Rickey and Robinson (12 page)

Chapter Six

The Color Bar Drops

When Rickey mentioned the possibility that “mass scouting might possibly come up with a Negro player or two” at the New York Athletic Club meeting back in January 1943, the comment was not just idle banter. On the contrary, it was part of a carefully conceived six-step plan for breaking baseball’s color barrier. He had accomplished step one at the meeting: gaining the support of the club’s owners. Step two was the selection of a player with exceptional talent. Step three was making certain that the player selected would have the character to deal with the difficulties he would encounter on and off the field. Step four was laying the groundwork for favorable press reaction. Step five was enlisting the assistance of the Negro community. The final step was securing acceptance of the Negro player by his teammates.

Soon after the meeting, Rickey began his quest for “the one” who would break baseball’s color line. He dispatched his chief scouts: George Sisler, Wid Matthews, and Tom Greenwade. He enlisted the aid of two university professors: Dr. Robert M. Haig of Columbia University and Dr. Jose Seda of the University of Puerto Rico. Dr. Haig, an old Ohio Wesleyan fraternity brother of Rickey’s, visited Cuba and reported on the culture and capabilities of Cuban players, and Dr. Seda reported on players in Mexico and Puerto Rico. The search was under way.

This effort took place against the backdrop of World War II. All over the globe battles raged between the forces of tyranny and the defenders of freedom. In the United States, great social changes were launched loose in the land, triggered by the 943 race riots in Harlem, Detroit, and Beaumont, Texas.

President Roosevelt issued Order 8802 creating the Fair Employment Practices Commission. Communist groups sought to capitalize on growing racial unrest and engaged in picketing, petitioning, and pamphleteering efforts in attempts to widen the schism between the races. Black activists and white liberals helped escalate the pressures. Political campaign rhetoric underscored the social upheaval.

The chafing pressures of racial tension in the United States in those years were symbolized by the Harlem riots in 1943. A white policeman had wounded a black soldier, precipitating the street violence. Most of Harlem was declared off limits to servicemen by Mayor La Guardia. The New York City mayor also formed a Committee on Unity aimed at keeping racial tension down to a minimum and preventing potential violence. Charles Evan Hughes, son of the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, headed the committee that consisted of nineteen other prominent New Yorkers. Dr. Dan Dodson, a professor of sociology at New York University, was the organization’s executive director.

Lily-white baseball became a prime target of the socially conscious. One brochure of the time depicted a dead black soldier and bore the caption “Good enough to die for his country . . . not good enough for organized baseball.”

In December 1943 at the winter baseball meetings, the famous black singer-activist Paul Robeson led a delegation that met with Commissioner Landis and urged the admission of black players into the majors. Unofficially, Robeson was told that the American public was not ready to accept integrated baseball. Robeson, who was then appearing on the New York stage in the role of Othello, responded, “They said America never would stand for my playing Othello with a white cast, but it is the triumph of my life.”

After the meeting, Landis issued a statement: ‘’Each club is entirely free to employ Negro players to any and all extents it desires. The matter is solely for each club’s decision, without restriction whatsoever.” The statement was a public relations puff. “We knew it was mere rhetoric,” says Mal Goode, who was to become the first black network news correspondent. “But back then, all we could do was ask; we couldn’t demand.”

Through his two decades as commissioner, Landis had strongly opposed breaking baseball’s color line. In 1921, as a newly named commissioner, he forbade players to wear major-league uniforms in exhibition games against Negro teams. He hoped that this would hide the fact that many major-league teams lost to the Negro clubs. “In 1938,” recalls Goode, “the two managing editors of the
Pittsburgh Courier,
the largest black newspaper in the world, met with Kenesaw Mountain. He said that the time wasn’t right for blacks in baseball. ‘You do whatever you want,’ he told them. In those days, they would say to you, ‘Boycott if you want, we don’t care.’ There weren’t that many blacks going to major-league games.” In the early years of World War II, Bill Veeck planned to purchase the Phillies and stock the roster with black players. “We could have run away with the pennant,” recalls Veeck. Landis allegedly learned of the plan and squashed it. “I realize now that it was a mistake to tell him,” notes Veeck.

Nonetheless, by May 1944 the last traces of segregation had been eliminated in the major-league stands, if not on the fields. The St. Louis Browns and St. Louis Cardinals did away with the segregated section in the right-field pavilion at Sportsman’s Park. Equality among spectators had been achieved; the pressure kept building for equality on the playing field.

At the time, the only outlets for black baseball players were the existing Negro Leagues, the Negro National and American leagues. Each league had six teams that played approximately 110 games each season, which lasted from May through Labor Day. Many of them played in majorleague stadiums when the home team was on the road. The Homestead Grays, for example, played at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh when the Pirates were on the road. This arrangement netted additional profits for white owners for use of their otherwise idle stadiums; after expenses the Negro clubs got just 40 percent of the gross. When major-league stadiums were not available, small-town ballparks were used instead. Black players were underpaid and suffered arduous bus trips and hard living conditions during the baseball season.

The Negro clubs asked for a committee from organized baseball to work with them for better scheduling and perhaps eventual recognition as part of the structure of organized baseball. At the major-league meetings in Cleveland in the spring of 1945, Larry MacPhail of the Yankees and Branch Rickey were designated by their respective leagues to select two prominent black figures and form a four-man committee to report on the Negro question in baseball. Tabbing Rickey for this role was purely coincidental; no one outside of Rickey’s intimates knew of his search for a black player for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Joe Bostic, a black sportswriter and the official announcer for the Negro National League and the Negro American League, felt that the time had come to act. Bostic, who could have had no inkling of Rickey’s plan, staged a confrontation with Rickey and the white establishment at the Dodger training camp in Bear Mountain, New York.

“One of the things back then about being black or Negro was keeping your place,” recalls Bostic, “and I did not know my place. During World War II I had been in the forefront of trying to break the color line in major-league baseball. On two occasions I went down to Two fifteen Montague Street to plead my case, and I was bodily thrown out. Rickey was not there when these incidents took place. I was told that you can’t accuse major-league baseball of being in favor of the color line—that no Negro had tried. We were Negroes; we hadn’t become black as yet. One of my big arguments was the war. They had a one-armed man, Pete Gray, playing major-league ball, and yet they wouldn’t let in a whole great pool of untapped American talent.

“I got the idea to demand a tryout and show up unannounced with a couple of players.” One of the players was Terris McDuffie, age thirty-six, winner of five of eleven decisions for the Newark Eagles in 1944· The other was a thirtynine-year-old first baseman, Dave “Showboat” Thomas of the New York Cubans. “At that point, those were the only two players I could get who were willing to face the wrath of the man,” continues Bostic. “There was fear among black players that there might be people who could get to the Latin owners and deny opportunities to blacks to play in winter ball. There was also a feeling that what I was doing was senseless, that you couldn’t break through the color barrier by stonewalling.”

Bostic arrived with Williams and McDuffie, as well as several reporters. Workouts had already begun; there were about a dozen white players who also were being evaluated. “Rickey personally oversaw some pitching by Terris McDuffie. Durocher conducted infield practice and stationed Showboat Thomas at first base. He was called ‘Twinkletoes’ because of the way he handled his feet so slickly at first base. Rickey invited me to go with him into the Bear Mountain dining room. We sat at a table right in the very middle of the big room.

“‘You have not been as smart as you might have been,’ he told me. ‘You should have informed me about what you planned to do. You should have written to me and told me that you wished to bring people for a tryout.’

“‘Mr. Rickey,’ I said, ‘I’m on the opposite side of the fence from you.’ He was chewing on his cigar. He was infuriated with me. ‘I can think of eight or ten reasons why you feel it is not possible to accommodate such an adventure as this,’ I told him. .

“He just listened and puffed on his cigar. ‘You can probably think of thirty or forty reasons why I shouldn’t be here,’ I continued. ‘This way neither of us has to do any thinking. The fellows are here and they’re ready to play.’

“‘I don’t appreciate what you have done, Mr. Bostic,’ he said. He leaned closer to me. ‘You’ve put me on a spot. If I didn’t try these men out, you’d have the biggest sports story of the century. If I try them out and don’t sign them, you have the biggest sports story of the century. Either way, it is an embarrassing situation for me and the Brooklyn Dodgers.’ “I told him not to worry about any of the complications, that the two guys I brought up could play ball. ‘Let’s not worry about the politics, Mr. Rickey. Let’s get the Dodgers a good ball club.’

“At that point, he started talking about his concern for the black man. He actually put on a show for me. Rickey cried and talked about religion and so on. I was very cynical. I thought he was a phony. As it later turned out, I was right—at least as far as I was concerned. He didn’t sign the two players, and from that day to the day he died, he never spoke to me again. Of course, my move might have been ill timed from Rickey’s point of view. He might have already had his eye on Robinson.”

Ironically, two years to the day after this Bear Mountain tryout, both Bostic and Rickey would be at Ebbets Field, witnesses to Jackie Robinson’s first appearance as a Brooklyn Dodger.

The next day, April 16, 1945, three other black players were given tryouts by the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. The players were Sam Jethroe from Erie, Pennsylvania, an outfielder for the Cleveland Buckeyes; Marvin Williams of the Philadelphia Stars; and Jackie Robinson, age twenty-six, from Pasadena, California. About a dozen white players were also trying out. They had already begun their workouts when the black athletes arrived with Wendell Smith, a black sportswriter. The
Pittsburgh Courier,
Smith’s newspaper, had helped arrange the tryouts.

“Nobody put on an exhibition like we did,” Robinson later recalled. “Everything we did, it seemed like the good Lord was guiding us. Everything the pitcher threw up became a line drive someplace. We tattooed the short left-field fence, that is Marv and I did . . . and Jethroe was doing extremely well from the left side, too. And he looked like a gazelle in the outfield.”

The tryout ended and the three black players were given application blanks to fill out and were told they would be contacted sometime in the future. Boston manager Joe Cronin and his coach Hugh Duffy admitted they were impressed with the three black players, but they claimed it was too short a tryout to come up with any definitive plans as to what to do with the players.

“Tom Yawkey, the Boston owner, could have had all three of those players for nothing,” said Wendell Smith. “They wouldn’t take any of them.” The Red Sox would become the last team in the major leagues to integrate; their first black player, Elijah “Pumpsie” Green, joined the club in 1959, one year before the Negro Leagues closed down.

During World War II, Sam Lacy had written in the black newspapers, “With us, the first man to break down the bars must be suited in every sense of the word. We can’t afford any misfits pioneering for us, and for obvious reasons. Unwilling as they are to employ Negro players, they will be quick to draw the old cry: ‘We gave them a chance and look what we got.’”

Now, Lacy and other black writers were openly hostile. Five black players had auditioned in two days and the bars were still up. Cum Posey in the
Pittsburgh Courier
wrote, “It’s the most humiliating experience Negro baseball has yet suffered from white organized baseball.”

Rickey still wished to conceal his plan to break baseball’s color line, yet felt a statement was called for after the Bostic incident received so much attention. At a press conference, he argued that the Communists were using the tryouts as an issue to stir up racial conflict. Refusing to respond to questions about black players entering the major leagues, Rickey instead offered “a legitimate and valuable alternative for Negro players—the United States League.”

The newly formed United States League consisted of six black baseball teams, one of which was the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers. Rickey announced that the Brown Dodgers would play at Ebbets Field when the Brooklyn Dodgers were on the road.

The existing Negro National and American leagues had exploited black players for years, Rickey claimed, but members of the black press could see no difference between the Negro Leagues and Rickey’s alternative. The proposed United States League only fueled the deep-seated resentment the black community had for white baseball. ‘We want Negroes in the major leagues if they have to crawl to get there,” wrote Frank A. Young in the
Defender,
“but we won’t have any major-league owners running any segregated leagues for us.”

An “End Jim Crow in Baseball” committee was formed to pressure major-league teams to sign black players. Committee members included the head of the Actor’s Guild, Stella Adler; actors Louis Calhern, John Garfield, Sam Jaffe, and Paul Robeson; the lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II; black poet Langston Hughes; William O’Dwyer; and Adam Clayton Powell.