Jackie and Campy (21 page)

But in 1955 Robinson had an additional incentive to win. In April the Yankees fielded their first African American player, catcher Elston Howard. Eight years after Jackie had broken the color barrier the Bronx Bomb
ers had finally integrated. Now only three all-white teams remained: the Phillies, Tigers, and Red Sox.
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Instead of celebrating the event, however, Stengel insulted his black catcher. When asked what he thought of Howard’s early performance, the Yankees’ manager remarked, “Well, when they finally get me a nigger, I get the only one who can’t run.”
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It was a feeble attempt to be funny, but the remark was abusive and did not escape notice by Robinson, who had been openly critical of the all-white Yankees years earlier. On that occasion he was reprimanded by the National League president for his remarks. This time Jackie held his tongue and let his on-field performance do the talking in the World Series.

Newcombe faced New York’s ace, Whitey Ford, in Game One at Yankee Stadium on September 28. Neither hurler had their best stuff, but the Yanks took a 6–4 lead into the eighth inning. With two outs, Robinson on third base, and Dodgers pinch hitter Frank Kellert at bat, Jackie decided to take matters into his own hands. Anticipating that Yankees catcher Yogi Berra wouldn’t expect him to steal home, Robinson inched off third as Ford went into his wind-up. He broke for the plate before the hurler released the ball. Snagging Ford’s pitch in front of the plate, Berra allowed Jackie to slide into his tag. The image was instantly freeze-framed in the national conscience: Jackie Robinson, consumed by rage and pride, once again defying all odds and stealing home. That image still endures as a lasting reminder of the black man’s vindication. When umpire Bill Summers called Robinson safe, Berra, incensed by the call, jumped up and down, screaming in protest. It remains one of the most controversial decisions in baseball history.

Although Jackie brought the Dodgers to within one run of the Yanks, New York held on to win the game, 6–5.
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The Yankees won again the following day, 4–2, and it appeared as if Brooklyn was going to be bridesmaids once again. No team had ever come back from being down two games to none to win the best-of-seven Series. Predictably Brooklyn fans resumed their familiar chant: “Wait ’til next year!”

Seated in the visitors’ clubhouse, heads in hands, the Dodgers were dejected until Robinson perked up. “We gotta win Game Three,” he snapped. “If we lose again, they’ll be calling us choke-up guys the rest of our lives. Do we want that?”
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The implication of going down in baseball history as choke artists was powerful motivation. The tone of the Series changed dramatically when the scene shifted to Ebbets Field on September 30 for Game Three. Alston sent twenty-three-year-old Johnny Podres to the mound against Bob Turley. Podres had finished just 9-10 during an injury-plagued season but had shown promise early on. “I started off that year with seven wins by June,” recalled Podres. “Even though I got hurt, it ended up pretty good for me. I hadn’t pitched many innings by the fall because of the injury, so I was fresh. It was like coming out of spring training. I had a good fastball, and I was raring to go.”
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Alston’s hunch proved to be correct. Campanella led the Dodgers’ attack with three hits and three
RBI
s. But Robinson sparked the team’s comeback. With the scored tied 2–2 in the bottom of the second, Jackie put the Dodgers ahead for good when he singled with one out, went to second when Amoros was hit with a pitch, and advanced to third on a bunt single by Podres. Turley became unnerved with Robinson dancing off third, threatening to steal home. He walked Reese, forcing in Robinson with the go-ahead run. Later in the game, Jackie suckered Elston Howard, who was playing the outfield, into
an extra-base hit by purposely overrunning second base on a steal. When Howard threw to second, Robinson easily scampered to third. Brooklyn won 8–3, as Jackie finished the game with two hits and played a flawless third base with seven chances.
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Rejuvenated by Podres’s complete-game victory, the Dodgers came back the next day to tie the Series at two-all with an 8–5 victory behind the clutch pitching of Clem Labine and homers by Campanella, Snider, and Hodges. Snider was the hero of Game Five, belting two home runs off Yankees pitcher Bob Grim for a 5–3 Dodgers win. When the Series returned to Yankee Stadium on October 3, Whitey Ford took the mound and coasted to a 5–1 victory. Once again the momentum shifted, and the Yankees were confidant that they’d clinch another championship. Alston chose Podres to start Game Seven against the Yankees’ Tommy Byrne. Confident after his stellar performance in Game Three, Podres told his teammates, “Just get me one run. That’s all I need. Just one!”
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Years later the Dodgers’ hurler insisted that the deciding Game Seven was no different from any other game he pitched. “It really didn’t matter that we were playing the Yankees and the Dodgers had never beaten them before,” he said.

The deciding game of the Series was played at Yankee Stadium on October 4. Robinson, scratched from the lineup with a pulled Achilles tendon, would have to watch from the dugout what would become the greatest single game in Brooklyn’s history. The contest remained scoreless until the fourth, when the Dodgers scored a run on a double by Campanella and a single by Hodges. The Dodgers added another run in the sixth on a sacrifice fly by Hodges. The only danger Podres experienced came in the sixth. With two men on and no outs, Yogi Berra hit a long fly ball down
the left-field line. Since Berra usually hit the ball to right, Dodgers left fielder Sandy Amoros, who had just entered the game, had positioned himself toward center. He had to make a long run to the left-field corner and it looked as if the ball would fall in for a double, allowing both runners to score. But Amoros dashed to the line and at the last possible moment stuck out his glove to make the catch. Whirling around, he threw the ball back into the infield, where shortstop Pee Wee Reese caught Yankees runner Gil McDougald off first base for an easy double play. Podres surrendered just one hit after that, retiring the Yankees in order to give the Dodgers their very first world championship.
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Sportswriter Shirley Povich captured the magnitude of the victory when he called in his story to the
Washington Post
: “October 4, 1955. Please don’t interrupt, because you haven’t heard this one before . . . honest. At precisely 4:45 p.m. today, in Yankee Stadium, off came the 52-year slur on the ability of the Dodgers to win a World Series, for at that moment the last straining Yankee was out at first base, and the day, the game, and the 1955 Series belonged to Brooklyn.” But the most memorable headline graced the front page of the
New York Daily News
, which displayed the caricatured face of a nearly toothless hobo and the caption “
WHO’S
A
BUM
!” Before either newspaper hit the streets, Dodgers fans went crazy. Caravans of cars honked their horns up and down Flatbush Avenue and Ocean Parkway. Brooklynites, young and old, marched through the streets of their neighborhood banging garbage cans lids, hugging each other, and crying. Telephone circuits between the boroughs collapsed from overload. Confetti showered down from the upper floors of office buildings. The owners of restaurants, candy stores, and butcher shops gave away their wares for free.
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Overwhelmed by emotion, Walter O’Malley, known for his tight purse strings, increased Campanella’s salary to $50,000, making him the highest paid player in Dodgers history. He would come to regret the action the following year, when the catcher, hampered with injuries throughout the season, would suffer one of his worst performances. The ’56 campaign was in the distant future, though. The present was a time to celebrate. A few weeks later the baseball writers voted Campy his third
MVP
Award.
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It couldn’t get any better for the kid who began his career on the crude sandlots of North Philadelphia.

During their final year together, Campanella and Robinson found it difficult to hide their disdain for each other. Roy’s status as a three-time
MVP
and the highest-paid Dodger intensified the jealousy Jackie already harbored against him. In turn Robinson believed that Campanella was jealous of his pioneering role in baseball. “I’m the only stumbling block against his moving into a better position in the Brooklyn organization,” he told sportswriter Carl Rowan. “Nothing will make him more happy than if I was off the club and he would be the number one man.”
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Robinson’s feelings were confirmed by an incident that took place during spring training that year. When a black youngster approach Campanella hoping for a tryout as a catcher, Roy told him, “I’m not running the camp, but if I was, Robinson would be the first son of a bitch to get rid of.” After learning of the remark, Jackie confronted the catcher, but nothing came of it. He then asked general manager Buzzie Bavasi to trade him, anticipating that “this thing was going to develop into a real problem.”
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Shortly afterward Robinson, in a private letter to his wife, wrote, “The more I see of Camp the less I like him. . . . He’s like a snake, ready to strike at the best possible moment.”
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Deceitfulness wasn’t his only complaint. Jackie, who could be priggish as well as sanctimonious, was also disturbed by Campanella’s womanizing. No doubt Campy was subject to the same temptations as most Major Leaguers. In fact when the Dodgers were on the road, they enjoyed their own entourage of groupies. Known collectively as “the Varsity,” the women met them at train depots, hotel lobbies, and the ballparks. Initially O’Malley tended to look the other way, but eventually he threatened a $500 fine for any player who consorted with the group. It was his way of discouraging the possibility of an interracial coupling, which could lead to a publicly humiliating, if not disastrous incident.
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Although Campanella had a reputation for flirting with other women, the only evidence of an extramarital affair comes from Robinson. “It seems Campy has a girl here,” he wrote to Rachel that spring. “The fellows keep kidding him about her and it has gotten under his skin. Camp is always kidding the other guys but can’t take it himself.”
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More often, however, Robinson’s criticism focused on Campanella’s passive approach to civil rights rather than his personal conduct.

The year 1956 marked the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. After the Supreme Court’s
Brown v. Board of Education
decision,
black activists, fed up with second-class citizenship, mobilized to end de facto segregation in the South. The first significant protest occurred in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955, when Rosa Parks, a seamstress at a local department store, challenged the city’s discriminatory seating policy in public transportation. Parks was arrested for the crime of refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man who demanded it. Her arrest catalyzed Montgomery’s black community leaders, who selected Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a twenty-five-year-old Baptist minister, to lead a citywide bus boycott. The boycott placed economic pressure not only on Montgomery’s bus company but on many of the city’s merchants who relied on black customers. What ensured the success of the movement, however, was a class-action lawsuit brought against Montgomery city officials a few months after the boycott began.

Four black women who, like Rosa Parks, also defied segregated seating, challenged the constitutionality of both city and state segregation ordinances. The case, argued in federal courts by
NAACP
attorneys, referenced the
Brown
decision. After considerable deliberation, a special three-judge panel in the U.S. District Court declared Alabama’s state and local laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional. The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment, ending the 381-day boycott. The Montgomery boycott propelled King to the forefront of the fledgling civil rights movement. During the next year he, along with other leading black clergymen, established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as an institutional vehicle to coordinate an ongoing campaign of nonviolent social protest, including sit-ins, interstate bus rides, and voter registration drives. King’s inspirational example also served to mobilize other black activists, who began to escalate their protests against segregation and inequality. White backlash soon followed, and several black churches in the South were fire-bombed.
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