I Never Had It Made (6 page)

“Have you got the guts to play the game no matter what happens?”

“I think I can play the game, Mr. Rickey,” I said.

The next few minutes were tough. Branch Rickey had to make absolutely sure that I knew what I would face. Beanballs would be thrown at me. I would be called the kind of names which would hurt and infuriate any man. I would be physically attacked. Could I take all of this and control my temper, remain steadfastly loyal to our ultimate aim?

He knew I would have terrible problems and wanted me to know the extent of them before I agreed to the plan. I was twenty-six years old, and all my life back to the age of eight when a little neighbor girl called me a nigger—I had believed in payback, retaliation. The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity. I looked at Mr. Rickey guardedly, and in that second I was looking at him not as a partner in a great experiment, but as the enemy—a white man. I had a question and it was the age-old one about whether or not you sell your birthright.

“Mr. Rickey,” I asked, “are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?”

I never will forget the way he exploded.

“Robinson,” he said, “I'm looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back.”

After that, Mr. Rickey continued his lecture on the kind of thing I'd be facing.

He not only told me about it, but he acted out the part of a white player charging into me, blaming me for the “accident” and calling me all kinds of foul racial names. He talked about my race, my parents, in language that was almost unendurable.

“They'll taunt and goad you,” Mr. Rickey said. “They'll do anything to make you react. They'll try to provoke a race riot in the ball park. This is the way to prove to the public that a Negro should not be allowed in the major league. This is the way to frighten the fans and make them afraid to attend the games.”

If hundreds of black people wanted to come to the ball park to watch me play and Mr. Rickey tried to discourage them, would I understand that he was doing it because the emotional enthusiasm of my people could harm the experiment? That kind of enthusiasm would be as bad as the emotional opposition of prejudiced white fans.

Suppose I was at shortstop. Another player comes down from first, stealing, flying in with spikes high, and cuts me on the leg. As I feel the blood running down my leg, the white player laughs in my face.

“How do you like that, nigger boy?” he sneers.

Could I turn the other cheek? I didn't know how I would do it. Yet I knew that I must. I had to do it for so many reasons. For black youth, for my mother, for Rae, for myself. I had already begun to feel I had to do it for Branch Rickey.

I was offered and agreed to sign later a contract with a $3,500 bonus and $600 a month salary. I was officially a Montreal Royal. I must not tell anyone except Rae and my mother.

It was almost two months—October 23, 1945—before I was notified to go to Montreal to sign my contract and to meet Mr. Rickey's son, Branch Rickey, Jr., who was in charge of Brooklyn Dodger farm clubs. The press had been called in. They made a dash for the telephone when Hector Racine, the president of the Montreal club, announced that Jackie Robinson, a shortstop, had been signed to play for Montreal. Having phoned in the big news, the press came back to try to milk more information out of the Dodger officials and me. There was the inevitable question about the reaction of the fans to my being on the team. The Montreal president said he was confident Montreal fans were not racially biased and would judge me on my playing merit. Young Rickey told something about the talent search which had resulted in my being discovered. He added that there would undoubtedly be some reaction from sections of the United States where racial prejudice was rampant.

“My father and Mr. Racine are not inviting trouble,” young Rickey said, “but they won't avoid it if it comes. Jack Robinson is a fine type of young man, intelligent and college-bred, and I think he can make it, too.”

Mr. Rickey's son continued to point out that some of the Brooklyn organization's other players, particularly from certain sections of the South, would “steer away from a club with Negro players on its roster.” He added, “Some of them who are with us now may even quit, but they'll be back in baseball after they work a year or two in a cotton mill.”

The announcement and young Rickey's statement got a great deal of press coverage. Although some sportswriters, among them Dan Parker and Red Smith, were encouraging, there were plenty of negative comments.

Rogers Hornsby, a Texan and retired player, predicted, “Ballplayers on the road live close together. It won't work.” Fred “Dixie” Walker, a popular outfielder for Brooklyn, was quoted as saying, “As long as he isn't with the Dodgers, I'm not worried.” Pitcher Bob Feller didn't see any future for me. “He is tied up in the shoulders,” Feller said. “He couldn't hit an inside pitch to save his neck. If he were a white man, I doubt if they would even consider him as big league material.”

Jimmy Powers, sports editor of the New York
Daily News,
wrote that I would not make the grade in the big leagues “next year or the next.” I was, according to him, a thousand-to-one shot. Jack Horner of North Carolina's Durham
Herald
wrote hopefully that I would probably get out of my own accord because I would be so uncomfortable and out of place. Minor League Commissioner W. G. Bramham accused Branch Rickey of being “of the carpetbagger stripe of the white race who, under the guise of helping, is in truth using the Negro for their own self-interest, to retard the race.” Bramham sneered that if the black religious leader Father Divine wasn't careful, there would soon be a Rickey Temple built in Harlem. Alvin Gardner, president of the Texas League, agreed. “I'm positive you'll never see any Negro player on any of the teams in organized baseball in the South as long as the Jim Crow laws are in force,” he stated.

Overnight some of the prejudiced white owners and officials became extremely concerned about the future of the Negro leagues. They mourned because Mr. Rickey was destroying the defenseless black clubs. With some, the issue was genuine. With others, raising the issue helped cast doubt on the wisdom of taking black players from the black clubs into the major leagues.

The Kansas City Monarchs threatened to sue Rickey. They contended I had a contract with them and was their property. Some major league owners encouraged the Monarchs. These owners wanted to stop blacks from getting into the mainstream of baseball, and some were making money leasing their ball parks to the Jim Crow teams. Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, said that the Dodgers should pay the Monarchs for my services. The threatened suit came to an end suddenly when one of the Monarch owners, who, incidentally, was white, sent a telegram to Mr. Rickey saying he had been misquoted. He wouldn't dream of doing anything to keep any black player out of the major leagues. I guess the word got around that black fans would not view it kindly if the Jim Crow clubs barred the way for a black player to make the big time.

III

Breaking the Color Barrier

Q
uite a while before I signed with Montreal, I had agreed to play on an all-star black team for the American National League that planned to go to Venezuela on a barnstorming tour. Rae and I had planned to be married in February. While I was in South America, we both thought it would be a good chance for Rae to begin to fulfill a lifelong dream of traveling. She wanted to go to New York to see another part of the country. She had a fear that once married she would be stuck in California as both our families were. We both had no idea that our destiny would differ significantly from our parents'. She had saved some money and her family gave her another $100. Rae had been a student nurse for five years, and the prospect of seeing New York excited her. She got a job as a hostess in a swank restaurant on Park Avenue. After a couple of months, she quit because of the way the management treated black patrons and employees. They used every kind of device to let black patrons know they weren't welcome. A black man with a turban on his head could get the best of accommodations because he wasn't a black American in the eyes of the restaurant owner.

Next, Rachel got a job as a nurse at the Hospital for Joint Diseases and lived with a friend of her mother's who had a place in Harlem. Even though she was getting a chance to see New York and had the company of her friend Janice, she was lonely. She was earning a pitifully small salary and usually had her meals at a great little restaurant on Seventh Avenue, called Jenny Lou's. As good as the food was, Rachel and Janice yearned for a home-cooked meal and for the kindness of an invitation to someone's house for dinner. The lady in whose house Rachel and Janice were staying was well-known and had many friends. But none of them thought about asking these young visitors from out of town to come to dinner. Years later, when she returned to New York as Mrs. Jackie Robinson, some of the same people who had known her before as an insignificant girl named Rachel Isum wanted to do all sorts of things to entertain her. Rae found that quite ironic.

Rachel purchased part of her trousseau in New York, and I brought the wedding ring home from Latin America. When we were reunited in the early part of 1946, wedding plans were on the agenda. To please Rae's mother, we agreed to a big church wedding. The ceremony was beautiful and we were most pleased that our dear friend, Reverend Karl Downs, flew in from Texas to perform the ceremony.

After we had been declared man and wife, as we walked down the aisle together, I spotted some old boyhood buddies from the one-time Pepper Street gang in Pasadena. I was so happy to see them there and so happy about getting married that I stopped to shake hands with them. Rae kept walking to the end of the aisle and waited there, slightly miffed, until I caught up with her.

At the reception afterward, we had a marvelous time, but when we got ready to leave to go to a local hotel where we would be staying overnight, we found that one of my friends had “borrowed” my old car as a joke. We stood there, a brand-new bride and groom, without transportation to take us to our honeymoon hotel. Finally, the car materialized and we went to the hotel. We were lucky to be admitted because I had forgotten to make a reservation and explain that we were a bridal couple so that the management would provide the traditional flowers and extra services. Once the hotel room door closed, the minor mishaps receded before the great joy of knowing we were alone together at last.

A few weeks after the wedding, we were to fly to Daytona Beach, Florida, where I was to report for spring training with the Montreal farm club. We started out by plane from Los Angeles, arriving at New Orleans quite early in the morning. Upon arrival, I was told to go into the terminal. Rachel waited and waited. Then the stewardess came up to her and suggested that she go into the terminal and take all her things with her. I discovered we had been bumped from our flight owing to military priorities, so they said. We were not alarmed, having been assured that there would be only a brief delay. But as we argued our rights, the plane took off. Another typical black experience. After a few hours we weren't as concerned about the time we were losing as we were about the hunger we felt. Blacks could not eat in the coffee shop but could take food out. We asked where we could find a restaurant. We learned there was one that would prepare sandwiches provided we did not sit down and eat them there. Though we were both weary and hungry, we decided to skip food until we reached a place where we could be treated as human beings.

Our next project was to find a hotel where we could wait until we got another flight. The only accommodations were in a filthy, run-down place resembling a flophouse. A roof over our heads and a chance to lie down, even in a bed of uncertain sanitary condition, was better than nothing. We made the best of it and notified the airport where we could be found. They promised to call. They did. At seven in the evening, exactly twelve hours after we had been told about a “brief delay,” we were in the air again. After a short flight, the plane set down at Pensacola, Florida, for fueling. The manager of the Pensacola Airport told me that we were being bumped again. There wasn't any explanation this time. They had simply put a white couple in our seats. A black porter managed to get us a limousine. It stopped at a hotel in Pensacola, and the white driver summoned a black bellboy and asked him where we could get room and board for the night. The bellboy recommended the home of a black family. These were generous and warmhearted people who insisted on taking us in, in spite of the fact that they had a huge family and a tiny home. Their willingness to share made us forget about being sorry for ourselves. Realistically, though, there was just no room for us. We thanked them, telling them we couldn't dream of inconveniencing them and got a ride to the Greyhound bus terminal. We had decided to take the next bus to Jacksonville, thinking that at least we could relax a bit and rest our backs, but we were in for another rude jolt. We had sunk down gratefully into a couple of seats and pushed the little buttons which move you back into a reclining position. The bus was empty when we boarded, and we had taken seats in the middle of the bus. I fell fast asleep. At the first stop, a crowd of passengers got on. The bus driver gestured to us, indicating that we were to move to the back of the bus. The seats at the back were reserved seats—reserved for Negroes—and they were straight-backed. No little button to push. No reclining seats.

I had a bad few seconds, deciding whether I could continue to endure this humiliation. After we had been bumped a second time at the Pensacola Airport, I had been ready to explode with rage, but I knew that the result would mean newspaper headlines about an ugly racial incident and possible arrest not only for me but also for Rae. By giving in to my feelings then, I could have blown the whole major league bit. I had swallowed my pride and choked back my anger. Again, this time it would have been much easier to take a beating than to remain passive. But I remembered the things Rae and I had said to each other during the months we had tried to prepare ourselves for exactly this kind of ordeal. We had agreed that I had no right to lose my temper and jeopardize the chances of all the blacks who would follow me if I could help break down the barriers. So we moved back to the very last seat as indicated by the driver. The bus continued to pick up passengers. They came on board the bus and filled up the choice white seats. The black section was so crowded that every other person sat forward on the edge to create more room. In the dark, Rachel was quietly crying, but I didn't know that until years later. She was crying for me and not out of self-pity. She felt bad because she knew I felt helpless. She hoped I realized that she knew how much strength it took to take these injustices and not strike back.

Finally, the bus pulled into Daytona Beach. We were relieved to reach our destination. But we had not escaped from old man Jim Crow. The white members of the team were living in a hotel; however, Rae and I had “special accommodations” at the home of Joe Harris, a local black political leader. Joe was an activist. He kept in touch with every black voter in his district to make sure they voted. His skill at organizing had enabled him to gain concessions from the power structure. He had persuaded business people in downtown Daytona Beach to treat black customers with respect and had influenced the transit people to hire black drivers on local buses. Joe and his wife Duff treated Rae and me with well-known Southern warmth. They liked to kid us, calling us the lovebirds since we were newlyweds. The one major disadvantage we had at the Harris home was that we could not cook or eat there on a regular basis except for breakfast. For our other meals, we had to depend on greasy-spoon joints.

After staying several days at Daytona Beach, the club was moved to Sanford, Florida. I would have more than two hundred teammates, the majority of them Southern. The first time we met was in the locker room and I remember being quite reticent. Most of the other players seemed intent on doing their own jobs. But there was a mutual wariness between us, a current of tension that I hoped would lessen with time.

I had my first confrontation with the press in camp. Some-one asked if I thought I could “make it with these white boys.” I said I hadn't had any crucial problems making it with white fellow athletes in the service or at UCLA or at Pasadena. One of the newsmen asked what I would do if one of the white pitchers threw at my head. I replied that I would duck. Noting that I was a shortstop, another newsman made the assumption that this automatically meant I wanted to replace the popular Brooklyn Dodger shortstop, Pee Wee Reese. I pointed out that Pee Wee Reese was after all with the Brooklyn Dodgers and I was trying to make the Montreal Royals. I was not in a position to go after another man's job on another team—I was going to concentrate on securing my berth with Montreal. This confrontation with the press was just a taste of what was to come. They frequently stirred up trouble by baiting me or jumping into any situation I was involved in without completely checking the facts before rushing a story into print.

Clyde Sukeforth, the scout who had taken me to Mr. Rickey, was in camp at Sanford. I was glad to see him. Clyde introduced me to Clay Hopper, the Montreal manager. I 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. There was no outward sign of prejudice in his manner, however, when we first met. Hopper told me I could take it easy, just hit a few and throw the ball around. This relaxed activity—or, rather, lack of activity—went on all that first day and the next. The evening of the second day, the stunning and discouraging word came that Mr. Rickey had ordered me back to Daytona Beach where I had originally reported. Naturally, I was worried about this sudden shift. Officially, I was told I was being sent ahead to Daytona a few days before the rest of the club was to arrive so that Rachel and I would have a chance to settle down. The truth I learned from Wendell Smith when en route to Daytona, was that my presence with the club in Sanford had already created racial tensions. Local civic officials had decided that mixing black and white players was apt to create trouble.

Shortly after Branch Rickey had signed me for Montreal, he had signed John Wright, a black pitcher, for the farm club. Johnny was a good pitcher, but I feel he didn't have the right kind of temperament to make it with the International League in those days. He couldn't withstand the pressure of taking insult after insult without being able to retaliate. It affected his pitching that he had to keep his temper under control all the time. Later I was very sad because he didn't make the Montreal team.

All during that spring training period in Daytona, I was conscious every minute of every day, and during many sleepless nights that I had to make good out there on that ball field. I was determined to prove to our manager, Clay Hopper, that I could make the grade. Perhaps it is a good thing that I didn't know about Hopper's initial reaction to me. Hopper had begged Mr. Rickey not to send me to his club.

“Please don't do this to me,” he had pleaded. “I'm white and I've lived in Mississippi all my life. If you do this, you're going to force me to move my family and my home out of Mississippi.” Clay Hopper began to come around only after I demonstrated that I was a valuable property for the club.

During this time of trial, while my fellow players were not overtly hostile to me, they made no particular effort to be friendly. They didn't speak to Wright or to me except in the line of duty, and we never tried to engage them in conversation. They seemed to have little reaction to us, one way or the other.

But the generosity and friendliness of one white teammate during those early days with Montreal stands out vividly. A young and talented player, Lou Rochelli, had been—until my arrival—the number-one candidate for second base. When I got the assignment, it would have been only human for him to resent it. And he had every right to assume that perhaps I had been assigned to second base instead of him because I was black and because Mr. Rickey had staked so much on my success. Lou was intelligent and he was a thoroughbred. He recognized that I had more experience with the left side of the infield than the right, and he spent considerable time helping me, giving me tips on technique. He taught me how to pivot on a double play. Working this pivot as a shortstop, I had been accustomed to maneuvering toward first. Now it was a matter of going away from first to get the throw, stepping on the bag, and then making the complete pivot for the throw to first. It's not an easy play to make especially when the runner coming down from first is trying to take you out of the play. Rochelli taught me the tricks, especially how to hurdle the runner. I learned readily, and from the beginning, my fielding was never in question. But my hitting record was terrible. This was obvious in practice games during that first spring training. After a good hard month of training, I had only two or three decisive hits.