subjects of race, gentrification, and the Dodgers are embodied in the figure of a psychotic killer, an albino African American who wears a Brooklyn Dodgers warm-up jacket and tells people he is the illegitimate son of Jackie Robinson. Penguin published a paperback of this book in 1986. Frederic Roberts gives it considerable attention in his essay mentioned above. The borough and the ballclub both evoke plenty of memories. Perhaps the most fervent collection of these ballclub reflections is Peter Golenbock’s Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers.48  Golenbock’s book contains plenty of talk from Dodger players, other employees, journalists, and fans. A complement to Golenbock’s book is Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer’s It Happened in Brooklyn: An Oral History of Growing up in the Borough in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.49 Coffee table-sized, this book offers both memories and photographs of the borough and its inhabitants (dozens were interviewed) during those years. Though Robinson and the Dodgers are a comparatively small part of this experience, Robinson made Brooklyn “a special kind of place.”50 It evokes much nostalgia, but the notion that Brooklyn is a changing place is also present.

Two more recent books depict what it was like to be a Dodger fan and a Dodger. Thomas Oliphant in Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family’s Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers describes what it was like to root for the Dodgers while growing up in a family devoted to liberal causes, particularly integration.51 Oliphant combines his own and others’ memories of Jackie Robinson’s arrival in Brooklyn and the team’s subsequent addition of other African American players. “It helped,” he says, “that Brooklyn itself was for that time the most tolerant and diverse place in America.”52 Carl Erskine calls his memoir of his time pitching in Brooklyn What I Learned from Jackie Robinson.53 Erskine is concerned to acknowledge that Robinson’s quest for racial equality extended to equality for all people, including Erskine’s Down-syndrome son Jimmy. Erskine concludes that “we all benefited from Jackie, and he helped us all understand ourselves and each other better. He had helped his race, but he helped mine more.”54

Here is Erskine on living in Brooklyn in the 1950s: “It was like living in a small town. Brooklyn had been that ephemeral middle ground. It was rural in aspects—beach-filled with crisp, clean, ocean breezes—and also had a strong cultural base.”55 Brooklyn, through these eyes, seems a little too good to be true, and in fact the borough was changing rapidly during these years, as both Oliphant and others interviewed by the Frommers notice. Relying on human memory is not always a good way to discover what happened. Henry Fetter, for instance, looks at National League attendance figures during Robinson’s rookie season and finds that Robinson’s presence had no discernible effect, despite the memories of many. This makes Fetter wonder about the idea “that Brooklyn provided a fortuitously welcome setting for this tale of racial tolerance.”56 Eschewing individual memory is also a focus for Jonathan Eig in his Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season.57 “I have tried in these pages not to imagine what Jackie Robinson went through in 1947,” he writes. “I have tried at every turn to present verifiable facts. The facts speak for themselves, and I think they speak much more powerfully than the myths that have come to cloud Robinson’s story.”58

Three books on Robinson and the Dodgers published in the late 1990s deserve special mention. Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait is an extraordinary picture book with an accompanying text by Robinson’s wife Rachel.59 The text itself seems rather thin, but there are many useful details. For instance, after they moved to Stamford, Connecticut, the Robinsons named their dog after supposed mentor Branch Rickey. This would suggest a relatively complicated relationship with the Mahatma. The pictures, though, are the more interesting part of the book. There’s one of Robinson leaving the Brooklyn clubhouse, looking very old. In the background a cat looks up at him. There are wonderful pictures with political implications: Robinson shaking hands with President Eisenhower at a formal dinner in 1953; later, Robinson sitting at a lunch counter with Malcolm X.

Carl E. Prince’s Brooklyn’s Dodgers is also a useful academic book, published in 1996 by Oxford University Press.60 Subtitled The Bums, the Borough, and the Best of Baseball, it attempts to show how the team embodied many of the social and political concerns of the day. It’s an intriguing effort to see a major-league team in its cultural context. Then there’s Jules Tygiel’s The Jackie Robinson Reader, published in 1997 by Dutton.61 Though much of the material will initially seem familiar to the SABRite, Tygiel’s stated concern is to make of the anthology “an alternative biography of Robinson.”62 While there are excerpts from the usual books—Kahn’s and Tygiel’s, for instance—there’s also a good deal of material collected from newspapers and magazines, and this makes the book especially valuable.

Tygiel’s anthology also reminds me again of all the books about Robinson and the Dodgers I haven’t read, but a Giants fan needs to keep a certain distance. I’m always comforted by the fact that when the Dodgers no longer wanted Robinson’s services they traded him to the Giants. To my mind, this is evidence that Giants owner Horace Stoneham was no dummy. As he said in a letter to Robinson, “I can’t help thinking it would have been fun to have had you on our side for a year or two.”63 And to this Giants fan it seems no more heretical than Leo Durocher’s sudden transfer from the Dodgers to the Giants during the 1948 season, or hated Giant Sal Maglie’s appearance as a Dodger pitching mainstay in 1956.

A few books covering the 1972 baseball season commemorate Jackie Robinson in the year of his death. Roger Angell’s Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion contains just a page on Robinson, but most of it needs to be quoted here. Angell remembers a scene from some twenty years before, one that convinced him that “we had asked [Robinson] to do too much for us.”

It was something that had happened during an insignificant weekday game between the Giants and the Dodgers back in the nineteen-fifties. Robinson, by then an established star, was playing third base that afternoon, and during the game something happened that drove him suddenly and totally mad. I was sitting close to him, just behind third, but I had no idea what brought on the outburst. It might have been a remark from the stands or from one of the dugouts; it was nothing that happened on the field. Without warning, Robinson began shouting imprecations, obscenities, curses. His voice was piercing, his face distorted with passion. The players on both teams looked at each other, uncomprehending. The Giants third-base coach walked over to murmur a question, and Robinson directed his screams at him. The umpire at third did the same thing, and then turned away with a puzzled, embarrassed shrug. In time, the outburst stopped, and the game went on.64

Clearly, Jackie Robinson’s psyche suffered as much, if not more, than his body did from the stress.

Joel Oppenheimer’s book on rooting for the 1972 New York Mets, The Wrong Season,65 concludes with a eulogy of Robinson. At its end, Oppenheimer remembers Robinson the baseball player: “We will talk about the stance, the bat held high, the head looming, and the ball bouncing off the wall in deep left center, and the crazy garbage truck run, the pigeon toes . . . and in a world where he was clean, and where, yes, Dixie Walker was clean too, with his long-bred hatred, and the point for both was to score the runs and make the flashing play.”66 The point for Oppenheimer? “For sure . . . Jackie deserved better than us.” In an extraordinary time, an extraordinary man, Jackie Robinson.

LEVERETT T. SMITH JR., a member of SABR since 1973, is author of “The American Dream and the National Game” (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1975). Since the mid-1990s he has reviewed books for the Bibliography Committee Newsletter.

Author’s note

Parts of this article appeared originally in SABR’s Bibliography Committee Newsletter, July 1997.

Notes

1. The Baseball Index, Society for American Baseball Research, baseballindex.org/.

2. Jackie Robinson and Wendell Smith, My Own Story (New York: Greenberg, 1948).

3. Eliot Gorn and Warren Goldstein, A Brief History of American Sports (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 218.

4. Gerald Early, “Jackie Robinson, Amiri Baraka, Paul Robeson, and a Note on Politics, Sports, and the Black Intellectual,” in Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture (New York: Ecco Press, 1989), 208–14.

5. Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson (New York: Knopf, 1988).

6. Early, The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture (New York: Ecco Press, 1994), 146–54.

7. Robinson, Baseball Has Done It, ed. Charles Dexter (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1964).

8. Robinson, I Never Had It Made (1972; New York: Ecco Press, 1995).

9. Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).

10. Kahn, xvi.

11. Kahn, xix.

12. Kahn, 402.

13. Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (New York: Vintage, 1984).

14. Tygiel, Extra Bases: Reflections on Jackie Robinson, Race, and Baseball History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

15. Kahn, Memories of Summer: When Baseball Was an Art and Writing about It a Game (New York: Hyperion, 1997).

16. Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1997).

17. Arthur Ashe and Rampersad, Days of Grace: A Memoir (New York: Knopf, 1993).

18. Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1997), 155.

19. Rampersad, 391.

20. Rampersad, 7.

21. Sharon Robinson, Stealing Home: An Intimate Family Portrait by the Daughter of Jackie Robinson (New York: HarperCollins, 1996).

22. Sharon Robinson, 23.

23. Sharon Robinson, 45.

24. Arthur Mann, The Jackie Robinson Story (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1956).

25. Mann, 154.

26. Mann, 218.

27. Carl Rowan, with Jackie Robinson, Wait Till Next Year: The Life Story of Jackie Robinson (New York: Random House, 1960), 339.

28. Harvey Frommer, Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier (New York: Macmillan, 1982).

29. Maury Allen, Jackie Robinson: A Life Remembered (New York: Franklin Watts, 1987).

30. Lee Lowenfish, Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007).

31. David Falkner, Great Time Coming: The Life of Jackie Robinson, from Baseball to Birmingham (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).

32. Scott Simon, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2002),

33. Simon, 3.

34. Simon, 4.

35. Simon, 9.

36. Simon, 164.

37. Simon, 151.

38. Joseph Dorinson and Joram Warmund, Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports, and the American Dream (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998).

39. Dorinson and Warmund, xii, xi.

40. Dorinson and Warmund, xxi.

41. David Shiner, “Jackie Robinson and the Third Age of Modern Baseball,” in Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports, and the American Dream, 149.

42. Samuel O, Regalado, “Jackie Robinson and the Emancipation of Latin American Baseball Players,” in Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports, and the American Dream, 157.

43. Lee Lowenfish, “The Two Titans and the Mystery Man: Branch Rickey, Walter O’Malley, and John L. Smith as Brooklyn Dodgers Partners, 1944–1950,” in Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports, and the American Dream, 165.

44. Frederic Roberts, “A Myth Grows in Brooklyn: Urban Death, Resurrection, and the Brooklyn Dodgers,” in Baseball History (summer 1987): 4–26.

45. Philip Goldberg, This Is Next Year (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992).

46. Jay Neugeboren, Sam’s Legacy: A Novel (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974).

47. Thomas Boyle, Only the Dead Know Brooklyn (New York: Penguin, 1986).

48. Peter Golenbock, Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New York: Putnam, 1984).

49. Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer, It Happened in Brooklyn: An Oral History of Growing up in the Borough in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1993).

50. Frommer and Frommer, 15.

51. Thomas Oliphant, Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family’s Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005).

52. Oliphant, 55.

53. Carl Erskine, What I Learned from Jackie Robinson: A Teammate’s Reflections On and Off the Field (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005).

54. Erskine, 147.

55. Erskine, 126.

56. Dorinson and Warmund, Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports, and the American Dream, 188.

57. Jonathan Eig, Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007).

58. Eig, 281.

59. Rachel Robinson and Lee Daniels, Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996).

60. Carl Prince, Brooklyn’s Dodgers: The Bums, the Borough, and the Best of Baseball, 1947–1957 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

61. Jules Tygiel, The Jackie Robinson Reader: Perspectives on an American Hero (New York: Dutton, 1997).

62. Tygiel, vii.

63. Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography, 308.

64. Roger Angell, Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), 51.

65. Joel Oppenheimer, The Wrong Season (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973).

66. Oppenheimer, 157.

Second base. It might not have the pizzazz of shortstop. It also might not have the glamour of third base, which is known as the “hot corner.” Fans don’t normally expect the same power numbers from a second baseman that they see in others who play the infield, like the stereotypical slugger who plays first base. And yet second base is called the keystone position.

Over the past century many second sackers have put up great offensive numbers. Twenty second basemen are enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.1 In an attempt to determine the greatest-ever offensive force from a second baseman, let’s list these Hall of Famers in approximately the chronological order in which they appeared in the major leagues. They all have played second base for most, if not all, of their careers. With the exception of Jackie Robinson, who was not permitted to play in the big leagues until he was 28 years old, and Joe Gordon, who missed two seasons during World War II, all the players listed had relatively long careers.2

(Click image to enlarge)

From this chart we can see that Robinson did indeed have the fewest number of games played. While Rogers Hornsby might be acknowledged as the greatest offensive second baseman to play the game, given that his Wins Above Replacement (WAR) value is higher than the others, we should recognize that it is difficult to compare players from different eras, especially given that some did not play in all of their potentially prime years.

That leads to the question: Who was the greatest second baseman of the late 1940s to mid-1950s, when Jackie Robinson played?

Jack Roosevelt Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, and he was immediately an everyday player. An everyday player who played first base. What?!?

Robinson had played second base for the Kansas City Monarchs as part of the Negro Leagues. In 1945, he batted .414 for the Monarchs. Signed by Branch Rickey, Robinson joined the Montreal Royals, the top farm team in the Brooklyn organization, in 1946. That season he led the International League by batting .349 and stealing 40 bases, all the while playing second base. When Robinson was called up to the Dodgers, he did not disappoint, leading the National League in 1947 with 29 stolen bases while posting a solid .297 batting average. The Brooklyn first baseman earned Rookie of the Year honors, winning the award over New York Giants pitcher Larry Jansen and Yankees hurler Spec Shea.

The 1946 Dodgers had featured a solid leadoff batter in Eddie Stanky. The 31-year-old Stanky led the National League in both 1945 and 1946 in walks, with 148 and 137, respectively. Combined with his .273 batting average in 1946, he had the knack of getting aboard and scoring runs. His on-base percentage was tops in the league that year (.436), so manager Burt Shotton penciled in Stanky to lead of in 1947 as well, in order for him to get on base and be moved along by the strong-hitting Robinson and perhaps driven in by Bruce Edwards, Carl Furillo, or Dixie Walker, all of whom had at least 80 RBIs in that season.

Since Stanky was a fixture at second base, Robinson played first. However, in 1948, Stanky was dealt to the Boston Braves during spring training. This meant that Robinson slid over to second base for the 1948 campaign, and over the course of his next nine seasons, Robinson played 748 games (starting 740 of them) at second base. More on this later.

Jackie Robinson, of course, was the first Black ballplayer to play major-league baseball in the twentieth century. No one knows what numbers Robinson would have put up had he been allowed to begin playing baseball at the age of 21 or so, like so many of the others now enshrined in Cooperstown. More than likely, though, his professional baseball career would have been affected by the war.

From our table above, we see that Robinson is one of five Hall of Fame second basemen who played during the mid-1940s to mid-1950s. Let’s trim the table to focus on Robinson’s playing era.

Using the WAR statistic, which is a nonstandardized measure that attempts to indicate how many more wins a player would provide for his team in lieu of a replacement player, we can compare the best players who played second base during Robinson’s time in the majors.

While there is no clear-cut or consistent formula to compute the WAR number, there is some sense of uniformity. Some websites calculate the statistic differently. Using baseball-reference.com/leaders, second baseman Rogers Hornsby ranks 12th in the all-time list with a WAR of 127.1. To put this number in perspective, the leader in this category is Babe Ruth with a WAR of 182.5. Robinson’s career WAR value (61.7) ranks 169th all-time.

Back to our era, which took place after World War II. How do Jackie Robinson, Bobby Doerr, Joe Gordon, Red Schoendienst, and Nellie Fox stack up against one another? Can we go beyond using WAR for comparison? For the sake of comparison, Billy Herman is not included, since he ended his career the season before Robinson started at second base. Likewise, Bill Mazeroski is not included, as he was a rookie in Robinson’s final playing season.

According to baseball-reference.com/leaders/WAR_career.shtml, WAR has a scale for a single season: 8+ indicates MVP quality, 5+ indicates All-Star quality, 2+ indicates a starter, and 0-2 indicates a reserve. Any number less than 0 indicates a replacement player. Further, WAR can be calculated as a total player number (offense and defense) or separately for offense and defense.

If we search for all second basemen3 who played from 1948 through 1956 who had an Offensive WAR (oWAR) of at least 4.0 (not quite All-Star quality), we obtain the following table (bold entries designate league leaders):

(Click image to enlarge)

Robinson is clearly the offensive leader. He put up six consecutive seasons in the top 10 list in oWAR during his career, from 1948 through 1953 (although he played only nine games at second base in 1953), and five of those times put him into the top 11 spots during this period. His 1952 oWAR mark of 7.8 led all major leaguers, not just second basemen, but as can be seen, it was only his third-best seasonal performance. He owns the top three spots in this table for all second basemen with his 1949, 1951, and 1952 performance, and he has four of the top five oWAR numbers. This also confirms Baseball-Reference’s ratings, as Robinson was the 1949 National League Most Valuable Player.

In his 1949 MVP season, Robinson led all National League batters with a .342 batting average. His 37 stolen bases led every player in the majors (as did the 16 times he was caught stealing).4 He had 17 sacrifice hits to pace the NL. His on-base percentage in 1952 (.440) was tops in the majors, justifying his replacement of Stanky in the lineup. By 1952, Robinson was batting in either the third or fourth position in the batting order. Robinson had six seasons in the top 10 in the National League Adjusted Batting Wins (consecutively, from 1949 to 1954). In three of those seasons, he placed in the top 10 of all major leaguers (1949, 1951, and 1952). Recall that Adjusted Batting Wins refers to a “set of formulas developed by Gary Gillette, Pete Palmer, and others that estimates a player’s total contributions to a team’s wins with his bat.”5 A value of 0 is an average performance, less than 0 is worse than average, and greater than 0 is better than average.

We see that many of the top-21 players in oWAR in the table above are indeed Hall of Famers, but none reached Robinson’s level.

DEFENSE

Robinson was a definite force with a bat, and once he got on base, he was a threat to score. What about his defense? Throughout baseball history, two qualities seem to have defined excellence at second-base defense: avoidance of errors and participation in double plays. Robinson’s plaque in Cooperstown claims that he “led second basemen in double plays four times.”6 However, some of the more recent measures seem to converge to a single point of agreement: The number of assists per game by a second baseman is of utmost importance in determining fielding skill. These numbers can be inflated in light of such matters as the first baseman’s range and the propensity of the pitching staff to induce groundballs.

In comparing offensive statistics of all second basemen in both the American League and National League from 1948 through 1956, we make some discoveries. First, Robinson did not start playing second base for the Dodgers until his second season (1948), when he played 116 games at second and 30 games back at first. (He also played six games at third base.) He then played all of his games from 1949 through 1952 at the keystone position (596 games). In 1953 the 34-year-old added the outfield to his repertoire (76 total games). In fact, after 1952, Jackie played only 36 games at second (in five seasons). As a result, in 10 seasons in the National League, Robinson played 748 games (with 740 starts) at second, which comes to 55.24 percent. Amazingly, he started in all but 10 of his 1,354 total games over that 10-season stretch.

Robinson was a six-time All-Star, and he received votes for the league’s Most Valuable Player award in all but two seasons, claiming the honor in 1949. In 1953 he was voted in as a reserve All-Star outfielder and appeared as a pinch-hitter. The next season, he was the starting left fielder in the senior circuit’s lineup.

By comparison, Joe Gordon played all but two games in his career at second. He won the AL MVP Award in 1942 and was a nine-time All-Star. Bobby Doerr played all of his games at second and was a nine-time All-Star. Nellie Fox played all but eight games in his career at second. (And those eight were in his final season.) He won the AL MVP award in 1959 and was a 15-time All-Star (including twice each season from 1959 to 1961). Red Schoendienst played 1,834 games at second (89.7 percent of his total games) and was a 10-time All-Star.

What to do? How do we normalize the data for equal comparisons? The table below provides a Defensive WAR value for second basemen between 1948 and 1952 (bold entries designate league leaders).

From 1949 to 1952, there were 15 instances in which a second baseman had a Defensive Wins Above Replacement (dWAR) value of at least 1.5. (Robinson also comes in at 16th with a 1.4 mark in 1952.) Baseball-Reference concedes that the “replacement level on defense is the league average.”7

Robinson had a .983 fielding percentage in 748 games at second base, making 68 total errors but turning 607 double plays. There is a statistic known as WAR Fielding Runs (Rfield). The following table lists seasons for second basemen when an Rfield value of at least 6 was attained.

Fielding runs (Rfield) above average are relative to the positional average. Therefore, a +10 second baseman is 10 runs better than the average second baseman. The best during Robinson’s four seasons at second belongs to Detroit Tigers second baseman Jerry Priddy, with a value of +20 in 1950. But that was only one season. Only 18 times did a player score above 5, and Robinson had four of them (including the second-highest mark of 16 in 1951).

In 1951 Robinson led the National League in putouts (390) and assists (435) by a second baseman. Three times (1948, 1950, and 1951) he led all second basemen in fielding percentage.

Final note: A useful statistic in comparing the fielding of position players is the Total Zone Fielding Runs, which characterizes the number of runs above or below average the player was worth based on the number of plays made. Unfortunately, this statistic is available for second baseman only after 1953, the season when Robinson stopped his second-base duties.

It is safe to say that Robinson was the best second baseman in the majors, both offensively and defensively, during his playing days at the keystone position. His manager moved Robinson around the diamond and into the outfield, probably because he was a great athlete, but one thing is certain: Jackie Robinson deserved to be enshrined into the Hall of Fame based on his statistics.

Notes

1 The website at the Hall of Fame claims that 21 second basemen have been enshrined, but they show only 20 when directed to the page of second basemen.

2 Our list does not include Frank Grant, who played for the Cuban Giants, and, according to the Baseball Hall of Fame, was “perhaps the best of the African-American players who played in organized baseball in the 1880s, before the color line was drawn.” See baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/grant-frank.

3 The search restricts players who played at least 50 percent of their games in that season at second base.

4 Interestingly, Robinson stole 88 bases in his first three seasons but was caught 41 times. Over his next seven seasons, he stole 109 bases but was caught just 35 times.

5 See baseball-reference.com/leaders/abWins_top_ten.shtml.

6 See baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/robinson-jackie.

7 See baseball-reference.com/leaders/WAR_def_top_ten.shtml.

Jackie Robinson, center, shows his son Jack Jr. and the son of Roy Campanella the statue of Abraham Lincoln that stands outside the Essex County Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey in February 1951. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE)

On July 18, 1949, Jackie Robinson appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to testify against Paul Robeson, another prominent Black man who was accused of being a member of the Communist Party. It marked a turning point in the lives of both men. For Robinson, it meant being catapulted into the political arena, where he would remain until his death 23 years later. For Robeson, an internationally known opera star, the first African-American to ever play Othello on stage, and one who had walked a picket line outside Yankee Stadium to protest segregated baseball, it meant the end of his brilliant singing career.

Robinson’s impact on Robeson’s career in 1949 illustrates the complexity of his life during a crucial period in American history. Both were African-American men who had reached the pinnacle of their respective careers in a society dominated by Whites. But opera was not baseball and thus Robinson found himself in a much more influential position to integrate a segregated society. After all, it was Robinson who came alone and arrived before the others. He came before Campanella and Newcombe, before Doby and Miñoso, and before Mays and Aaron. He came before Banks, Clemente, Gibson, Brock, Stargell, and all the other greats. He came before Rosa Parks and James Meredith, before Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and before the Little Rock Nine, bus boycotts, freedom riders, and the March on Washington.

When baseball desegregated itself in 1947, the first major American institution to do so voluntarily, Jackie Robinson was penciled into the lineup for what was to become a whole new ballgame. He stood at home plate years before an executive order desegregated the US military, before the Supreme Court integrated public schools, and before Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Writing in Take Time for Paradise, Bart Giamatti emphasized the importance of an integrated game. “Late, late as it was, the arrival of Jack Roosevelt Robinson was an extraordinary moment in American history. For the first time a Black American was on America’s most privileged version of a level field.”1 Martin Luther King Jr. put it more succinctly during a meeting with Don Newcombe. “You will never know how easy it was for me because of Jackie Robinson,” he said.2

The year 1997 marked the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking major-league baseball’s racial barrier. Although remembered primarily for his athletic skills, both at UCLA and in a Dodgers uniform, Robinson always appeared to be someone on a much broader and more important mission in life. “He used his athletics as a political forum,” said his widow, Rachel, in an interview with Peter Golenbock. “He never wanted to run for office but he always wanted to influence people’s thinking.”3 Perhaps that explains why Mrs. Robinson always emphasized that Jackie was a civil-rights activist first and a ballplayer second.

Yet, despite numerous books and articles on Robinson the ballplayer published between 1947 and 1997, few drew attention to his role as a political activist. Consequently, only a small minority of Americans were aware of his battles with the military (he was court-martialed), his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify against Paul Robeson, his involvement with Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, and Thurgood Marshall during the Civil Rights Movement, and the role he played in several presidential campaigns.

The purpose here, therefore, is to paint a political portrait of Jackie Robinson. What were his major political views and which individuals (in baseball and out) were most influential in shaping them? To capture his political portrait, we will focus on three significant episodes of his life: the Paul Robeson affair; his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement; and his role in presidential campaigns.

THE PAUL ROBESON AFFAIR

The signing of Jackie Robinson in 1945 is legendary. Scouted while a member of the Kansas City Monarchs, Robinson spent the 1946 season in Montreal before joining the Dodgers in 1947. For Rickey, Robinson was a jewel. He neither smoked nor drank and, like Rickey, he was born and raised in a strict Methodist home. He attended a major university (UCLA) and participated in four sports, both with and against White athletes. He was combative, proud, and courageous. On the field, he excelled. Promising Rickey that he would “turn the other cheek” at least initially when targeted by opponents who slung racial slurs and insults at him, Robinson devoted all of his energy to baseball in 1947. After his first season, The Sporting News named him Rookie of the Year – the first time the award was given to any player. His record spoke for itself: 42 successful bunts (14 for hits, 28 sacrifices), 29 stolen bases, 12 home runs, and a .297 batting average. J.G. Taylor Spink, publisher of The Sporting News, commented on his accomplishments: “Robinson was rated solely as a freshman player – on his hitting, his running, his defensive play, his team value.”4 For 10 seasons, from 1947 to 1956, he led the Dodgers to six National League pennants and one World Series championship.

It can be argued, however, that 1949 was the most significant year of Robinson’s life – both on the field and off. On his way to his first and only MVP award, he led the league in hitting (.342) and stolen bases (37), hit 16 home runs, and collected 124 RBIs as the Dodgers won the pennant by one game over the St. Louis Cardinals. It was also the year in which he became the first Black to participate in the All-Star Game.

Also, in June of 1949, Paul Robeson returned to the United States after completing a European tour. Robeson, the first Black to ever play Othello on stage in the United States, had become a major critic of America’s segregationist policies. Born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1898, he was Phi Beta Kappa and the valedictorian of his graduating class at Rutgers. A few years later he received a law degree from Columbia University. On the athletic field, he was equally impressive, earning 15 varsity letters and twice being named an All-American in football. Unable to find a job in a predominantly White world, he chose instead to pursue a musical career, focusing primarily on opera.

By the mid-1940s, Robeson’s concerts became a combination of songs and political messages, as he frequently spoke out on the plight of America’s Blacks. “The Ballad of Joe Hill,” a song about a union organizer, replaced famous arias. Before a packed audience at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, he announced that he had changed the original words of “Ol’ Man River” to mean “we must fight to the death for peace and freedom.”5 And as the years passed, he became more closely associated with the American Communist Party. However, it was a statement he made before an audience in Paris that drew the attention of the US government and changed Robeson’s life forever: “It is unthinkable that American Negroes would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against the Soviet Union which in one generation has lifted our people to full human dignity.”6

It was the early years of the Cold War and an emerging concern that the Communist Party was making inroads among America’s Blacks bordered on paranoia. Robeson was confronted regularly with protesters at his concerts and twice, in Peekskill, New York, his performances sparked riots. In Harlem’s Red Rooster Restaurant, Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe refused to shake his hand.7 Meanwhile, the House Un-American Activities Committee continued its assault against “disloyal” Americans. In early July 1949, it opened its “Hearings Regarding Communist Infiltration of Minority Groups.” Soon after the hearings concluded, Robeson was stripped of his passport by the FBI and, consequently, performance contracts were either canceled or never initiated, driving him into obscurity. For more than four decades, he was the only two-time All-American to not be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. He was finally admitted posthumously in 1995. His passport was reactivated in 1958 following a US Supreme Court ruling that his due-process rights had been violated.8

If life is a chess game, then Jackie Robinson’s role in the summer of 1949 was to checkmate Paul Robeson. In early July, Representative John S. Wood, Democrat of Georgia and chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, contacted Robinson and invited him to appear before his committee “to give lie to” Robeson’s statements.9 It is not surprising that Robinson was selected to testify. According to Alvin Stokes, a Black investigator for the committee, it was imperative to get someone of Robinson’s stature to discredit Robeson.10

Robinson was clearly confronted with a dilemma. On one hand, if he testified, he might be little more than a Black pawn in a White man’s chess game that pitted Black against Black. If he did not testify, however, Robeson’s statement might be upheld as a view representative of all Blacks, a view Robinson and millions of other Blacks vehemently disagreed with. Despite advice from his wife to not testify, he was ultimately won over by the more persuasive views of Branch Rickey, who apparently decided that a public appearance of this nature was a necessity. Assisted by Lester Granger of the Urban League, a Black civil-rights organization, Robinson wrestled vigorously with the content of his statement. “It must be placating, so that the white race will not be alienated,” he said. “And of course it must be strong enough so that it won’t lose the colored audience either.”11 He found himself suspended in what the writer Carl Rowan referred to as “a patriot’s purgatory.”12 On July 18, 1949, just six days after he played in his first All-Star Game, he presented his prepared statement before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

In essence, Robinson’s appearance before HUAC was a checked swing. He lunged after Robeson’s Paris statement and dismissed it as “silly” before pulling back his bat and attacking Jim Crow and American racism in general. Years later and shortly before his death in 1972, he reflected on his 1949 testimony: “I have grown wiser and closer to the painful truth about America’s destructiveness. And, I do have an increased respect for Paul Robeson who sacrificed himself, his career, and the wealth and confidence he once enjoyed because, I believe, he was sincerely trying to help his people.”13 After all, it was Paul Robeson who picketed Yankee Stadium in the 1940s demanding that baseball be integrated.14 But Robeson clearly paid a price for his activism. With his career shattered, his income dropped from $100,000 in 1947 to $6,000 in 1952. In his later years, he lived a reclusive life in poverty with his sister and died from a stroke in Philadelphia on January 23, 1976.15

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

A year after his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee, The Jackie Robinson Story opened at movie theaters nationwide. Jackie played himself in the film. Ruby Dee played Rachel. Years later, he would lament that the film was made much too soon.16 Indeed it was! For Robinson’s overall contributions to society went far beyond his display of outstanding athletic skills. Over the next two decades, he actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement and three presidential campaigns. He cultivated close friendships with Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Nelson Rockefeller, and Jesse Jackson, while he feuded openly with Adam Clayton Powell, Malcolm X, and William F. Buckley. He wrote a regular syndicated column on political issues, hosted a radio show, appeared on Meet the Press, coordinated jazz concerts at his home to raise funds for civil-rights causes, served as a corporate executive, was named to the directorship of a major bank, and was appointed to numerous boards and commissions in both the private and public sectors.

Throughout the 1950s and the early ’60s, a dormant America, most of which was satisfied with the status quo, was rudely awakened by sit-ins, freedom rides, and mass marches – all in support of racial equality. Soon, the unfamiliar became the familiar. There was Birmingham and Little Rock, Greensboro and Selma. There was Emmett Till and Medgar Evers, James Meredith and Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman. While Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the nation was stunned by urban riots and the assassinations of four of its most prominent leaders: John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Still to come was the pain and agony of the Vietnam War.

Through it all, Jackie Robinson immersed himself in the cause, clarified his political views, fortified his basic principles, and acted upon his most cherished beliefs. When he retired from baseball after the 1956 season, after refusing a trade to the New York Giants, he immediately entered the business world as a vice president of personnel for Chock Full O’ Nuts, a New York City restaurant chain. Under the tutelage of owner William Black, he not only learned how to manage employees in the private sector (a skill he would later apply to other business ventures), but he was given the opportunity to continue his quest for racial equality nationwide. Permitted to use Chock Full O’ Nuts stationery to express his views, he lobbied key political figures and advocated strongly for Black capitalism.17

In 1957 Robinson was named chairman of the NAACP Freedom Fund Drive, which required him to travel the country to recruit new members and raise funds for the civil-rights organization. In April of that year, he was a guest on NBC’s Meet the Press, discussing two topics in particular: civil rights (“we’re moving too slow”) and baseball’s reserve clause (he supported it). However, by 1972 Robinson changed his mind on the reserve clause. He, Hank Greenberg, Jim Brosnan, and Bill Veeck were the only people affiliated with major-league baseball to support Curt Flood’s quest to end the reserve clause by appealing to the Supreme Court. Fearing reprisals, perhaps, no active player at the time spoke out in favor of Flood.18

By 1959, Robinson found another outlet for expressing his views. Writing a syndicated column three days a week, he explored a variety of topics that ranged from a lynching in Mississippi to substandard housing in Harlem. In one column, he announced he was politically independent, but he was being wooed by both parties.19 In another column, he accused the Boston Red Sox of racism because they failed to bring Pumpsie Green (their only black player with major-league skills at the time) north after spring training.20 But his political interests would broaden and include other topics.21

Although he had met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as early as 1955 (after King’s home was firebombed), it was not until the early 1960s that Robinson developed a close working relationship with the civil-rights leader and accompanied him on numerous speaking tours. However, when King openly opposed the Vietnam War and attempted to blend the peace movement with the Civil Rights Movement, Robinson retreated. “Isn’t it unfair for you to place all the burden of blame on America and none on the communist forces we are fighting?” he asked King in a public letter.22 Similarly, Robinson also had a public conflict with Muhammad Ali when the heavyweight boxing champion declared himself a conscientious objector and openly opposed the war.23 Eventually, however, after his son Jackie Jr. returned from the war wounded, Robinson began to view US intervention in Vietnam differently. He became particularly concerned about the disproportionate number of poor Blacks being dispatched to the war zone.

Relentless, Robinson’s assault on racism continued. In 1968 he was one of the leading organizers of the effort to block South Africa’s participation in the Olympics because of its continuing practice of apartheid. In 1970 he testified before the Senate Small Business Subcommittee and criticized what he termed the Nixon administration’s anemic efforts to support Black capitalism. And shortly before his death in 1972, he attacked professional baseball for its reluctance to hire Black managers, coaches, and front-office personnel. But unlike many professional athletes who have found the transition from the playing field to mainstream society difficult, Robinson appeared to thrive on it and always reminded people of the evils of racism.

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS

Robinson’s involvement in the civil-rights struggles led him naturally toward the political arena. As more Blacks demanded greater power, their votes increased in value. Not surprisingly, politicians in both parties aggressively sought out well-respected role models who could deliver Black votes. Jackie Robinson, in particular, was viewed as a prize catch for any aspiring political candidate. By 1959, however, he still maintained his political neutrality, though he was actively recruited by both parties. A year later, things changed.

The presidential election year of 1960 proved to be pivotal for the nation. Aware of its significance, Robinson sought the presidential candidate who he thought most clearly understood the racial issue and best represented the cause of civil rights. He initially chose Hubert Humphrey, a liberal Democrat. “I had campaigned for Senator Humphrey in the Democratic primaries because I had a strong admiration for his civil rights background as mayor of Minneapolis and as a U.S. Senator. I had heard him publicly vow to be the living example of a man who would rather be right morally than to achieve the presidency.”24 His choice of Humphrey, however, would be short-lived. After losing the West Virginia primary, the Minnesota senator ended his quest for the presidency, leaving Robinson to choose between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in the general election.

Later in 1960, Robinson traveled to Washington and met with both candidates. “Finally, I didn’t think it was much of a choice, but I was impressed with the Nixon record on rights,” he wrote years later. “And, when I sat with him in his office in Washington, he certainly said all the right things.”25 Also, he got the impression later that Nixon would appoint a Black person to his Cabinet if elected. On the other hand, he found Kennedy to be courteous, awkward, and uncomfortable in his presence. “My very first reaction to the Senator was one of doubt because he couldn’t or wouldn’t look me straight in the eye. My second reaction, much more substantial, was that this was a man who had served in the Senate and wanted to be president, but who knew little or nothing about Black problems and sensibilities. I was appalled that he was so ignorant of our situation and be bidding for the highest office in the land.”26

According to Harvey Frommer’s account in Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier (1982), Robinson was also upset that Kennedy had offered him money for his support. Clearly, Robinson did not find it easy supporting the Republican Party, but his reasoning appeared to be sound. If Blacks did not play an active role in both parties, he argued, they would eventually be ignored by Republicans on the one hand and taken for granted by Democrats on the other. Such a combination, he emphasized, would leave Blacks both powerless and vulnerable. His reasoning would be tested in 1964.

Still licking their wounds from a devastating loss of the White House in 1960, the Republicans’ reaction was consistent with that of a party out of power and uncertain of its mission. It nominated an extremist for president. In August of 1964 at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona accepted his party’s nomination and promptly delivered his “extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice” speech. Robinson, who worked the floor in support of Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, was shocked when the delegates booed his candidate loudly before a national TV audience. “As I watched this steamroller operation in San Francisco, I had a better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany,” he wrote in his 1972 autobiography. He referred to Goldwater as “anti-Negro, anti-Jewish, and anti-Catholic” and predicted that he would be defeated soundly in November, which was indeed the case, as Lyndon Johnson won the presidency in a landslide. Consequently, Robinson’s greatest fear, that the Republican Party would become a party of “Whites only,” was becoming a reality.

In 1966 Rockefeller appointed Robinson to be a special assistant for community relations in New York state. Two years later, he resigned, just a few days after his party nominated Richard Nixon for president. Distraught over a report that the South “had a veto” over the party’s nomination for vice president, he announced his resignation from Rockefeller’s staff and prepared to campaign for Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey again. In a front-page article in the New York Times, he expressed his feelings in baseball terms: “I don’t know of anything that hurt me more than the nomination of Richard Nixon and the rejection of Governor Rockefeller. It made me feel like I felt when Bobby Thomson hit a home run to beat us out of the pennant in 1951.”27

By 1971, Robinson’s disillusionment with White politics had even penetrated his relationship with Rockefeller. He became dismayed over the governor’s cuts in education and welfare and his implementation of a one-year residency requirement to qualify for welfare. “He seems to have made a sharp right turn away from the stand of the man who once fought the Old Guard Establishment so courageously,” Robinson wrote in 1972.28

So after years of fighting for civil rights and campaigning for presidential candidates, the Black Knight from Brooklyn with the pigeon-toed gait and graying hair found himself stranded on second – “far out at the edge of the ordered world at rocky second – the farthest point from home. Whoever remains out there is said to ‘die’ on base,” wrote Bart Giamatti. “Home is finally beyond reach in a hostile world full of quirks and tricks, and hostile folk. There are no dragons in baseball, only shortstops, but they can emerge from nowhere and cut one down.”29 For Robinson, the shortstops came in the form of John Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and even Nelson Rockefeller.

In the numerous books and articles written about Robinson over the years, one may conclude that he learned three important lessons that could be passed on to succeeding generations: First and foremost, he learned and believed that people can change for the better. A Jim Crow Army was integrated, reluctant Dodgers teammates accepted him, and Malcolm X overcame a life of drugs and crime. Second, he learned the importance of mentors and role models in shaping one’s life. The three most important teachers in his life, other than his wife, Rachel, were Branch Rickey, William Black, and Nelson Rockefeller. And third, he learned that one should never be satisfied with the status quo. Most importantly, he learned the power of questions. “Why can’t I sit in the front of the bus?” he asked in 1944 on a military base in Texas. “Why don’t the Yankees have more Black ballplayers?” he asked in 1953. “Why doesn’t John Kennedy know more about the plight of Black people?” he asked in 1960. “And how can the Republicans ever hope to recruit Black voters after rejecting Rockefeller?” he asked in 1964 and again in 1968.

As years have passed, new insights into Robinson’s life and legacy have appeared in books and film. Arnold Rampersad’s Jackie Robinson is considered by many to be the definitive biography of the trailblazer’s life.30 In Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait, Rachel Robinson provides her perspective on Jackie’s life both on and off the field.31 On the 60th anniversary of Robinson’s breaking the color barrier, Michael Long published First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson, which captures Jackie’s passion for social justice through a rich trove of letters to major political figures and civil-rights activists that were penned between 1946 and 1972.32 In After Jackie – Pride, Prejudice, and Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes: An Oral History, Carl Fusman traces Robinson’s enormous legacy by interviewing famous athletes, politicians, celebrities, and activists who came after him but who explain how he opened a path for them.33 And in Lisa D. Alexander’s When Baseball Isn’t White, Straight and Male: The Media and Difference in the National Pastime, we are warned about major-league baseball’s tendency to whitewash Robinson’s legacy by either outright ignoring or playing down his social activism.34 Retiring his number on April 15, 1997, for example, was a nice gesture, but not good enough. In 2016 Ken Burns helped set the record straight with his four-hour documentary, Jackie Robinson, which aired on PBS and focused almost entirely on Robinson’s commitment to social justice and equal rights.35

When Robinson appeared at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati on October 15, 1972, it was, for him, the bottom of the ninth, as he was battling diabetes and partial blindness. Rachel guided him to the microphone for a brief pregame ceremony. It was minutes before the start of the second game of the World Series when he was presented a special award by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn commemorating the 25th anniversary of breaking baseball’s color barrier. But in accepting the honor, Jackie seized the opportunity to steal one more base one last time. A polite and gracious thank you was not good enough. “I’d like to see a Black manager,” he said while millions watched on national TV. “I’d like to see the day when a Black man is coaching third base,” he emphasized.36

It was to be the last public appearance of Robinson’s life. Nine days later, he succumbed to a heart attack at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. Rev. Jesse Jackson delivered the eulogy at the Riverside Church in Manhattan. “He was the Black Knight in a chess game,” shouted Jackson. “He was checking the King’s bigotry and the Queen’s indifference. He turned a stumbling block into a steppingstone … and his body, his mind, his mission cannot be held down by a grave.” Robinson was interred at Cypress Hill Cemetery in Brooklyn. Serving as pallbearers were former teammates Pee Wee Reese, Ralph Branca, and Don Newcombe, basketball great Bill Russell, and future Hall of Famers Monte Irvin and Larry Doby, among others. Engraved on his gravestone was his own quote: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”37

And, indeed, Robinson continues to impact the lives of others. In 1973, just one year after his death, Rachel created the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which provides multiyear scholarships for minority students who are admitted to leading U.S. colleges and universities. According to its website, the foundation has graduated over 1,500 alumni, maintained close to a 100 percent graduation rate, and provided over $70 million in financial assistance and extensive support services to scholarship recipients. In 2017 the foundation was instrumental in the creation of the Jackie Robinson Museum, which was scheduled to open in 2020 at One Hudson Square in New York City.38

Sources

This chapter is drawn from the author’s article in Peter M. Rutkoff, ed., The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 1997 (Jackie Robinson) (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2000). Used by permission of McFarland & Company, Inc.,

Notes

1 Bart Giamatti, Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1989), 64.

2 Peter Golenbock, Bums (New York: Pocket Books), 280.

3 Golenbock, 178.

4 Michael Delnagro, “It’s the 40th Anniversary of Robinson’s Historic Debut,” Sunday Observer–Dispatch (Utica, New York), April 5, 1987: 4b.

5 Edwin Hoyt, Paul Robeson: The American Othello (New York: World Publishing Company, 1967), 176.

6 Eric Nussbaum, “The Story Behind Jackie Robinson’s Moving Testimony Before the House Un-American Activities Committee,” Time, March 24, 2020.

7 Hoyt, 161. Two additional sources on the Paul Robeson affair are Martin Duberman’s Paul Robeson, published by Knopf in 1988, and Kenneth O’Reilly’s Racial Matters: The FBI’s Secret File on Black America, published by the Free Press in 1973.

8 Paul Robeson appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee on June 12, 1956, to discuss the reinstatement of his passport. His testimony can be accessed at historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6440/. In 1958 the Supreme Court ruled that Robeson’s due-process rights had been violated and his passport was reactivated.

9 Ronald Smith, “The Paul Robeson-Jackie Robinson Saga and a Political Collision,” Journal of Sports History, 1979: 5-27.

10 Pittsburgh Courier, July 16, 1949: 2. According to Eric Nussbaum’s account (Time, March 24, 2020, see Note 6), Alvin Stokes believed that if Blacks acted preemptively and testified before HUAC they would clear their names from future scrutiny. He also believed Robinson’s testimony would benefit the Dodgers franchise.

11 Bill Roeder, Jackie Robinson (New York: A.S Barnes and Company, 1950), 154.

12 Carl Rowan, Wait Till Next Year (New York Random House, 1960), 201.

13 Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made (New York: G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1972), 98. A short video on Robinson’s testimony can be accessed at youtube.com/watch?v=KN9dPSRtyLQ.

14 Ronald Smith. Another source for the actions of the House Un-American Activities Committee is Eric Bentley’s Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1928-1968, published by Viking Press in 1968. An audio recording of Paul Robeson’s June 12, 1956, appearance before HUAC can be accessed at youtube.com/watch?v=kmFjjaFNHKo.

15 Alden Whitman, “Paul Robeson Dead at 77; Singer, Actor and Activist,” New York Times, January 24, 1976.

16 Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made. An interesting exercise would be to view The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and compare it to 42, the 2013 film that focuses on Robinson’s first season with the Dodgers. The latter is more raw in its language and less restrained in the portrayal of racism, compared with the 1950 sanitized version. Neither film, however, captures Robinson’s political activism that emerges later in his career.

17 Robinson’s letter to President John F. Kennedy on February 9, 1961, just a few weeks after the inauguration of the new president, illustrates his political savvy as well as his passion for social change. The letter can be accessed at archives.gov/files/education/lessons/jackie-robinson/images/letter-1961-01.jpg. Note the use of the Chock Full O’ Nuts letterhead that he used frequently.

18 Robinson appeared on Meet the Press on April 14, 1957. A transcript and audiotape of Robinson’s interview can be accessed at loc.gov/collections/jackie-robinson-baseball/articles-and-essays/baseball-the-color-line-and-jackie-robinson/meet-the-press.

19 New York Post, May 8, 1959: 92.

20 New York Post, May 27, 1959: 96.

21 Robinson’s columns that appeared in the New York Post and the Pittsburgh Courier were ghostwritten by Wendell Smith, who had traveled with him during his rookie season. Smith also was the ghostwriter for Robinson’s first book, My Own Story. In 1972 Smith died one month after Jackie Robinson’s passing. The last story he wrote was Robinson’s obituary.

22 Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made, 224.

23 Although there is little in the literature about the relationship between Ali and Robinson, a flavor of their conflict is captured in two video clips. The first covers Robinson’s reaction to Ali’s protest against the Vietnam War. It can be accessed at bing.com/videos/search?q=Relationship+between+Jackie+Robinson+and+Muhammad-+Ali&docid=608009722375245459&mid=EEDA926C939DC73B52AEEE-DA926C939DC73B52AE&view=detail&FORM=VIRE. The second clip includes the conflict between Malcolm X and Robinson as well as Robinson’s reaction to Ali’s stance on the Vietnam War. It can be accessed at bing.com/videos/search?q=Jackie+Robinson+quotes+on+Mu-hammad+Ali&docid=608055047092113230&mid=E7497E05921E897BDC11E7497E05921E897BDC11&view=detail&FORM=VIRE.

24 Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made, 148.

25 Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made, 148.

26 Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made, 149.

27 New York Times, August 12, 1968: 1. Jon Meacham, “Jackie Robinson’s Inner Struggle.” New York Times, July 20, 2020. Historian Jon Meacham reflects on Robinson’s autobiography, I Never Had It Made, placing it in historical context with respect to the contemporary relationship between the Republican Party and African-Americans.

28 Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made, 220.

29 Giamatti, 93.

30 Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1997).

31 Rachel Robinson, Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait (New York: Henry N. Abrams Inc., 1996).

32 Michael Long, First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson (New York: Macmillan, 2007).

33 Carl Fusman, After Jackie – Pride, Prejudice, and Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes: An Oral History (New York: ESPN Books, 2007).

34 Lisa D. Alexander, When Baseball Isn’t White, Straight and Male: The Media and Difference in the National Pastime (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013). Not widely known, and certainly not included in any major-league baseball tributes to Jackie Robinson is a statement he made in 1972 in his autobiography that resonates in the US political climate in the post-Obama years: “I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a Black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.” The “I never had it made” statement is captured in an impassioned speech he gave at a civil-rights rally in St. Augustine, Florida, on June 16, 1964. The video can be accessed at abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/jackie-robinson-delivers-passionate-speech-1964-civil-rights-60752464.

35 Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, Jackie Robinson, a two-part, four-hour documentary on Jackie Robinson with a special focus on his social activism. A two-minute video preview of the film can be accessed at latimes.com/86469443-132.html.

36 Jackie Robinson, October 15, 1972. This appearance and statement by Robinson before the start of the second game of the 1972 World Series at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati was the last public appearance of his life.

37 Eulogy delivered by Rev. Jesse Jackson at Robinson’s funeral on October 27, 1972, at Riverside Church in Manhattan.

38 More information about the Jackie Robinson Foundation can be accessed at jackierobinson.org/. Additional information about the Jackie Robinson Museum can be accessed at jackierobinsonmuseum.org/.

Outside of the 1919 sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees, baseball trades do not often occupy a persistent niche in pop culture. As the Bull Durham quotation indicates, the December 1965 trade of Frank Robinson from the Reds to the Orioles is a notable exception.

Annie doesn’t have the details quite right, though. In actuality, the Reds traded 30-year-old All Star outfielder Frank Robinson to the Orioles on December 9, 1965, for a package of players that included 26-year old starting pitcher Milt Pappas, 29-year old reliever Jack Baldschun, and 22-year old outfield prospect Dick Simpson. The trade has gone down in baseball lore as a lopsided deal that gave rise to the strong Orioles team of the late sixties and early seventies while condemning the Reds to second division status. Many articles and books have attempted to dissect the trade, and it frequently makes lists of the worst trades in baseball history.1

On the surface, the facts seem indisputable. In Robinson, the Orioles acquired a Hall of Fame outfielder in the late prime of his career. He not only won the Triple Crown in his first year in Baltimore (1966), but also was arguably the most important player on Orioles teams that won two World Series and four American League pennants across six seasons. In return, the Reds acquired a good, not great, starting pitcher (Pappas), a washed up reliever who never contributed (Baldschun), and a prospect who failed to make a major-league impact (Simpson).

However, as is often the case, there is more to the story. The “obvious” evaluation of this trade might not be the most accurate one. This article will explore an alternate viewpoint, that this trade was much closer to a “Win-Win” than is commonly perceived. In fact, the Big Red Machine might never have existed without it.

The Reds’ Perspective

Frank Robinson had played for the Reds at an elite level since entering the league in 1956. During his ten seasons (1956–65), he had accumulated 64 WAR and consistently ranked as one of the best players in the major leagues. In 1965, he delivered a slash line of .296/.386/.540 , with 33 home runs, and 113 runs batted in. These numbers were very strong, but at least in terms of conventional stats were down from his 1962 peak of .342/.421/.624, 39 homers, and 136 RBIs,.

All was not well in Reds country, though. The 1965 Reds had finished 4th in the NL standings, as their strong offense (825 runs, most in the NL) was offset by weak defense (704 runs allowed, fourth worst in the NL). Since appearing in the 1961 World Series, the Reds had won 98, 86, 92, and 89 games, but had yet to claim another NL pennant. The 1965 team had finished a distant eight games behind the National League champion Dodgers.

Moreover, the relationship between Reds owner/GM Bill DeWitt, a portion of the Reds fan base, and Frank Robinson was rocky. Frank had been arrested for possessing a firearm without a permit in Florida during Spring Training in 1961, and DeWitt had elected to let Robinson spend a night in jail without attempting to intervene. Robinson was commonly thought to resent this.2 Additionally, Robinson and the perennially cash-strapped DeWitt had annual salary squabbles for several years. Robinson had even threatened to retire in September 1963 until he received a substantial raise. Reds fans were frustrated at the team’s lack of competitiveness in 1965, and Robinson drew a great deal of their ire. Reds manager Dick Sisler had taken the unusual step of imploring fans to cease booing the outfielder at Crosley Field in August of 1965.

Bill DeWitt, under pressure to improve team pitching and in possession of a valuable asset he thought was in decline, proceeded to offer Robinson in trade to several teams. When the Orioles obtained pitcher Baldschun and outfielder Simpson in separate deals and included them with Pappas in their offer, the Reds agreed to the trade.

DeWitt had already been unsuccessful at acquiring Baldschun from the Phillies, and he liked Simpson for his speed and potential. He viewed Pappas as the incoming ace of the Reds staff, and furthermore emphasized his desire to maximize the return for Robinson while he still could. In fact, in a trade defense that is often misquoted, DeWitt described Robinson as “not a young 30,”3 and stated, “we’d rather trade a player a year too soon than a year late.”4

The Orioles Perspective

The Baltimore Orioles of the mid-1960s were a team on the rise. They had won 97 games in 1964 and 94 games in 1965, although they finished third in the American League standings both years. Those Orioles teams were pretty well balanced, having finished fourth in the majors both years in runs allowed and ninth (1964) and twelfth (1965) in runs scored. Nonetheless, Orioles General Manager Lee MacPhail thought they needed a change to break through.

In fact, per Orioles’ Farm Director Harry Dalton, the Orioles were specifically seeking an upgrade to their outfield. After the acquisition of Robinson, Dalton commented, “Oh boy, cannons at the corners!”5 With Robinson in right field, Curt Blefary in left, Brooks Robinson at third, and Boog Powell transitioning from left field to first base, the Orioles did indeed feature strong production at each of these positions. .

Pappas had been the Orioles’ best starter in 1965, and the All-Star had pitched over 200 effective innings six out of seven seasons since assuming a full time role in 1959. Nonetheless, a dearth of effective pitching was not really a concern for the Orioles. All six of the pitchers who had made 15 or more starts in 1965 had an ERA+ better than league average, 19-year old Jim Palmer had thrown 92 effective innings, and Tom Phoebus, Jim Hardin, and Eddie Watt were in the Orioles minor league pipeline. The team certainly felt that they had a pitching surplus to leverage, particularly if the payoff was someone of Robinson’s stature.

As for Baldschun and Simpson, neither had actually appeared in a game as part of the Orioles organization. Both were acquired in December 1965 deals prior to their inclusion in the Robinson trade.

The Results

From the Orioles’ perspective, the trade bore immediate fruit. Robinson came out of the gate exceptionally well in 1966, hitting for a slash line of .463/.585/.976 in April. He finished the year with 49 home runs, 122 runs, 122 runs batted in, and a batting average of .316, winning the American League’s first Triple Crown since 1956 (Mickey Mantle).

From a team perspective, the Orioles were also very successful. The team went 11-1 in April, on their way to a 97-63 overall record. They beat the Twins by nine games for the American League pennant, then proceeded to sweep the Dodgers for the first World Series title in franchise history. Robinson capped his dominant season by winning the American League Most Valuable Player award, and was named the World Series MVP as well.

The significance of Robinson’s arrival in Baltimore went beyond his stellar on-the-field contributions. Robinson’s competitive nature and leadership abilities also helped spur a normally solid team to greatness. Jim Palmer, then just starting his second big league season, noted that the Orioles prior to 1966 had always hoped to win, but, “After [Frank Robinson] got there, we expected to win.”6 Outfielder Paul Blair echoed this sentiment: “We were good before — had great defense, good pitching, decent hitting — but Frank was the key. Not only did he play great, he showed us how to be all business and get the job done.”7

What did Robinson do for an encore? He continued to slug, and made the All-Star team four of the next five seasons. Although he never won another Most Valuable Player Award, he finished third in the voting in 1969 and 1971 and garnered votes each year except for 1968.

The Orioles as a franchise, after a brief drop off in 1967, also continued their strong run. After finishing sixth in the American League standings in 1967, the Orioles climbed to second in 1968, then concluded Frank Robinson’s tenure with the team with three straight 100-win seasons, three straight American League pennants, and another World Series championship in 1970 (ironically defeating the Reds).

Meanwhile, in Cincinnati the results of the trade were not as promising. Pappas struggled out of the gate in 1966, and had a mediocre first season with the Reds (12–11 record, 4.29 ERA, allowed more hits than innings pitched, ERA+ of only 92). Jack Baldschun was a disaster as a reliever, delivering a 5.49 ERA in 57 innings. Prospect Dick Simpson was similarly disappointing , as he contributed a slash line of .238/.333/.405 in 99 plate appearances.

The Reds fortunes, as might be expected after swapping their best player for middling contributors, collapsed. Cincinnati had been in the thick of the pennant race in 1964, won 89 games in 1965 (fourth place), and in 1966 could only manage 76 wins and a seventh-place finish. The Reds’ traditionally strong offense dropped off considerably, and the pitching did not substantially improve, despite trading Robinson for pitching help.

Fan and pundit reactions were mixed immediately after the trade, but the criticism mounted throughout the season as Robinson continued to produce and the Reds continued to struggle. Reds fans did not accept the team’s declining fortunes, and Bill DeWitt took the brunt of their ire. DeWitt experienced the ignominy of being hung in effigy in downtown Cincinnati in June, his earlier good work in shepherding the Reds to the 1961 National League pennant seemingly forgotten.8

DeWitt was embattled on another front as well, as the Reds were in discussions with the city of Cincinnati for a new stadium to replace Crosley Field. DeWitt believed the Reds should move out of downtown Cincinnati to a suburban location, and as a result was unwilling to commit to an extended lease in a downtown location. When National League president Warren Giles said he would block any move out of the city, DeWitt was left with few viable alternatives.9 He sold the team to a group of local businessmen on December 5, 1966, only four days shy of a year after the trade that ultimately defined his legacy.

Milt Pappas would enjoy a strong year for the Reds in 1967, going 16-13 with a 3.35 ERA in 217 innings. But he struggled in 1968, and he was traded to the Atlanta Braves in June after delivering a 5.60 ERA in 15 games for the Reds. Jack Baldschun only appeared in nine games in 1967 and spent the rest of his time with the Reds in the minors until his 1969 release. Dick Simpson played in only 44 games and batted .259/.339/.370 in 62 plate appearances in 1967, and then was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in the offseason.

Most conventional analyses of the “Frank Robinson trade” end here, as Robinson continued to play well for the Orioles, while the Reds had parted ways with all of the players they had acquired. Using WAR, here is how the trade stacked up:

Table 1: WAR Comparison for Directly Traded Players

Note: Baldschun and Simpson failed to contribute positive WAR to the Reds.

On the surface, this seems a convincing win for the Orioles. But although the Reds released Baldschun, Pappas and Simpson would eventually be traded for other players. A comprehensive review of the total impact of the Reds-Orioles trade not only needs to consider the contributions the players made directly to their respective teams, but also the contributions made by players that were acquired in exchange for them. Here’s where the story gets more interesting.

Milt Pappas was traded to the Atlanta Braves on June 11, 1968, along with pitcher Ted Davidson and infielder Bob Johnson, for pitcher Clay Carroll, pitcher Tony Cloninger, and shortstop Woody Woodward. At the time of the trade, Davidson was a 28-year old with a 6.23 ERA and Johnson was a 32-year old with only 17 plate appearances. It is clear the Braves were trading for Pappas.

Dick Simpson was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals on January 11, 1968, for outfielder Alex Johnson. Johnson would play two years for the Reds before he was traded in turn, along with utility man Chico Ruiz, to the California Angels for pitchers Pedro Borbon, Jim McGlothlin, and Vern Geishert.

The sum contributions of all the players acquired by the Reds need to be contrasted with Robinson’s value to the Orioles to evaluate the total on-field impact of the Robinson trade.

I chose to use Baseball-Reference.com’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR) to measure value, and I have further chosen to utilize only positive WAR and ignore negative WAR. My logic is this: the purpose of a trade is to provide assets to the team. Suboptimal deployment of those assets (such as continuing to start a below-replacement level pitcher every five days) are not necessarily reflective of the trade. I also restricted the analysis to the years 1966–71 when Robinson played for the Orioles. Going beyond that point gets increasingly complicated due to the number of players involved.

Here is how the trade stacks up considering all assets acquired by the Reds through 1971:

Note: Baldschun and Simpson failed to contribute positive WAR to the Reds and Pappas didn’t in 1968; Carroll played for the Reds through 1975, Borbon through 1979.

When seen through this lens, the trade was not nearly the disaster for the Reds it has widely been assumed to be. In fact, the trade was arguably a significant enabler to the launching of the “Big Red Machine” Reds team of 1970–76.

There is one more very significant consideration when evaluating this trade. The architect of the Reds of 1970–76 was legendary general manager Bob Howsam. He masterminded the 1972 trade that brought Joe Morgan to the Reds, hired Sparky Anderson, traded for George Foster, drafted Ken Griffey Sr, and made many other roster moves that were essential to creating one of baseball’s all-time best teams.

If the Robinson trade had not occurred, it is likely that Bill DeWitt would have remained in charge of the Reds, Howsam would have gone elsewhere, and baseball history might have been very different. Despite his accomplishments prior to the Robinson trade, there is nothing in his resume to indicate that he had the acumen to forge the Reds into the perennial championship-winning force they would become.

The acquisition of Frank Robinson spurred the start of the Orioles dominance. There is no doubt that with the benefit of hindsight the Orioles would make the trade again and the Reds would not. However, that 1965 trade of Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, Jack Baldschun, and Dick Simpson ignited the great Reds team, as well.

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER has been a baseball fan since opening his first pack of baseball cards in 1974. An engineer by trade, he has a particular interest in the strategic and team-building aspects of the game. He has contributed articles to several SABR publications.

THE SECOND FRANK ROBINSON TRADE

Another bad Frank Robinson trade? The sidebar practically writes itself.

On December 6, 1971, the Orioles traded Frank Robinson and reliever Pete Richert to the Los Angeles Dodgers for a package of young players including pitcher Doyle Alexander, pitcher Bob O’Brien, catcher Sergio Robles, and outfielder Royle Stillman. Here’s the positive bWAR earned by the players in the trade (regardless of team) until the end of Robinson’s playing career in 1976:

Despite Robinson’s advanced age (he was 36 at the time of the trade), this appears to be a second trade that confirms the idea that you will not get value when trading Robinson. However, just like the 1965 Reds-Orioles trade, there is more to the story.

On June 15, 1976, the Orioles traded Doyle Alexander, Jimmy Freeman, Elrod Hendricks, Ken Holtzman, and Grant Jackson to the New York Yankees for catcher Rick Dempsey and four pitchers: Tippy Martinez, Rudy May, Scott McGregor, and Dave Pagan. The headline players were Alexander (coming off a 2.1 WAR season in 1975) and Holtzman (5-4 with a 2.86 ERA at trade time), while Hendricks (aged 35) was nearing the end of his career, Freeman was a non-prospect by that point, and Jackson would be left unprotected in the 1976 expansion draft.

In return, the Orioles received quite a haul. Dempsey, Martinez, and McGregor would all be important players in the Orioles next run of greatness (1977 to 1983), with each playing for the team through at least 1986. May kicked in 2.2 WAR from 1976–77, while Pagan failed to develop and was left unprotected in the expansion draft. Dempsey, Martinez, McGregor, and May contributed 53.8 WAR to the Orioles in total.

The Alexander trade, which was only possible because Alexander had come for Robinson, was one of the best trades in Orioles history. Unlike Bill DeWitt in 1965, Orioles general manager Frank Cashen successfully executed Branch Rickey’s “better to trade them a year early than a year late” dictum.

Sources

Photos: National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, The Topps Company

Notes

1 “For those reasons, and they are good reasons, many people in Cincinnati will always view the Robinson trade as the worst trade ever made by the Reds.” Doug Decatur, Traded: Inside the Most Lopsided Trades in Baseball History (ACTA Sports, 2009).

2 “Two thoughts stayed with him (Robinson). He didn’t know he needed a permit for the gun, but he should have known; and if Gabe Paul had still been the General Manager he would not have had to spend the night in jail.” John C. Skipper, Frank Robinson (McFarland and Company, 2015).

3 Rob Neyer, “Rob Neyer’s Book of Baseball Blunders (Simon and Schuster, Inc., 2006).

4 Robert H. Boyle, “Cincinnati’s Brain Picker,” Sports Illustrated June 13, 1966.

5 G. Richard McKelvey, The MacPhails: Baseball’s First Family of the Front Office (McFarland & Co., 2000).

6 John Eisenberg, From 33rd Street to Camden Yards: An Oral History of the Baltimore Orioles (Contemporary Books, 2001).

7 Eisenberg, From 33rd Street to Camden Yards.

8 “Fans Hang DeWitt Effigy in Downtown Cincinnati,” The Sporting News, July 2, 1966.

9 Mark J. Schmetzer, Before the Machine (Cleristy Press, 2011).

Rickey was “The Mahatma” or “El Cheapo,” depending on who was writing about him. After signing Jackie Robinson in 1945, and then after promoting him to the Dodgers in ’47, Rickey was both praised and damned at the same time; there was no in-between. Shortly after his death on December 9, 1965, he was lionized and beatified. A few years later, the revisionists looked at his feet of clay and questioned his integrity. Now the neo-revisionists are re-examining Rickey and his legacy. Since Rickey is already long buried, they will praise him and resurrect the good about him that was interred with his bones.

But which Rickey was on stage in Brooklyn in 1947? The answer is easy: All of them. And it is the press that will guide the tour of that season.

The first stop is a January meeting in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. Rickey told the assembled major-league owners that he intended to promote Jackie Robinson that spring. The owners were shocked and voted 15–1 against the move, thereby putting Rickey and Commissioner Happy Chandler on notice. There was nothing the owners could do to prevent Rickey from doing what he felt was best for his club, but it did take steel nerves on Rickey’s part to continue with his plan. What may have worried the other owners was a 1946 report by Yankees boss Larry MacPhail that said owners should brace themselves for poor black fans driving away prosperous white fans.

A second stop takes place on the wintry night of Tuesday, February 5, at the Carlton YMCA in Brooklyn, where Dodgers executive secretary Herbert T. Miller had gathered together “30 distinguished Brooklyn Negroes” to meet Rickey, according to an article in an October 1951 issue of Sport magazine. They probably expected to hear that Jackie Robinson would be promoted to the parent Dodgers after a successful 1946 season with the club’s top farm team in Montreal. After all, Robinson had successfully made the switch from shortstop to second base, batted .349, stolen forty bases, and helped the Royals win the Little World Series. But it was a vintage Rickey performance because the crowd didn’t get what it expected.

He bluntly told his guests that the biggest threat to Robinson’s success, if he was promoted, would be that “the Negro people themselves will ruin it. . . . We don’t want what can be another great milestone in the progress of American race relations turned into a national comedy and an ultimate tragedy. If any individual group or segment of Negro society uses the advancement of Jackie Robinson in baseball as a social ‘ism’ or schism, I will curse the day I ever signed him to a contract, and I will personally see that baseball is never so abused and misrepresented again.”

Yet for some reason the audience of community leaders and other respectable middle-class citizens bought Rickey’s idea. They knew that society would be watching and judging. So they hastily started a campaign based on the phrase “Don’t Spoil Jackie’s Chances” and urged restraint and moderation among Robinson’s fans.

Why did they buy it when millions identified with Robinson? In him, they saw their own chances at gaining that promised equality too long denied. Perhaps they realized that this first step was a cautious one, fraught with danger both personal for Robinson and monumental for America. Or perhaps they were simply mesmerized by Rickey’s blunt assessment of the nation’s psyche. As Ed Fitzgerald wrote in a profile of Rickey published in a November 1947 issue of Sport:

Branch Rickey is a man who possesses tremendous magnetism. Measured in terms of candlepower, his personality lights up a whole room. There’s an intensity about him that thrusts itself upon your imagination and kindles a fire of interest in you. When he speaks, you find yourself leaning forward to catch every word. There’s something about the way he talks, easily but deliberately, that makes you certain the things he’s saying are of deathless importance. Whatever that elusive quality is that enables one man to dominate a group of his fellows, Rickey has it.

Not all the ballplayers who played for Rickey, or the sportswriters who covered those players and those teams, would completely agree with Fitzgerald’s assessment. (Enos Slaughter supposedly once said that Rickey had to open the vault to get a nickel change.) But it is a measure of the man that he could indeed make people talk about him, curse him, and debate his tactics during his life and decades after it ended.

What Rickey didn’t tell his audience that wintry night in Brooklyn was that he had a plan. The first step was to move spring training away from segregated Florida to sites and games in more tolerant Cuba and Panama. Along the way, Rickey thought, Robinson’s outstanding play in camp and in exhibition games would naturally lead to the Dodger players clamoring for him to be promoted. (Robinson had a .625 batting average and also stole seven bases that spring.)

But there were two immediate obstacles (not counting what would happen if Robinson didn’t perform up to expectations): Rickey wanted Robinson to switch to first base because the Dodgers were weak there; and some players threatened to organize a petition against Robinson’s potential and expected promotion.

The plans also called for manager Leo Durocher to demand that Robinson be called up for the good of the team. That part of Rickey’s plan failed miserably since Commissioner Chandler suspended Durocher for the season on April 9 for a host of indiscretions. The suspension had a polarizing effect on baseball. As Chandler put it:

A good many New York sports writers, no fans of mine anyhow, jumped to the defense of their fallen hero. . . . Time magazine made an accurate summation of that situation saying: “Commissioner Chandler had done the seemingly impossible; he has made Leo Durocher a sympathetic figure.” Chandler wrote on page 219 of his autobiography that “I’ll have to confess, I didn’t think anybody could do that.”

Another point of view was summed up by Washington Post sports writer Shirley Povich: “Maybe the punishment was in excess of the crime, but who can shed a tear for Durocher?”[fn]Rudy Marzano. The Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s; How Robinson, MacPhail, Reiser and Rickey Changed Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005), 134.[/fn]

Durocher was first replaced by Dodger scout, coach, and one-time minor-league manager Clyde Sukeforth. But Sukeforth was just a stopgap as Rickey searched for someone to guide the Dodgers for the season.

The names of former Yankees manager Joe McCarthy and former Giants player-manager Bill Terry were mentioned before Rickey decided to offer the job to old friend Burt Shotton, who had retired from his coaching job with the Cleveland Indians a few years previously. The sixty-two-year-old Shotton’s last full season as a big-league manager was with the seventh-place Philadelphia Phillies in 1933. Rather than wear a uniform again, Shotton said he would manage in his street clothes, which meant he could not go on the field. That was a crucial decision since it essentially meant that Robinson would not have someone as fiery as Leo Durocher arguing with the umpires for him.

Just a day after Chandler’s bombshell, Rickey stealthily slipped in one of his own. During the top of the sixth inning of an afternoon exhibition game on April 10 in Ebbets Field—against Montreal—he announced: “The Brooklyn Dodgers today purchased the contract of Jackie Roosevelt Robinson from the Montreal Royals. He will report immediately.”[fn]Anthony R. Pratkanis and Marlene E. Turner. “Nine Principles of Successful Affirmative Action: Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, and the Integration of Baseball,” in The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and the American Culture, 1997 (Jackie Robinson), edited by Peter M. Rutkoff. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2000), 152. Also found in Out of the Shadows; African American Baseball from the Cuban Giants to Jackie Robinson, edited by Bill Kirwin (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 195; and Lee Lowenfish, Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentlemen (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 425.[/fn]

Robinson had to endure a storm of protest about his promotion to the parent club. And some of the hostility came from fellow Dodgers. A spring-training survey in The Sporting News said the team was “mainly antagonistic” toward calling up Robinson.[fn]Marzano, p. 135.[/fn] It was Rickey who headed off the nascent rebellion from within the ranks. While it may have been naïve on his part to believe the team would clamor for Robinson’s promotion in order to bring them a share of any potential World Series wealth, Rickey nevertheless realistically told the rebels they could play with Robinson or be traded.

Two of the more disgruntled players were reserve catcher Bobby Bragan and popular outfielder Fred “Dixie” Walker. During a heated meeting with Rickey in spring training, Bragan said he wanted to be traded. Walker also asked to be traded in a letter to Rickey on March 26. Walker’s wish almost came true; a deal with Pittsburgh was agreed to in principle before Rickey vetoed it. With both stars and reserve players discontented, Rickey had to act decisively. Lester Rodney, the sports editor of the Communist party’s Daily Worker, credited Rickey with standing up to the pressure from the players:

“Kirby Higbe was traded immediately. . . . And when Carl Furillo said . . . ‘I ain’t gonna play with no niggers!’ Rickey snapped back, ’You don’t want to play with no niggers? Then you can go back to Pennsylvania and pound railroad ties for $15 a week. You’ll never set foot on a big-league baseball field again.’ Carl played. They all played.”[fn]The quote is from a biography of Lester Rodney, Press Box Red; The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports, by Irwin Silber.[/fn] A postscript must be noted here: By the end of the 1947 season Furillo, Bragan, and Walker had come to admire Robinson.

It was that sort of hyper-attention from the press that Rickey was continually adapting to in Brooklyn. Ambivalent press coverage dogged Rickey and his teams throughout his long career in baseball. In 1947, coverage started out positively with a May editorial in Crisis magazine that gave Rickey all the credit for “shrewdly picking” Robinson in 1945 and then wisely delaying the announcement of his promotion to the big leagues until just five days before the season opened. Then, just as Rickey had asked in his February 5 speech at the Brooklyn YMCA, the magazine also asked “Negro newspapers” to provide balanced coverage and not dwell solely on Robinson. Just as Rickey asked in that speech, the editorial concluded by urging all Americans to respect Rickey’s “judgment and courage” and Robinson’s “skill and courage.”

In its September 22 issue, Time magazine ran a story about Robinson’s winning the Rookie of the Year award from The Sporting News. The article did more than praise Robinson; it also labeled Rickey “the smartest man in baseball.” The cover story gave credit to Robinson for enduring “the toughest first season any ballplayer has ever faced.” But it also praised Rickey for hiring Pittsburgh Courier sportswriter Wendell Smith to travel with the team as a companion for Robinson, and for setting up “how-to-handle-Robinson” committees of prominent African Americans in National League cities.

Rickey wrote that he “picked” Robinson both for his play on the field and for his strength and character off the field. He asked Robinson not to retaliate when jeered. Yet the support committees would seem to have been ineffective, for between the positive Crisis editorial near the start of the 1947 season and the laudatory article in Time near the end of that season came the slings and arrows of less complimentary screeds. (Supposedly the character of Judge Goodwill Banner in Bernard Malamud’s novel The Natural was partly based on a Rickey habit of talking over people’s heads and being too theoretical.)

And Jimmy Powers of the New York Daily News did a lot of slinging, branding Rickey “El Cheapo” around 1945. It got so bad that in 1946 Rickey considered suing Powers. An article in Sport in November 1947 assessed the situation:

Powers misses no opportunity to sink another shaft into Rickey. It can hardly be denied that the Dodgers’ chief executive is an inviting target. Sometimes it seems he delights in furnishing critics like Powers with more ammunition.

Nothing Rickey does convinces Powers, who, of course, doesn’t want to be convinced. He has more fun, and keeps his readers more excited that way.

Rickey didn’t try to mislead the press, said his friends and allies both in the press and in the Dodgers’ office, he just had a tendency to over-answer and not everyone could follow his logic. And yet there were probably times, his biographers wrote, when Rickey probably “preferred not to be understood.”[fn]Leverett T. Smith Jr. “A Man of Many Faucets, All Running at Once; Books by and about Branch Rickey,” in The National Pastime; A Review of Baseball History #28 (Cleveland, Ohio: Society for American Baseball Research, 2008), 53-63.[/fn] Baloney, wrote New York Daily News writer Dick Young in a January 1953 issue of Baseball Digest:

Branch Rickey, though he reflects an aloofness in his relations with the press, is profoundly aware of the newspaper criticism directed against him. And yet much of the adverse comment written about Rickey results from his condescending approach to the press. Writers not so much resent his evasiveness, but rather his insufferable belief that he is getting away with it. Rickey, while talking to newsmen, creates the impression in his audience that he is thinking: “I can wrap these lame-brains around my little finger with my rhetoric.”

Few men have the nimble brain of Branch Rickey, including the newsmen whom he tries to deceive, but baseball writers are proud of the trust which is often placed in them. Rickey, inordinately suspicious, fails to project this feeling of trust. He substitutes arrogance and scorn, and as a result receives the “bad press” he cannot understand.

One of the reasons he got some bad press was his seeming contradictions and chutzpah in claiming the Robinson story as his own. For example, Commissioner Chandler felt slighted in having his role in Robinson’s breakthrough ignored and he blamed Rickey:

During our hours together out in the cabin I kept getting the impression that Rickey felt he was God Almighty, and that he was somehow the Savior of the black people. He tried his best—and this I know—he and his whole outfit moved in to give him the full credit for breaking the baseball color line. They wanted to keep everybody else, including me, out of it. But of course he couldn’t have done it without my approval. When he came down to Versailles [Kentucky], he had two chances: slim and none. But I did it for him, made it possible. I never could understand why he always cut me out of it, every time he mentioned the Jackie Robinson decision. I was surprised, and I suppose somewhat hurt by his attitude.[fn]Albert (Happy) Chandler with Vance H. Trimble. Heroes, Plain Folks, and Skunks: The Life and Times of Happy Chandler (Chicago: Bonus Books, Inc., 1989), 229.[/fn]

Also feeling slighted was the Daily Worker, which had been actively campaigning since the mid-1930s to integrate baseball. Historian Jules Tygiel once credited the Communist press and the African American press for continually pushing the idea that baseball should be integrated. Daily Worker sports editor Lester Rodney said:

Of course, it always rankled me that [Rickey] never acknowledged the role of the Daily Worker in all this. But he was a big anti-Communist and he hated the idea of us getting credit for anything—especially for breaking the color line. He didn’t want anyone to think that he had succumbed to pressure from the Reds.[fn]Irwin Silber. Press Box Red; The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2003), 102.[/fn]

That may or may not settle the “how” of the decision, but it certainly doesn’t settle the “why” and there again, Rickey offered conflicting reasons. He once told Look magazine sports editor Tim Cohane, in a piece published in the magazine on March 19, 1946: “I cannot face my God much longer knowing that His black creatures are held separate and distinct from His white creatures in the game that has given me all my own.”

That quote, as well as the story that Rickey was a crusader for equal rights after witnessing Charley Thomas (an African American catcher on Rickey’s Ohio Wesleyan team) cry in his South Bend, Indiana, hotel room in 1903 because of discrimination, are examples of what former Daily Worker sportswriter Bill Mardo calls the bubba meinse school of history. (Bubba meinse is a Yiddish expression that loosely translates as something akin to myth.)

In other talks with reporters, Rickey said that signing and then promoting Robinson was based solely on winning a pennant for the Dodgers. An article by John Chamberlain in an April 1948 issue of Harper’s magazine quoted Rickey (who got right to the point of the matter, which seemed to surprise the writer who expected Rickey to be evasive) as saying that Robinson was not promoted “to solve a sociological problem.” Instead, Rickey answered succinctly: “I brought him up for one reason: to win the pennant. I’d play an elephant with pink horns if he could win the pennant.”

The 1947 season was a trying one for the Dodgers. It was a season in which some people made fundamental personal changes in their beliefs that also indirectly helped shape a country. And Branch Rickey led them the whole way. At the end of it all, after losing a heartbreaking World Series to the New York Yankees, four games to three, Rickey encountered Yankees boss Larry MacPhail outside the clubhouse. The two had once been close. But MacPhail’s role in Rickey’s problems with the owners and Durocher’s suspension were a sore spot. Worst of all, MacPhail’s name kept popping up at odd times.

Rickey biographer Lee Lowenfish wrote: “The last straw may have been the recent comment by the combustible Yankees president that Leo Durocher would never have been suspended if Branch Rickey didn’t really want it to happen. In front of a swarm of photographers MacPhail offered a handshake to his defeated rival, but Rickey whispered, ‘I am taking your hand only because people are watching us, but never speak to me again, never.’”[fn]Lee Lowenfish. Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentlemen (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 438.[/fn]

JOE MARREN is an associate professor in the communication department at Buffalo State College. He was a summa cum laude graduate of Buffalo State in 1986, and he received his master’s degree in history from St. Bonaventure University in 1996. Marren worked as a newspaper reporter and then editor at a variety of community newspapers in western New York for eighteen years.

Sources

Books

Chandler, Albert (Happy), with Vance H. Trimble. Heroes, Plain Folks, and Skunks: The Life and Times of Happy Chandler. Chicago: Bonus Books, Inc., 1989.

Golenbock, Peter.  “Men of Conscience,” in Joseph Dorinson and Joram Warmund, editors, Jackie Robinson; Race, Sports and the American Dream, Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998.

Mardo, Bill. “Robinson—Robeson” in Joseph Dorinson and Joram Warmund, editors, Jackie Robinson; Race, Sports and the American Dream, Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998.

Marzano, Rudy. The Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s; How Robinson, MacPhail, Reiser and Rickey Changed Baseball. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005.

Pratkanis, Anthony R. and Marlene E. Turner. “Nine Principles of Successful Affirmative Action: Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, and the Integration of Baseball,” in The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and the American Culture, 1997 (Jackie Robinson), edited by Peter M. Rutkoff. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2000. Also found in Out of the Shadows; African American Baseball from the Cuban Giants to Jackie Robinson, edited by Bill Kirwin. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

Silber, Irwin. Press Box Red; The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports. Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2003.

Articles

Cohane, Tim. “A Branch Grows in Brooklyn,” Look (March 19, 1946), p. 69.

Fitzgerald, Ed. “Branch Rickey, Dodger Deacon,” Sport, November 1947, p. 58-68.

Gross, Milton. “The Emancipation of Jackie Robinson,” Sport (October 1951), 13ff.

Lardner, John. “Reese and Robinson: Team Within a Team,” New York Times Magazine (September 18, 1949), 17ff.

Lowenfish, Lee. “The Gentlemen’s Agreement and the Ferocious Gentleman Who Broke It,” in The Baseball Research Journal (38:1, pp. 33-34), edited by Nicholas Frankovich. Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 2009.

Mann, Arthur W. “Say Jack Robinson: Meet the Dodgers’ Newest Recruit,” Colliers (March 2, 1946), pp. 67-68.

Meany, Tom. “What Chance,” Sport, January 1947, pp. 12-13, pp. 96-97.

Sheed, Wilfrid. “Branch Rickey: He Revolutionized Baseball. Twice. and He Was a Penny-Pinching, Scheming Hustler of a Saint, Too,” Sport, December 1986, p. 29, p. 137.

Smith, Leverett T.  Jr. “A Man of Many Faucets, All Running at Once; Books by and about Branch Rickey, in The National Pastime; A Review of Baseball History (28), 2008, Society for American Baseball Research, 53-63.

Washburn, Pat. “New York Newspapers and Jackie Robinson’s First Season,” Journalism Quarterly Winter 1981, pp. 640-44.

Young, Dick. “Being A Baseball Writer,” Baseball Digest, January 1953, pp. 83-94.

“Rickey and Robinson,” Crisis, May 1947, p. 137.

Rookie of the Year,” Time (Sept. 22, 1947), 70.

Jackie Robinson, right, shakes hands with manager Leo Durocher of the Brooklyn Dodgers at spring training in Havana, Cuba in March 1947. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE)

In reviewing the career of Jackie Robinson in hindsight, one advantage is that everything seems as if it was a certainty. Robinson was one of the great players in the history of the sport, an innovator who was soon dubbed “Ty Cobb in Technicolor.”1 His Dodgers were an annual contender for the pennant, and Robinson became a fixture on those teams.

The future of Robinson looking forward was far less certain. He played out his career under a bevy of managers, and his interactions and appreciation (or lack thereof) for each is instructive as regards his personality and preferences in the days when the future of baseball’s “great experiment” was far from settled.

Unfortunately for the historians, Robinson apparently rarely had much to say about his earliest managers. He infamously hit .097 in his last (partial) season at UCLA and had played only a few months with the Kansas City Monarchs when Branch Rickey signed him for Brooklyn. Likely, Jackie Robinson’s determinedly negative view of the Negro Leagues impacted any potential lessons he may have drawn in his few months with the Monarchs.2

On the other hand, the pairing of Robinson and Montreal manager Clay Hopper in 1946 was an auspicious one. Robinson would write years later that he “had been briefed about Hopper. What I had heard about him wasn’t encouraging. A native of Mississippi, he owned a plantation there, and I had been told he was anti-black.”3 Hopper’s heritage was an open fact, and his reluctance to be the manager of an African American player was virtually certain. When he asked Dodgers GM Branch Rickey not to make him manage Robinson, the Mahatma supposedly offered, “You can manage correctly or be unemployed.”4

The legendary story about Hopper, as recounted by Rickey and subsequently by Robinson is that Rickey and Hopper were watching spring training together when Rickey praised a play by Robinson as “superhuman.” Hopper then asked Rickey, “Do you really think a n—-r’s a human being?” For his part, Rickey later explained, “I saw that this Mississippi-born man was sincere, that he meant what he said; that his attitude of regarding the Negro as subhuman was part of his heritage; that here was a man who had practically nursed race prejudice at his mother’s breast. So I decided to ignore the question.”5

Robinson’s season in Montreal provided all the evidence that Hopper needed as to his humanity and, indeed, near super-humanity. Robinson recounted himself that at the end of the season, Hopper approached him, offered a handshake, and exclaimed, “You’re a great ballplayer and a fine gentleman. It’s been wonderful having you on the team.”6 On another occasion, Robinson wrote of Hopper approaching him in September 1946 and telling him, “I’d sure like to have you back on the Royals next spring.”7 But of course Robinson’s 1947 season would be spent in Brooklyn.

The initial plan was for the legendary Leo Durocher to manager Robinson. Durocher had managed the Dodgers since 1939, and there was no reason to expect that he wouldn’t manage Brooklyn in 1947. During spring training Durocher himself went to work on changing the chemistry of the Dodgers clubhouse. Hearing rumors of a potential petition against Robinson making the Dodgers team, Durocher called a meeting of the rest of the team and advised, “I don’t care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a [expletive] zebra. I’m the manager of this team, and I say he plays.”8 Durocher also offered to make sure of the trade of any players who disagreed.9 However, a few weeks later, it would be Durocher and not Robinson who would be on the sidelines.

Durocher was suspended just before the season by Commissioner Happy Chandler for “conduct detrimental to baseball,” much of it likely centering on ties to organized gambling.10 The move so confounded Rickey and the Dodgers that Robinson’s first big-league manager was longtime coach Clyde Sukeforth, who skippered the first two games of the 1947 season. Sukeforth would later recall, “I remember writing out the lineup card, didn’t think anything special of it. I just wanted to follow what Mr. Rickey and Durocher wanted.”11

Sukeforth’s interaction with Robinson was much more significant than his two games as a manager. As the scout who brought Robinson into contact with Rickey, he was one of the first principal characters in the “great experiment.” He also helped Robinson greatly as a coach, to the extent that Robinson named Sukeforth as the person who had helped him most during his career in a publicity questionnaire that Robinson completed for the National League before the 1948 season.12

For his part, Sukeforth always professed surprise that Robinson gave him significant credit for his improvement as a player. Shortly before Robinson’s death in 1972, the two met at an event honoring Robinson at Mama Leone’s restaurant in New York. Sukeforth was called upon to speak and he downplayed his role in Robinson’s rise, only for Robinson to follow up a few days later by writing him, noting, “While there has not been enough said of your significant contribution in the Rickey-Robinson experiment, I consider your role, next to Mr. Rickey’s and my wife’s – yes, bigger than any other persons with whom I came in contact.”13

After Sukeforth’s two-game interim stint, veteran manger Burt Shotton took over as the Dodgers skipper. Shotton had last managed a major-league team in 1934, and his grandfatherly approach earned him the semi-mocking sobriquet of “Kindly Old Burt Shotton.” Along with Connie Mack, Shotton was one of the last two managers to wear street clothes rather than a uniform. His unassuming style was immediately impressed on the 1947 Dodgers, as he met with the team shortly before his first game and told them, “You fellas can win the pennant in spite of me. Don’t be afraid of me as a manager. I cannot possibly hurt you.”14

When his star rookie hit a lengthy early slump, Shotton simply continued putting Robinson’s name on the lineup card. Years later, Robinson wrote of Shotton, “He gave me all the opportunities possible. … When I broke in I had a particularly bad streak, but he handled me so wisely that I didn’t lose heart.”15 One biographer wrote of Shotton that he “was never given to extreme highs or lows. He kept a balanced perspective, which unfortunately was at times misinterpreted by reporters and fans as aloofness.”16

Shotton led the Dodgers through 1947, and returned to the helm in mid-1948, leading the team in a second run through the end of the 1950 season. The Saturday Evening Post noted, “[Robinson’s] rise to big-league stardom has come almost entirely under the managership of wise old Burt Shotton. This may be a coincidence, but seasoned students of the game do not think so. In their opinion, Shotton did a better job than Durocher or almost anyone else could have done in bringing Robinson through the dangerous period when he was the only Negro player in the major leagues.”17

For his part, Robinson later noted that Shotton “was quick” and his only issue with the older skipper was that “he almost never came out of the dugout.”18 In fact, because he didn’t wear a uniform, Shotton couldn’t come out of the dugout. The major-league rules prohibited him from doing so. But Robinson’s preference for a manager who would “[go] out on the field to fight the team’s battles”19 would require another protagonist.

In between Shotton’s two stints in Brooklyn, Robinson finally got a chance to play for Durocher, who returned from his suspension for the 1948 season, only to find Robinson wildly out of shape in spring training. When Durocher saw Robinson’s condition, he exploded, “What in the world happened to you? You look like an old woman. Look at all that fat around your midsection. Why, you can’t even bend over!”20 Durocher soon promised the media, “Robinson will shag flies until his tongue hangs out.”21

Durocher lasted only until the All-Star break, when he left the 35-37 Dodgers to jump to the archrival Giants. Robinson had rounded into shape and was hitting .295 at the time of Durocher’s departure. Still, from that point on, Robinson and Durocher were rivals. Durocher would bench-jockey Robinson, and the player would respond by alleging that Durocher wore his wife Laraine Day’s perfume.22 Day herself joined the feud, penning a letter insisting that Alvin Dark was a better second baseman than Robinson.23

For his part, Robinson didn’t seem to hold a grudge. He ranked Durocher his second favorite manager to play under, stating, “[I]f you have a winning team nobody is better than Durocher. … But with a losing team, Durocher would lose his composure.”24

On the other hand, Charlie Dressen was Robinson’s favorite manager. “Dressen was steady day in and day out, win or lose,” wrote Robinson.25 Dressen took over after Shotton’s second turn, and managed the Dodgers from 1951 to 1953. In his three seasons, Dressen led the Dodgers to a playoff for the NL pennant in 1951 and then back-to-back pennants in the following two seasons.

Dressen was not necessarily an easy manager to play under. Bill James wrote, “Dressen just couldn’t resist telling you, pretty much on a daily basis, how smart he was. Walker Cooper once said that Charlie Dressen wrote a book on managing; on every page it just said, ‘I.’ … Charlie was one of the few managers in baseball history who truly believed that he was the key to his team’s success.”26 James’s comments aside, Dressen knew who made the Dodgers go. During spring training, he told the media, “I am counting on Robinson to be the most valuable player in the National League next year.”27

Robinson delivered frequently during Dressen’s three seasons, and he held the skipper in highest regard. He wrote, “During the years I knew him as manager we players gave him one hundred percent effort. … He is the ball player’s best friend because he fights for the player’s rights.”28

Fighting for his rights was often on Robinson’s mind during Dressen’s tenure. Whether because he was no longer under Rickey’s request for restrained behavior or simply because he had become a veteran star in baseball, Robinson was often in the thick of the fray with umpires,29 and Dressen’s presence with him in those battles apparently weighed heavily in Robinson’s regard.

When Dressen couldn’t beat the Yankees in the 1952 or 1953 World Series and then wouldn’t sign another one-year contract with the Dodgers, the team moved on to Walter Alston. By this point, Robinson was on the back side of his big-league career, shuffling between multiple positions and seeing decline in his production. He frankly did not care for Alston.

Interestingly, in his own Baseball Has Done It, Robinson discusses his first three major-league managers (Shotton, Durocher, Dressen), and then pointedly does not discuss Alston in any way. A few years earlier in Wait Till Next Year, Robinson had spoken his piece. He wrote about an incident at Wrigley Field in 1954 when a call went against Duke Snider on a long drive that went over the wall but was erroneously ruled a double by umpire Bill Stewart. Robinson charged onto the field in protest of the call. His manager did not. Robinson later wrote, “Alston stood at third base, hands on hips, staring at me as if to say: All right, Robinson, all the fans see you. Cut out the grandstand tactics and retire to the dugout.”30

Once in the dugout, Robinson continued to express his feelings. “If that guy didn’t stand out there at third base like a damned wooden Indian,” he said in regard to Alston, “you know, this club might go somewhere. … What the hell kind of manager is that?”31

This wasn’t their first conflict, although it was the most public. Robinson recalled Alston approaching him soon after being hired, with hopes that Robinson would “put out for him the way I had for Charlie Dressen.” Nonplussed by the request, Robinson later noted, “I wondered why Alston should have any doubt about my putting out for him. … Yet I soon found out that Alston could not get over the notion that, because of my high regard for Dressen, I had to resent him.”32

An uneasy truce persisted between Robinson and Alston, and Robinson played out the last three years of his career, including winning the 1955 World Series. Alston stayed with the Dodgers much longer than Robinson and won three more World Series titles in Los Angeles. Alston made the transition from a playing career that included one big-league at-bat to winning 2,040 games as a manager and earning a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile, once Robinson retired, many wondered if he would ever manage. But even in 1964, Robinson wrote, “I used to have managerial ambitions. I don’t now.”33 He did go on to note, “Americans must learn … that many Negroes are qualified through experience for managing.”34

At Robinson’s final public appearance, for the 1972 World Series, mere weeks before his death, he told the crowd, “I am extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon, but must admit I’m gonna be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball.”35 In his final appearance, Robinson was again being a trailblazer and while he didn’t live to see Frank Robinson earn that honor or Cito Gaston become the first African American manager to win a World Series, he helped to jump-start those journeys.

Notes

1 Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 185.

2 An example of Robinson’s issues with the Negro Leagues can be found at Rampersad, 116.

3 Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 42.

4 Red Barber and Robert Creamer, Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 274.

5 The entire incident is chronicled at Robinson, 48, but also at many other sources.

6 Robinson, 52.

7 Jackie Robinson, Baseball Has Done It (Brooklyn: IG Publishing, 2005), 54.

8 Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 170.

9 Tygiel, 170.

10 Rampersad, 166.

11 C.E. Lincoln: “A Conversation with Clyde Sukeforth,” Baseball Research Journal, 16 (1987): 73.

12 The questionnaire is included in the Jackie Robinson Papers at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

13 Joe Cox, A Fine Team Man: Jackie Robinson and the Lives He Touched (Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, 2019), 131. The original copy of Robinson’s letter is in the Jackie Robinson Papers at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

14 Peter Golenbock, Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984), 169.

15 Robinson, Baseball Has Done It, 77.

16 David Gough, Burt Shotton, Dodgers Manager: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1994), 58.

17 Roger Butterfield, “Brooklyn’s Gentleman Bum,” Saturday Evening Post, August 20, 1949.

18 Carl T. Rowan with Jackie Robinson, Wait Till Next Year: The Story of Jackie Robinson (New York: Random House, 1960), 264.

19 Rowan with Robinson, 264.

20 Lee Lowenfish, Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 448.

21 Lowenfish, 448.

22 Rampersad, 236.

23 The note was included in the New York Daily News, June 19, 1950.

24 Rowan with Robinson, 263.

25 Rowan with Robinson, 263.

26 Bill James, The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers From 1870 to Today (New York: Scribner, 1997), 187.

27 Rampersad, 233.

28 Robinson, Baseball Has Done It, 78.

29 Rampersad, 246 and 249 includes details of two such umpire feuds for Robinson.

30 Rowan with Robinson, 265.

31 Rowan with Robinson, 266.

32 Rowan with Robinson, 262-63.

33 Robinson, Baseball Has Done It, 78.

34 Robinson, Baseball Has Done It, 78.

35 A transcript of Robinson’s comments is included in the Jackie Robinson papers at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Do you feel they’ll make the big-league grade?” This question (referring to Black ballplayers) was posed to Bob Feller in October 1946. As reported in The Sporting News on October 30, 1946, Feller said without hesitation, “I have seen none who combine the qualities of a big-league ballplayer – not even Jackie Robinson.”1

Induction Day at Cooperstown in 1962 saw two new inductees voted in by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Jackie Robinson and Feller had each finished their playing careers in 1956 and their paths first crossed after the 1946 season.

In the autumn of 1946, after leading the Montreal Royals of the International League to a win in the Junior World Series, which concluded on October 4, Robinson was showcased in a barnstorming tour, which started with six games in the Midwest and concluded with several games in California. The tour was coordinated by Mickey McConnell, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ director of promotions. The Dodgers organization was eager to let America meet the first Black player to enter Organized Baseball in the twentieth century. The “Robinson All-Stars” included several players from the Dodgers organization as well as players from the Negro Leagues.

That same autumn, Feller also put together a tour that was deemed to be the best organized and financed and most successful tour of its kind. Indeed, Feller’s take from the barnstorming trip eclipsed his annual salary with the Indians. After facing Satchel Paige’s Negro League All-Stars in the early part of his tour and Robinson’s team in four games in California, Feller made the prediction that was, within a very short time, negated by Robinson and other great Black ballplayers, including several members of his 1946 barnstorming squad.

Robinson’s tour was slated to begin at the Polo Grounds on October 1, but when the Royals played into October, there were cancellations and schedule changes. Plagued by poor promotion, a lack of big-name players, the late start, and poor weather, the Robinson tour did not enjoy great success. Several barnstorming tours crisscrossed the United States in the autumn of 1946. Tours led by Feller and Satchel Paige garnered the most media coverage and had the most success.

A revised schedule had Robinson’s tour beginning in Detroit on October 5, and Jackie flew to Detroit after the Junior World Series ended. There is no evidence that the game scheduled for Detroit ever took place.

On October 6, two days after the Royals won the JWS, the Robinson All-Stars opened their tour at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, losing to the “Major League All-Stars,” managed by Honus Wagner, 10-4. Robinson’s team, which included three White ballplayers, was one of the first integrated professional squads ever to take the field at a big-league park. Bob Malloy of Cincinnati and Stan Ferens of the St. Louis Browns pitched for the winning team. A full accounting of the game is not available.

The next day, the tour stopped at Youngstown, Ohio. The Robinson team lost 6-5 to the Major League All-Stars. Robinson went 4-for-5 with a homer. Marv Rackley also homered for the Robinson All-Stars. Rackley, one of the White players on the team and a teammate of Robinson’s at Montreal (the two combined for 105 stolen bases), had signed with Brooklyn prior to the 1941 season. After spending two seasons in the low minors, Rackley entered the US Army Air Force for the duration of World War II. In 1946 with Montreal, the speedster led the International League with triples (14) and stolen bases (65). He played in parts of four major-league seasons, appeared in 185 games, and batted .317.

Wagner’s team included Hank Sauer. Sauer was, at the time, relatively unknown. He had played in only 47 major-league games over a three-year span. Fans of the International League were aware of him. He had hit 21 homers with 90 RBIs in 1946. The following year, in his eighth minor-league season, his 50 homers for Syracuse punched his ticket to the big leagues. In 15 major-league seasons, he hit 288 homers. In 1952 he was selected the National League MVP after hitting 37 homers with 121 RBIs for the Cubs.

Sauer’s two run homer put Wagner’s team ahead 2-0 in the second inning, and Eddie Miller extended the lead to 5-0 with a three-run blast in the fifth inning. With two out in the seventh inning, Robinson’s squad rallied to tie the game on the back-to-back homers by Robinson and Rackley. Wagner’s squad pushed across the winning run in the bottom of the ninth on a single by Pittsburgh’s Lee Handley.2

On October 8 the caravan arrived at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field for a 4 P.M. contest. A glimpse of a scorecard from the game shows the players on the teams, along with some changes.3 Some of Robinson’s teammates in the 6-4 win are well known to this day. Others, however, have seen time pass them by.

Robinson played shortstop, because the team’s regular shortstop, Al Campanis, was injured. Robinson had three hits, scored two runs, and stole a base. The White players who played for the Robinson All-Stars at Pittsburgh were outfielder Rackley and relief pitcher Richard Mlady.

The starting pitcher for the Robinson squad, Willie Pope, had spent the season with the Pittsburgh Crawfords. He played in Organized Baseball from 1950 through 1955, but never advanced beyond Triple A.

Pope was relieved during a four-run fifth-inning rally by Mlady, who had been in the Dodgers organization since 1940. Mlady never made it to the majors, posting a 40-44 record in six minor-league seasons. In 1946 he had been with Nashua of the Class-B New England League, teaming with two players who were on the Robinson All-Stars and would go on to great success with Brooklyn.

The first of the Nashua players was catcher Roy Campanella. The Dodgers signed him in 1946 and he spent the season at Nashua, batting .290 in 113 games. He arrived in Brooklyn in 1948. The other Nashua player was pitcher Don Newcombe, who was on the caravan but did not pitch at Forbes Field.

At first base for Robinson’s squad was Lennie Pearson of the Negro League champion Newark Eagles. He was 28 years old, but by the time he was noticed by Organized Baseball in 1950, he was already 32. Pearson was signed by the Braves and played at Milwaukee in the Triple-A American Association in 1950, batting .305. The following season, the Braves promoted George Crowe. Pearson was sent down to the Hartford Chiefs of the Class-A Eastern League. He batted .272 in his last season in the Braves organization.

Robinson’s second baseman was Larry Doby, who also had spent 1946 with the Eagles, for whom he had begun his professional career in 1942. During the 1947 season, the Cleveland Indians acquired him from Newark, and Doby went on to a Hall of Fame career. He was the first Black player signed by a team other than the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Robinson’s third baseman was Herb Souell of the Kansas City Monarchs. He was 33 years old. By the time Organized Baseball signed him, he was 39 years old. He played only one minor-league season, 1952.

Robinson’s outfielders included Rackley, Monte Irvin, and John Scott. Irvin was destined to be a star in the majors as he had been in the Negro Leagues. In 1946 he had played with the Newark Eagles, and remained with them through 1948. In 1949, at age 30, he was acquired by the New York Giants and was with them for seven seasons. In 1951 he led the National League in RBIs with 121 and finished third in MVP balloting. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1973. Scott, a member of the Monarchs and a 1945 teammate of Robinson’s, never played in Organized Baseball, finishing up his Negro League career at Kansas City in 1948.

Most of the members of the “major-league all-stars” had done little to distinguish themselves. Only a couple are remembered to this day. Al Gionfriddo started in center field. He is remembered for his catch of a long fly ball by Joe DiMaggio in the 1947 World Series. Sauer was stationed in left field, and Eddie Lukon of Cincinnati started the game in right. Batting second for the majors was Frankie Gustine, who spent the first 10 of his 12 major-league seasons with Pittsburgh. Lukon batted third, and the cleanup batter was Sauer.

Batting fifth was shortstop Pete Suder, who spent his entire 13-year major-league career with the Athletics, first in Philadelphia, then in Kansas City. In 1946 he had batted .281 in 128 games. Next up was first baseman Eddie Miller, who had homered at Youngstown. Miller was a shortstop for the Cincinnati Reds. Lee Handley, who had driven in the winning run at Youngstown, was at third base. He spent eight of his 10 major-league seasons with Pittsburgh and after his playing days stayed active, along with Gustine, in youth baseball in the Pittsburgh area.

The catcher was George Susce, who had been a backup retriever for eight seasons, playing his last major-league game in 1944. In 1946 he had been a coach with the Indians. The pitcher on October 8 was Joe Beggs, who was tagged with the loss, going the route and allowing 10 hits. Beggs, who pitched in the majors for nine seasons, was coming off a 12-10 season with Cincinnati.

Robinson’s team drew first blood, scoring three runs on four hits in the third inning. With one out, Scott and Pope singled. A double by Rackley brought Scott home. Robinson singled Pope home and Rackley scored on an infield error.

Pope, who had allowed only a second-inning single to Suder and a fourth-inning double to Lukon, was victimized by a wild streak in the fifth when Wagner’s team scored four runs on only two hits. Handley walked to lead off the inning and Susce singled. Beggs struck out and Gionfriddo was hit by a pitch, loading the bases. He left the game for a pinch-runner. Gustine walked, forcing in Handley, and Lukon singled in a pair of runs. After Sauer walked to load the bases again, Suder hit into a force play that scored Gustine with his team’s final run.

Robinson’s team tied the game in the sixth. Doby led off with a triple and came home on a two-out single by Pearson. Robinson ignited a game-winning two-run rally in the eighth inning. He doubled and, after Irvin was walked, Pearson’s triple cleared the bases. After Souell was hit by a pitch, Pearson was picked off third base, ending the inning. Mlady limited Wagner’s team to two hits over the last two innings to get credit for the win.

On October 11 Cleveland welcomed the barnstormers, but the game was rained out and rescheduled for Monday, October 14. The rain continued and the next day’s game at Dayton was canceled.

On October 13 the Robinson entourage was at Chicago’s Comiskey Park and defeated the Wagner All-Stars 10-5. By this time, Robinson had added another White player to his troupe. Mike Nozinski, who had played for Nashua with Campanella and Newcombe, augmented the pitching staff. Nozinski played 10 games at the Double-A level in 1947, but that was as high as he got.

The starting pitcher for Robinson’s squad was onetime Montreal teammate Johnny Wright, who had originally pitched in the Negro Leagues with Newark in 1937 and had been with the Homestead Grays at the time he was signed by the Dodgers. Wright pitched the first five innings and left the game with a big lead.

Jackie’s team went out in front in the first inning. With two out, Robinson walked and scored from first on a double by Irvin. Wright singled in the third inning, moved to second on an error, and scored on a single by Robinson. A double by Campanella ignited a two-run rally in the fourth inning that drove starting pitcher Stan Ferens from the mound. A three-run sixth for the Robinson team was topped off when Jackie executed a perfect suicide squeeze play, bunting Rackley home from third. Jackie’s team took a 7-1 lead into the bottom of the sixth.

Wagner’s team narrowed the gap to 7-4 with three runs in the bottom half of the inning. Ross “Satchel” Davis replaced Wright on the mound. The once and future Cleveland Buckeyes hurler walked two batters and was replaced by Nozinski, who, after filling the bases and allowing the three runners to score, calmed down and finished the game for the winners.

Robinson’s squad extended its lead in the late innings. In the eighth, off reliever Bob Malloy, Robinson tripled down the right-field line, scoring Johnny Scott. Jackie scored on a fly ball by Doby. In the ninth, Dave Pope tripled home Joe Atkins but was thwarted in his attempt for an inside-the-park homer when Gionfriddo’s throw was relayed by Handley and Susce applied the tag. Wagner’s team scored a run in the last inning, as an errant throw to first by Nozinski allowed a runner to score from third.4

The teams played at Cleveland Stadium the next day and Robinson’s team won 8-0. The hitting star was Irvin with a single, a double, and a triple. Jackie’s team broke the game open with a five-run second inning. Atkins, who had spent the 1946 season with the Pittsburgh Crawfords, belted a sixth-inning inside-the-park-homer. At age 32 in 1954, he got to play Triple-A ball with Ottawa in the International League, but he never made it to the majors. The pitching chores were handled by Mlady, who went the first five innings, and Negro League veteran Alonzo Boone, who finished up. Between them, they allowed only two hits.5 Boone first played professionally in 1929 for Memphis in the Negro National League. In 1946 he was with the Cleveland Buckeyes. He returned to the Buckeyes for his final competitive season in 1947.

On Tuesday, October 15, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Robinson’s team faced the Omaha Firemen at Legion Park. There was a chill in the air and attendance was only 469. In the top of the eighth, Robinson’s team took a 7-5 lead when Atkins tripled in two runs. However, when he tried to make it an inside-the-park-homer, he was thrown out at the plate. Omaha’s Jim “Westy” Basso retrieved the ball and threw it home by way of shortstop Frank Mancuso. Basso, who hailed from Omaha, played 13 minor-league seasons, but never got higher than Triple A. Mancuso, who also stole home in the game, played for the St. Louis Browns from 1944 through 1946 and finished up his career with Washington the following season. The smallish crowd saw the Firemen win 8-7 when they scored three runs in the ninth inning.6

At San Francisco’s Seals Stadium on October 18, 9,813 fans watched the first matchup of the Robinson All-Stars and the Bob Feller All-Stars. Before the game, there was a home-run hitting contest featuring Stan Musial, Mickey Vernon, Charlie Keller, Sam Chapman, and Jeff Heath. Feller’s team won the game, 6-0. Robinson got a hit and stole a base off the Cleveland fireballer, but his infield single, which bounced over Feller, was one of only two hits given up by the pitcher in five innings. Dutch Leonard and Spud Chandler completed the pitching chores for Feller’s squad. Their offense was led by Heath, who tripled and homered. Musial had a pair of hits and scored two runs.7

On October 20, it was on to Oakland for Robinson’s squad. They took on the Sherry Liquor team, which included several big-league players, including Bill Rigney of the Giants. The teams played to an 8-8 tie in a game halted by darkness after 10 innings.

On October 23, at Bakersfield, there was a miscommunication as barnstorming teams led by both Satchel Paige and Robinson appeared to face Feller’s squad with 3,500 fans looking on. After a settlement was reached, Jackie looked on as teams led by Feller and Paige played. Feller’s team won.8 The following afternoon, at El Centro, 114 miles east of San Diego, Feller’s team beat the Robinson All-Stars in front of 1,800 spectators.9

On the evening of October 24 at San Diego’s Lane Field, with 4,414 fans looking on, Feller pitched five innings, striking out 11, as his team won 4-2. In the fourth inning, Robinson walked and scored the game’s first run, flying home on a short double by Souell. Feller’s team quickly tied the game when Chapman singled home Ken Keltner. When Feller left the game, his team trailed 2-1, after to a go-ahead homer by the Robinson squad’s Earl “Mickey” Taborn. Taborn, who had spent the 1946 season with the Monarchs, signed with the New York Yankees and was with their Triple-A Newark affiliate in 1949. It was his only year in Organized Baseball, but he continued to play and was in the Mexican League from 1951 through 1961.

Feller’s squad rallied for three eighth-inning runs to win the game. Musial led off with a single and Keller’s long double put runners on second and third. Keltner singled in the runners. He advanced to second on a single by Heath and came around to score his team’s final run on a single by shortstop Bob Lemon. Chandler, who entered the game in the sixth inning, was the winning pitcher.10

The following night, Feller took the mound again and was again outstanding at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. He pitched five perfect innings, striking out 10, as his team won, 4-3. During the seventh and eighth innings of the game, Robinson took issue with the ball-strike calls by home-plate umpire Gordon Ford. The temper displayed by Robinson was in stark contrast to the unusual restraint he showed during his first years in the Dodgers organization.

The Oakland Larks of the West Coast Association, a Negro minor league, hosted the Robinson All-Stars on October 31, the Robinson All-Stars winning 13-7. The key blow was a three-run homer by Souell. On November 3 in San Bernardino, the Larks won, 8-5. Robinson went 3-for-4 with a double.

While he was in Southern California, Robinson began practicing with the Los Angeles Red Devils, a minor-league basketball team. He was a force on the hardwood and scored 18 points in a 39-38 win over Sheboygan on November 9.11 The team played into January, and Robinson’s teammates included two future major-league baseball players – Irv Noren and George Crowe. Robinson’s last game with the team was on January 3.

Robinson and Doby advanced to the majors in 1947. They were joined in subsequent years by Campanella, Newcombe, and Irvin. The Negro Leagues would diminish in size after 1948 and although Robinson led successful barnstorming trips in the early years of his major-league career, the advent of television and the westward migration of franchises would make barnstorming by big leaguers vanish. The four remaining Negro League teams played the last Negro League East-West All-Star Game on August 26, 1962. After the 1962 season, the final big-league barnstorming tour, led by Willie Mays, visited five small towns.

ALAN COHEN has been a SABR member since 2010. He serves as vice president-treasurer of the Connecticut Smoky Joe Wood Chapter, is datacaster (MiLB First Pitch stringer) for the Hartford Yard Goats, the Double-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies, and has been serving as head of SABR’s fact-checking committee since 2020. His biographies, game stories, and essays have appeared in more than 50 SABR publications. Since his first Baseball Research Journal article appeared in 2013, Alan has continued to expand his research into the Hearst Sandlot Classic (1946-1965) from which 88 players advanced to the major leagues. He has four children and eight grandchildren and resides in Connecticut with his wife, Frances, their cats, Morty, Ava, and Zoe, and their dog, Buddy.

Sources

In addition to Baseball-Reference.com, the author used:

“Robinson’s Stars Split in Openers,” The Sporting News, October 16, 1946: 23.

“Robinson Stars as Team Wins,” Pittsburgh Press, October 9, 1946: 26.

“Robinson Stars Triumph, 6-4,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, October 9, 1946: 25.

“West Coast Baseball Fans Pay Tribute to Jackie Robinson: Durocher Roots for Jackie’s Team in Tilt Against Feller’s,” Pittsburgh Courier (National Edition), November 2, 1946: 16.

Abrams, Al. “Robinson Impresses Big League Players: Cracks Out Three Hits as His Team Defeats Major League Stars, 6-4,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 9, 1946: 15.

Adams, Caswell. “Feller Earns $175,000 to Crack Ruth’s Record,” Evening World Herald (Omaha, Nebraska), November 8, 1946: 27.

Barthel, Thomas. Baseball Barnstorming and Exhibition Games – 1901-1962: A History of Off-Season Major League Play (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishers, 2007).

Bojens, Ken. “Off the Main Line,” San Diego Union, October 24, 1946: A-16.

Old, John B. “Jackie’s Blasts at Umpire Mar Game in Los Angeles,” The Sporting News, November 6, 1946: 2.

Stann, Francis E., “Win, Lose, or Draw,” Washington Evening Star, November 7, 1946: C-1.

Young, Fay. “Through the Years,” Chicago Defender, October 19, 1946: 11.

Notes

1 Steve George, “250,000 See Feller-Paige Teams Play,” The Sporting News, October 30, 1946: 9.

2 “Wagner’s All-Stars Beat Robbie’s, 6-5,” Chicago Times, October 8, 1946: 48.

3 On August 23, 2010, PBS aired an episode of the History Detectives. During a segment of the broadcast, a scorecard from the October 8, 1946, game in Pittsburgh was shown. Articles from contemporary issues of the Pittsburgh Courier (local edition) and the Chicago Defender also were shown. The article by Fay Young in the Chicago Defender is listed in the sources. The article from the Pittsburgh Courier is shown in Note 4. The scorecard was completed and presents the most complete record of what transpired on October 8, 1946.

4 “Jackie Robinson’s Team Beats Major leaguers, 10-5,” Chicago Defender, October 19, 1946: 16.

5 “Robinson All-Stars Bag 8-0 Decision,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 15, 1946: 16; “Robinson’s All-Stars Blank Dressen’s, 8-0,” Cleveland Call and Post, October 19, 1946: 9B; “Robinson’s All-Stars Win 3 Out of 5 Games,” Pittsburgh Courier (Local Edition), October 19, 1946: 24.

6 “Omahans Rally in Last Frame,” Council Bluffs (Iowa) Nonpareil, October 16, 1946: 8; Maurice Shadle, “Omaha’s Stars Win in Ninth, 8-7,” Morning World Herald (Omaha, Nebraska), October 16, 1948: 13.

7 “Feller Shuts Out Robinson’s Stars,” San Francisco Examiner, October 19, 1946: 15.

8 “Jackie Robinson Here for Contest; Could Not Compete,” Bakersfield Californian, October 25, 1946: 15.

9 “Feller in One-Day Hops in Coast Cities,” The Sporting News, October 30, 1946: 10.

10 “Feller Whiffs 11 in 4-2 Win: Major Leaguers Triumph Behind Four-Hit Pitching,” San Diego Union, October 25, 1946: B-4.

11 “Red Devils Nab Cage Tilt,” Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1946: II-7; J. Cullen Fentress, “Jackie Robinson Scores 18 Points as L.A. Tops Sheboygan,” Pittsburgh Courier (National Edition), November 16, 1946: 13.