Jackie and Campy (5 page)

For all of Paige’s talent, however, Rickey did not consider him a suitable candidate to break the color barrier. The colorful pitcher was too outspoken, too self-absorbed, and his morals too loose for Rickey. Viewing himself as the centerpiece of black baseball, Paige cared more about himself than his teammates, routinely jumping from club to club. Nor did Rickey appreciate the image the star hurler projected. A consummate showman, Satchel gave the impression of a “Stepin Fetchit”—a happy-go-lucky character—playing to the fans as he ambled onto the diamond. Paige was also earning $37,000 a year with the Kansas City Monarchs, which made him too expensive for Rickey. Finally, Paige was thirty-nine in 1945 and clearly on the downside of his pitching career.
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The other outstanding Negro Leaguer was Josh Gibson, baseball’s premier black slugger, who reportedly hit more than eight hundred home runs in a sixteen-year career. Gibson began his professional career at sixteen with the Homestead Grays in 1930. He jumped to the Pittsburgh Crawfords two years later and captured the first of nine home run titles. Some of his blasts are variously estimated at between 575 and 700 feet, including one he purportedly hit out of Yankee Stadium.
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Gibson’s fluid, compact swing also allowed him to hit for average as he compiled a .384 lifetime mark, the highest in Negro League history. An outstanding catcher, the black slugger had a strong arm and was a good handler of pitchers. Like Paige, however, Gibson was too unsophisticated for Rickey. His education was spotty and consisted primarily of vocational training. At six feet two and 230 pounds, Gibson, a fun-loving soul, gave to some observers the appearance of an ignorant man-child. Often the target of bench jockeys, he had a quick-temper, didn’t take pressure well, and was known to explode at hecklers, something he would have to deal with as the first African American in the Majors. Gibson also struggled with alcohol, sometimes going on extended benders. By the mid-1940s the thirty-three-year-old catcher was also grappling with his health. Suffering from recurring headaches and dizzy spells, he was hospitalized for ten days in January 1943 after doctors discovered a brain tumor. He refused to allow
an operation and instead returned to baseball, while the headaches and blackouts continued.
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None of these problems escaped the scrutiny of Rickey’s scouts, who were instructed to keep careful records of the playing performances and personal lives of every candidate being considered.

To be sure, Paige and Gibson were extraordinarily talented athletes who easily met Rickey’s criterion of playing ability. But their personal lives and examples did not meet the standard he envisioned for the first African American to integrate the game. For Rickey, that individual had to be taken seriously by the white baseball establishment as well as by the fans. It was imperative that the individual he chose had a strong moral character, the determination to succeed under extremely difficult circumstances, and a sense of loyalty to the American way of life. To that end, Rickey gave priority to those Negro Leaguers who had served their country during World War II. If anything, a black military veteran would at least be given the benefit of the doubt by whites because of his service to the country. In this respect, Rickey found common cause with a budding civil rights movement.

Civil rights leaders had already begun to focus on the military contributions made by blacks in order to secure greater respect in the armed forces and better employment opportunities at home. Nearly one million African Americans served in the military during World War II. Initially U.S. military leadership struggled to keep them out of combat, but
NAACP
president Walter White and A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids, pressured President Franklin D. Roosevelt not only to ensure the enlistment of blacks but also to create African American fighting units.
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Randolph believed that the war could also create an opportunity to achieve equality in the labor force, but only if blacks demanded it. Accordingly in 1941 the labor leader called on African Americans to march on Washington to demand an end to job discrimination. Not wanting to risk the embarrassment of such a spectacle, Roosevelt, using the leverage of federal defense contracts, acceded to their wishes. The organizers agreed to cancel the march in return for a presidential directive, Executive Order 8802, that established the Fair Employment Practices Committee to assure fairness in hiring. As the war years unfolded, the
FEPC
put pressure on the U.S. Employment Service to give preference in job referrals to employers who did not discriminate against
minority groups and cited those industries that violated the president’s order. As a result, an increasing number of blacks found jobs in government service and in defense industries.
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Despite their contributions to the war effort, black veterans and defense workers continued to face racial discrimination at home. Segregation was still the most distinguishing characteristic of race relations in the American South, where a rigid system of state and local ordinances enforced strict separation of the races in schools, restaurants, movie theaters, and even restrooms. Jim Crow laws relegated blacks to inferior public schools, health care, and public lodging, as well as discriminatory voter registration procedures that kept many of them disenfranchised. Veterans, having fought for their country, were no longer willing to buckle under to Jim Crow. They represented a young generation of blacks who expected justice and were determined to secure full political and social equality.
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Prior to 1945 their demands would have fallen on deaf ears among the white baseball establishment. Commissioner Landis was a staunch defender of the “gentleman’s agreement.” This unwritten rule had barred minorities from the game ever since 1896, when segregation was established by the Supreme Court ruling
Plessy v. Ferguson.
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Racist attitudes were reinforced by the significant numbers of white southerners who played in the Majors, as well as by the extensive Minor League system that existed in the South. But when Landis died on November 25, 1944, his successor proved to be more receptive to the idea of integration. Albert “Happy” Chandler, former U.S. senator from Kentucky, might have hailed from a segregationist state, but he had a strong sense of social justice. Shortly after Landis’s death, Wendell Smith and Rick Roberts, black journalists from the
Pittsburgh Courier
, came calling to find out where the new commissioner stood. “I am for the Four Freedoms,” he told them. “If a black boy can make it at Okinawa and go to Guadalcanal, he can make it in baseball.”
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These circumstances created a perfect storm for Rickey, who, in the spring of 1945, accelerated his search to find a Negro League star who was also a military veteran. Initially his efforts focused on Monte Irvin, an outfielder for the Newark Eagles. Irvin was widely acknowledged as the best hitter in the Negro Leagues in 1940 and 1941. “Most of the black ballplayers thought Monte should have been the first black in the major leagues,” said Cool Papa Bell, a star with several Negro League teams and
still considered the fastest man in baseball history. “Monte was our best young ballplayer at the time. He could hit that long ball, he had a great arm, he could field, he could run. He could do everything.”
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Irvin possessed many of the attributes Rickey sought. He was one of the finest all-around athletes to hail from New Jersey, winning All-State honors in four sports in high school. After graduation he attended Lincoln University while playing in the Negro Leagues under the name “Jimmy Nelson” to protect his amateur status. An intelligent, articulate gentleman, Irvin had a calm demeanor that allowed him to endure the racial abuse he experienced as a player without letting it affect his self-esteem. What’s more, he had served in the armed forces during World War II, earning the admiration of both white and black ballplayers.
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Indeed Monte Irvin appeared to be the ideal candidate to break the color line. But he had just gotten out of the army and felt that he wasn’t in the best playing shape:

At the same time, Rickey had developed a keen interest in Roy Campanella, the catcher for the Baltimore Elite Giants. Although Campanella was not a military veteran, he did meet Rickey’s standards of playing talent and determination.
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Unbeknown to the black catcher, Rickey had
hired Oscar Charleston, a former star and manager in the black leagues, to scout prospective candidates because he was able to slip in and out of Negro League dugouts and hotels without arousing suspicion. Rickey ordered Charleston to keep careful notes on the strengths and weaknesses, both personal and professional, of Campanella. When he finally met with the Brooklyn president in October 1945, Roy was surprised to learn that Rickey “had a book of notes on me three inches thick.” “I didn’t even realize that the Dodgers had been watching me,” he added. Like Irvin, Campanella was told that he was being considered for the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers, another black club. He dismissed the inquiry outright because he was already making more money playing ball in Latin America.
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Ultimately Rickey decided that Campanella wasn’t the best candidate to break the color line. He was concerned about Campy’s ability to develop a working relationship with white pitchers and that the demands of catching would only serve to increase the already considerable pressures the first black ballplayer would face.
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In addition Rickey had concerns about Campanella’s personal background. He was a high school dropout who had a reputation for womanizing, which was not the image Rickey wanted to project for the first black ballplayer in professional baseball.
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What’s more, Campanella was of mixed ancestry, the son of an Italian father and an African American mother. According to Arnold Rampersad, a black scholar, Campy didn’t match Rickey’s idea of “what the first Negro player should look like—and what he thought black Americans would want the first to look like.”
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As a result, Rickey continued his search until he discovered Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs.

Robinson was an intelligent, articulate young man who starred in four sports at
UCLA
and served as a second lieutenant in the army during World War II. He was proud of his African American heritage and his jet-black complexion, something he was quick to defend when confronted by the ugly specter of racial discrimination. Indeed Jackie Robinson possessed all the qualities Rickey was looking for. He was brought to Rickey’s attention in the spring of 1945 by Wendell Smith of the
Pittsburgh Courier
.