Jackie and Campy (4 page)

Social acceptance of minorities by whites increased during the Great Depression. Brooklyn became home to a growing African American population drawn to the borough by less expensive, roomier housing than elsewhere in New York City. Joining blacks were an increasing number of Puerto Ricans who left their poverty-stricken homeland in search of jobs in the Navy Yard area and Greenpoint. White residents were increasingly forced to live in the same neighborhoods with these minorities as poverty became a social and economic equalizer among Brooklynites.
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The Democratic Party strengthened the bonds between these different racial and ethnic groups through employment in its New Deal work programs. Hoping to displace the borough’s Republican hegemony, Democratic politicians actively courted and won over African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and working-class whites, all of whom relied on the services of municipal government.
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Bill Reddy, a white who grew up in Borough Park in a predominantly Irish and Jewish neighborhood, recalled, “The great thing about being a kid in Brooklyn during the 1930s was that it didn’t matter what your ethnic background was. . . . Everybody was the same. Nobody had anything.”
43
Joe Flaherty, Reddy’s neighbor, admits that white kids were naïve about
race relations. “We didn’t know we had a race problem,” he said. “We liked to think that Negroes didn’t need anything, that they were happy in their place. Sure, there were some tough black kids. But there wasn’t this myopic focus on blacks that there is today.”
44
Both Flaherty and Reddy suggest that color blindness prevailed during their childhoods, at least in Borough Park. But such a perspective is tainted by the fact that neither individual had much contact with blacks during their youth. Jim McGowan, an African American who was raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, agrees that the “racial climate was entirely different than it is today” but bases the claim on his experience in an integrated neighborhood:

Regardless of the perspective, one thing is clear: Brooklyn’s blacks and whites did not believe they had a “race problem” in the 1930s and 1940s. Most of the whites were immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants. Half of these were Jews who had escaped persecution, first by Russian czars and later by the Nazis. The rest were Irish and Italian Catholics who had fled Europe to escape economic hardship and political or religious persecution. There was also a growing African American population, whose history was inextricably tied to persecution, first through slavery and later through Jim Crow. Persecution, racial or religious, was the common denominator for all of these groups. In addition every social group that resided in the borough came as a minority. Everyone was poor, and everyone struggled to make a living. These common circumstances created a strong sense of identity in which race and ethnicity were much less important that one’s character as a human being and how one treated one’s neighbors. It’s also what allowed Brooklyn
to become the biggest melting pot in the nation and play a pivotal role in breaking baseball’s color line.

But baseball’s integration was still a decade away; in the mid-1930s the Dodgers were more concerned about winning ball games and improving attendance rates than social justice. A succession of managers followed Wilbert Robinson, none of them able to build a contender. But the local press managed to find some humor in an otherwise hopeless situation. Sportswriter Sid Mercer dubbed the Dodgers “Bums,” inspired by a leather-lunged fan who regularly sat behind home plate and shouted “Ya bum, ya!” whenever the team committed an error. The name stuck, and soon the newspaper headlines featured “Bums” as often as “Dodgers.” Cartoonist Willard Mullin underscored the label by creating the “Flatbush bum,” which quickly became a nationally known symbol for the team as well as for Brooklyn itself. By 1938 Ebbets Field was in a state of disrepair and the team was in debt to the Brooklyn Trust Company for $500,000. George McLaughlin, president of the Trust, warned that the club’s credit would be severely restricted unless it improved its leadership.
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When the Dodgers hired Larry MacPhail as general manager in 1938, their fortunes changed for the better. MacPhail rejuvenated the organization both on and off the field. He began immediately by repainting Ebbets Field, renovating its bathrooms, and installing electric lights for night games. Accordingly on June 15, 1938, the Dodgers hosted Cincinnati in baseball’s first night game before a sellout crowd. Night baseball was only one of many promotions MacPhail introduced, though not all of them proved to be successful. On August 2, for example, Brooklyn experimented with yellow baseballs in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals. Although yellow was supposed to be easier to see than white, the players didn’t like the innovation and the experiment was dropped. Similarly MacPhail hired former Yankee great Babe Ruth as a first-base coach for the second half of the season. Though Ruth believed that he was being given a trial as the team’s next manager, MacPhail was simply exploiting the star’s popularity, realizing that fans would turn out early to watch the Bambino knock balls out of the park. Of course, Ruth, still yearning for the spotlight, obliged.
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As a result of the various promotions, attendance doubled to 660,000 for the season.
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The Dodgers’ new popularity was even memorialized in an irreverent poem by Dan Parker of the
Daily Mirror
, who wrote about
“Murgatroyd Darcy,” a baseball groupie, who forsook the “juke joints” for Ebbets Field to root for her “gallant knights,” the Dodgers.
49

After the 1938 season, MacPhail replaced manager Burleigh Grimes with one of his players, shortstop Leo Durocher, and spent freely to acquire veteran stars who combined with talented prospects to turn the team into one of the best in the National League. Durocher, who was loud, obnoxious, and driven, distanced some of the players and was quickly dubbed “Leo the Lip.” But he inspired more than he alienated. His fierce desire to win overcame complaints against him, and the Dodgers steadily rose in the standings. After a third-place finish in 1939 and second-place in 1940, the Dodgers clinched the pennant in 1941, winning one hundred games.
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The team was led by veteran first baseman Dolph Camilli, who led the league in home runs (34) and
RBI
s (120); center fielder Pete Reiser, who led the league in batting (.343), slugging (.558), and runs scored (117); right fielder Dixie Walker, who was supposedly over the hill but somehow managed to hit .311; and pitchers Kirby Higbe and Whitlow Wyatt, both of whom were tied for the league lead with twenty-two wins apiece.
51

The Dodgers faced the New York Yankees in the World Series that year. After three games the Yanks enjoyed a two-games-to-one lead. However, the Dodgers threatened to come back. With two outs in the ninth inning of Game Four, Brooklyn held a 4–3 lead and looked as if they’d tie the Series. Tommy Henrich came to bat for New York, facing Dodgers hurler Hugh Casey. Casey recorded two quick strikes on Henrich before throwing a rapidly sinking curve ball. Henrich swung and missed for strike three. But the ball got past Dodgers catcher Mickey Owens and rolled all the way to the backstop, allowing Henrich to reach first base easily. It was all the Yankees needed. New York went on to win the game, 7–4.
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The following day the Bronx Bombers clinched the championship, and another painful tradition was born: losing to the Yankees in the World Series. After the ’41 Fall Classic ended, the
Brooklyn Eagle
ran a headline that would become famous: “Wait till Next Year!”
53
It would become the rallying cry for Brooklynites, who became renowned for their fortitude and obstinate belief in “next year.”

Although MacPhail never won a world championship in Brooklyn, he is credited with laying the foundations of the team’s golden age. One of his greatest moves was luring a young, sweet-talking broadcaster by the
name of Walter “Red” Barber from Cincinnati to New York during the winter of 1938–39. Prior to that time, none of New York’s Major League teams allowed their games to be broadcast over the radio, fearing that it would lead to a decrease in attendance. MacPhail, on the other hand, believed that radio could serve to promote the game by advertising it. His instinct proved to be correct. With Barber at the microphone on Opening Day of 1939, New York City experienced its first radio coverage of big league baseball. By the end of the season, attendance at games rose to 955,000—up by 295,000 from the previous year—and the Dodgers outdrew the Yankees by 100,000 and the Giants by 250,000.
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Radio became an instant hit, and many fans began to build their lives around the Dodgers because of it. Radios were everywhere—in homes, cars, stores. During the summer months Brooklynites would pipe the Dodgers broadcast into the streets. In fact in some neighborhoods it was possible for pedestrians to hear the game uninterrupted because of the popularity of the practice. At first Barber’s southern drawl and down-home expressions startled listeners. If the Dodgers were launching a rally, he’d say, “The boys are tearing up the pea patch.” If Brooklyn appeared to clinch the game, it was “tied up in a crocus sack.” A bench-clearing brawl was a “rhubarb.” Base runners in scoring position were “ducks on the pond.” Barber’s distinctive voice and engaging personality soon won over the hearts of Brooklynites, especially women. Female interest in baseball increased, and MacPhail capitalized on it by promoting “Ladies Day,” giving free admission to women.
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Barber was much more than a play-by-play announcer, though. He was a reporter who used his reportorial skills to educate listeners about the game. Using personal insight and amusing anecdotes, he was able to make a 10–1 rout interesting. He’d arrive three hours before game time and stand around the batting cage, where he’d pick up tidbits of information on a particular player’s hitting mechanics or a pitcher’s delivery. That information would be interspersed throughout his broadcast.
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And while Barber was making Brooklynites the most knowledgeable fans in the game, he was also cultivating a personal connection with them. Brooklynites invited him into their living rooms each day, where they listened from their sofas and armchairs. Businessmen and secretaries made him part of the office. Kids mimicked his idiosyncratic expressions while doing their own
play-by-play in neighborhood stickball games. Radio made Red Barber a household name in Brooklyn. But television made him a broadcasting legend on August 26, 1939, when
NBC
put him behind the microphone for the first televised baseball game, a Saturday afternoon double-header, pitting the Dodgers against the Cincinnati Reds.
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Together—radio, television, and Barber—changed the nature of baseball forever.

Despite his success, MacPhail was not long for Brooklyn. For years he had struggled with alcoholism, and after one of his benders he allegedly traded the entire Dodgers team to the St. Louis Cardinals. But Sam Braden, the Cardinals’ owner, was unable to raise the $3 million needed before the Dodgers’ stockholders nixed the deal.
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Furious at having lost the ’41 World Series, MacPhail bore down harder on Durocher. The final straw came in July 1942, when center fielder Pete Reiser crashed into the concrete wall at Ebbets in pursuit of a fly ball. He lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital. Diagnosed with a fractured skull and a severe concussion, Reiser was told by the attending physician that he was through for the season. But MacPhail refused to accept the diagnosis. Believing that the star outfielder could prove to be the difference for the Dodgers in a hotly contested pennant race with St. Louis, he ordered Durocher to play the youngster. Reiser complied, despite suffering from double vision. Naturally he was ineffective both at the plate and in the field, and the Dodgers lost the pennant. MacPhail, already infuriated by the team’s stockholders, who criticized him for his excessive spending, resigned on September 24, 1942, and accepted a commission as colonel in the U.S. Army.
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Shortly afterward the Dodgers named Branch Rickey, recently dismissed as general manager of the Cardinals, as MacPhail’s successor.

Rickey promised to make Brooklyn “the baseball capital of America.”
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Little did anyone realize at the time that he had plans to do much more than that. Rickey believed that Brooklyn, with its racial tolerance, growing African American population, die-hard working-class fans, and penchant for the underdog was the ideal place to launch a noble experiment to integrate baseball.
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Within the next five years he would not only revolutionize the national pastime but would help to inspire the modern civil rights movement in the United States.

2.

Rickey’s Choice

At the center of Branch Rickey’s plan to rebuild the Brooklyn Dodgers was scouting and signing African American players. It was a plot to break the “gentleman’s agreement” that had banned black athletes from baseball since the late nineteenth century. Rickey recognized the enormous pool of talent that existed in the Negro Leagues and sought to capitalize on it, both on the field and at the turnstiles. But winning teams and big profits were not the only reasons for integrating the sport; there was also a nagging personal motive. Since 1912, when he entered baseball as a scout, Rickey harbored a deep sense of guilt over devoting his life to a child’s game instead of a more altruistic profession.
1
Integration would allow him to unburden his conscience by redressing a long-held social injustice. It was nothing less than a religious obligation for him. To that end, the Dodgers’ president carefully orchestrated the process of identifying and signing the ideal African American ballplayer to break the color line.

Wesley Branch Rickey, named after John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist faith, was hardly suited to the blue-collar sport of baseball, with its incorrigible athletes, rowdy fans, and deceitful style of play. Rickey’s most defining trait was his fierce morality. Sportswriters dubbed him “the Deacon” and “the Mahatma” because he reminded them of a combination of “God and your father.”
2
Raised in a devout Methodist family, Rickey as a youngster memorized Scripture and taught himself Latin, Greek, and algebra. His parents cultivated a strong work ethic by assigning him countless chores on their farm in southern Ohio. Promising his mother that he’d never drink, swear, or violate the Sabbath, the young Buckeye matured into a devout Methodist.
3
According to his grandson, Branch Rickey III, “his mother objected to the idea of her son playing baseball because the players, back at the turn of the century, often rode to the games on the back of a wagon drinking, and just as often, came home with women in the back of the same wagon. They were a loose crowd. There wasn’t much morality around a baseball team back then.”
4
Still, he could not shake his deep and abiding passion for the sport.

Rickey learned the game in the family’s backyard by catching for his older brother. He quickly became a die-hard fan of the Cincinnati Reds and, by his late teens, proved good enough to catch for a local semipro team. In 1901 he enrolled in Ohio Wesleyan University, where he waited tables and helped coach the baseball team in order to pay his tuition. It was during this time that he allegedly made a personal commitment to integrating baseball. The pivotal events came in the spring of 1904, when the twenty-one-year-old witnessed the racist treatment of Charles “Tommy” Thomas, his black first baseman. In a game against Kentucky, the opposing players refused to take the field unless Thomas was removed, and began shouting, “Get that nigger off the field.” Rickey, enraged by their belligerence, stormed the opposing manager, screaming, “You will play Tommy Thomas or you won’t play
OWU
!” Kentucky reconsidered when the Wesleyan crowd began to chant, “We want Thomas! We want Thomas!” In the end, the game was played with Thomas at first base.
5

A few weeks later Wesleyan traveled to South Bend, Indiana, to play Notre Dame. When Rickey tried to register his team at the Oliver Hotel, the clerk informed him that he and the rest of the team were welcome, but Thomas was not. Thomas, humiliated by the scene, suggested that he simply return to Ohio Wesleyan. Rickey flatly rejected the offer. Instead he threatened to remove his entire team from the hotel unless Thomas was allowed to stay. A stalemate ensued. Then Rickey proposed that Thomas could share his room if the hotel would place a cot in it. The hotel manager agreed to the compromise. That night Thomas couldn’t sleep.
6
Rickey recalled that the black first baseman “just sat on the end of the cot, his huge shoulders hunched and his large hands clasped between his knees.” “I sat and watched him, not knowing what to do,” he confessed. “Tears welled, spilled down his black face and splashed to the floor. Then his shoulders heaved convulsively and he rubbed one great hand over the other with all the power of his body muttering, ‘Black skin . . . black skin. If I could only make ’em white.’ He kept rubbing and rubbing as though he would remove the blackness by sheer friction.” Rickey insisted, “Whatever mark that incident left on Charley Thomas, it was no more indelible than the impressions made on me.”
7

After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan, Rickey signed as a catcher with Dallas of the North Texas League for $175 a month. He performed well
enough to attract the interest of his boyhood team, the Reds, who purchased his Minor League contract. But once he was told that he’d have to play on Sunday—something he promised his mother he’d never do—Rickey refused and was let go. He caught on with the St. Louis Browns and later the New York Highlanders, both of whom agreed to honor his promise not to play on the Sabbath. An overstrained arm put an end to his undistinguished playing career after just two seasons. In 1906 Rickey married Jane Moulton, his childhood sweetheart and the daughter of a state senator. Enrolling in the University of Michigan, he earned a law degree in two years instead of the customary three.
8

Despite his impressive education and domestic tranquility, the young lawyer was determined to succeed in baseball and joined the lowly St. Louis Browns as a scout. Promoted to manager in 1913, Rickey led the Browns up the American League standings until 1915, when the club was sold. The next year the cross-town rival St. Louis Cardinals, then an inept, debt-ridden team, hired Rickey as president. Though given little cash, the hardworking executive built a contender by obtaining Minor League clubs to develop Major League talent. It was the first modern farm system in baseball, transforming the way Major League teams built their rosters. Among other innovations, Rickey also introduced the idea of a permanent spring training camp, an organized system of scouts, sliding pits, and the use of a stopwatch to measure speed on the base paths. By 1940 the Cardinals owned thirty-two Minor League teams outright and enjoyed working agreements with eight others. Their success was reflected in the six National League pennants they captured between 1926 and 1942.
9

But St. Louis was not the right place to implement integration. It had a southern temperament with conservative and racist traditions. “During my time in St. Louis,” recalled Rickey, “a Negro had to sit in the bleachers. He couldn’t buy his way into the stands. Mind you, this was more than a half century after Emancipation, after Negroes had been given the rights of citizenship under the constitution. It was unthinkable. So, when I went to Brooklyn, I wanted to do something about Negro participation in baseball.”
10
By that time Rickey’s commitment to integration had become both a personal and a professional quest. Nor did he care how the white baseball establishment or the white press viewed him, which wasn’t very complimentary. According to Lester Rodney, sports editor of
the
Daily Worker
, New York’s Communist newspaper, Rickey was widely viewed as “pompous, arrogant and cheap.” Even those who supported the integration of baseball on moral grounds believed that the Dodgers’ president was “guilty of big-daddy patronizing behavior towards blacks.” Despite the fact that Rickey was “no saint,” Rodney acknowledges that he was “far shrewder and bolder than the other magnates” and credits him for “seizing the day by taking the giant step the others would not take.”
11

Shortly after he became president of the Dodgers, Rickey broached the controversial subject with George V. McLaughlin, president of the Brooklyn Trust Company, the bank that saved the franchise from bankruptcy during the Great Depression. McLaughlin was the trustee for the majority owners, and while he didn’t sit on the club’s board of directors, any important baseball decision would have to be approved by him. Rickey, careful to emphasize the on-field benefits of integration, downplayed his personal moral convictions. “The greatest untapped reservoir of raw material in the history of the game is the black race,” he confided privately to McLaughlin. “The Negroes will make us winners for years to come, and for that I will happily bear being called a bleeding heart and a do-gooder and all that humanitarian rot.” Although the banker gave his permission for Rickey to scout the Negro Leagues for qualified players, he cautioned him “not to try to solve any great sociological problem.”
12
Accordingly in early 1943 the board of directors agreed to the search for a Negro Leaguer to break the color line and pledged themselves to secrecy.
13

In the 1930s and early 1940s the Negro Leagues boasted some of the most exceptional talent in all of baseball. The Negro National and Negro American Leagues featured such outstanding players as Satchel Paige (Kansas City Monarchs), Josh Gibson (Homestead Grays), Ray Dandridge (Newark Eagles), Monte Irvin (Newark Eagles), Cool Papa Bell (Pittsburgh Crawfords), Judy Johnson (Hilldale), Biz Mackey (Baltimore Elite Giants), Luke Easter (Homestead Grays), Sam Jethroe (Cleveland Buckeyes), Buck Leonard (Homestead Grays), Martin Dihigo (New York Cubans), and Gene Benson (Philadelphia Stars). While these ballplayers never gained the fame of their white counterparts, they were every bit as talented. In fact white Major League stars played against Negro Leaguers more than four hundred times in the off-season and came to respect their abilities.
14

Other owners had flirted with the idea of integration much earlier than Rickey, being attracted by both the talent of Negro Leaguers and the potential for significant financial profits. Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, reputedly considered signing Paige for $75,000 a year as early as 1938 but was discouraged by prominent Washingtonians. Four years later, in 1942, Griffith contacted Bell and Gibson and asked if they’d be interested in playing for the Senators, but nothing came of it.
15
That same year William Benswanger, the president of the Pittsburgh Pirates, invited Roy Campanella and Sammy Hughes of the Baltimore Elite Giants and Dave Barnhill, a pitcher for the New York Cubans, to a tryout, but he also reneged.
16

Perhaps the closest attempt at integration came in 1943, when Bill Veeck tried to purchase the cellar-dwelling Phillies and stock them with Negro League stars. “With Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Luke Easter, Monte Irvin and countless others available, I had not the slightest doubt that the Phillies would have leaped from seventh place to the pennant,” wrote Veeck in a 1962 autobiography. But Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and National League president Ford C. Frick scuttled the plan by arranging for another suitor to purchase the Phils at half the price Veeck was offering. Frick later boasted that he had “stopped Veeck from contaminating the league.”
17

Rickey followed these earlier efforts with great interest. Though each one was aborted, they seemed to indicate that the tide was turning against the “gentleman’s agreement.” Accordingly Rickey directed his chief scouts—Clyde Sukeforth, George Sisler, Wid Matthews, and Tom Greenwade—to search the Negro Leagues for the “best candidate” for his team.
18
In terms of talent there were two obvious choices.

Satchel Paige was unquestionably the premier pitcher and biggest draw in the Negro Leagues. A tall, lanky right-hander, Paige first achieved fame with the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the 1930s. He had an overpowering fastball that made hitters buckle at the knees. “Satchel might not have won every game he pitched, but he probably won more than any other pitcher in baseball,” said Gene Benson of the Philadelphia Stars. “Satch was also exciting to watch for both black and white fans because he was such a showman. There’d be times he’d call in his outfield and then strike out the side. That kind of clowning was good for baseball. I don’t think anybody,
maybe with the exception of Babe Ruth, dominated the game the way he did.”
19
Stanley “Doc” Glenn, who caught Paige when he pitched briefly for the Stars, claimed that “as hard as he threw, his ball was like a feather, real light.” “The greatest thing about him, though, was that he could locate his pitches,” Glenn added. “You just put the glove up there where you wanted it and you didn’t have to worry about him hitting the target.”
20
By 1939, though, when he joined the Kansas City Monarchs, Paige’s fastball had lost some of his bite. To compensate he developed several off-speed pitches and hesitation deliveries that baffled hitters.