Jackie and Campy (15 page)

Instead of striking back, Robinson channeled the anger into his play. “After I spiked him,” recalled Ashburn, “it only seemed to motivate him more. Jackie beat us like a drum that series, and there wasn’t much bench jockeying after that.”
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Ben Chapman was fired a few weeks later. When Eddie Sawyer, a reserved former professor from Ithaca College, became the new manager, the Phillies treatment of Robinson improved dramatically.

By the end of June Jackie was “asserting himself with a vengeance,” according to Durocher. It was clear that he was venting his rage through his aggressive play, but if he started just one fight he would risk losing all the progress he had made. Having failed repeatedly to rein him in, Durocher chose to look the other way, dismissing Robinson’s fiery play as a matter of self-motivation and competitive drive. “Jackie was the kind of player who needed to be diving, scratching and yelling to be at his best,” he said in his 1975 autobiography,
Nice Guys Finish Last
. “He doesn’t just want to
beat you, he wants to shove the bat up your ass. I could understand that. It was the way I played. Besides, he resented my trying to keep a rein on him.”
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Robinson insisted that was not the case. “I think Leo felt I had not given him my best effort that season and that I had worked harder for Shotton the year before,” he recalled years later. “Although Leo and I got into a number of hassles and exchanged many verbal insults, I believe we never lost the respect we had for each other.”
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By most accounts, Durocher was a difficult person to respect, let alone like. Ironically Robinson was somehow able to put aside his own strong moral code to respect a manager with a Las Vegas lifestyle replete with loose women, mobsters, gamblers, and other unsavory characters. In fact Robinson maintained few loyalties, though the ones he had were unconditional. Branch Rickey, for example, was certainly not a disinterested humanitarian in regard to the integration of baseball. If he was, he would not have disrespected the Negro League owners by refusing to compensate them for the contracts of the players he signed. Though Robinson might have understood the contradiction, he never acknowledged it. Instead he supported Rickey’s contention that the Negro Leagues were a poorly run business and the contracts were not legally binding. David Falkner, author of
Great Time Coming: The Life of Jackie Robinson from Baseball to Birmingham
, believes that Robinson wrote an essay for
Ebony Magazine
in June 1948 condemning the black leagues in order to defend Rickey against charges by Negro League owners that he stole their players.
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Nor did Robinson show much loyalty to Satchel Paige, one of the Negro League’s greatest stars, who paved the way for his opportunity to integrate baseball.

When Paige signed with the Cleveland Indians on July 7, 1948, joining Larry Doby as the second African American player on that team, Robinson was asked to comment and replied that Paige was the “greatest Negro pitcher in the history of the game.”
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According to Doby, however, Jackie “detested Satch strongly.” “Satch was competition for Jack,” said Doby. “Satch was funny. He was an outstanding athlete, and he was black. He had three things going. Jack and I wouldn’t tell jokes. We weren’t humorists. We tried to show that we were intelligent, and that’s not what most white people expect from blacks. Satch gave whites what they wanted from blacks—joy.”
27

Doby’s observation that “Satch was competition for Jack” raises the question of jealousy. Baseball writers and historians have portrayed Rob
inson as being above such petty jealousies. They suggest that his attitude toward Negro Leaguers was patronizing because of his superior education and success at other sports. If Robinson was jealous of Paige because he was stealing the spotlight, it may also serve to explain the inevitability of his conflict with Campanella.

Campy returned to the Dodgers on Friday night, July 2, just in time to appear in a three-game series against the rival New York Giants. To make room for him, rookie catcher Gil Hodges was moved to first base.
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As soon as he arrived at Ebbets, the clubhouse manager sized up his square physique and picked out jersey No. 39, promising to give him a better-fitting uniform after the three-game series ended. That night, Campy went three for three with a double and two singles. The following night he belted a triple and two singles, and in the Sunday afternoon finale he smashed two home runs and singled to collect four
RBI
s. Needless to say, he kept No. 39 for the rest of his career.
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With Campanella in the lineup, the Dodgers won sixteen of the next nineteen games.

“One of Branch Rickey’s concerns was the relationship my father would establish with a primarily white pitching staff,” said Roy Campanella Jr.
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Campy quickly eliminated those concerns by taking charge from the start. Hugh Casey, a moody South Carolinian, made the mistake of challenging the new catcher’s authority. The first time Casey pitched to him, Campanella called for a curve ball, but Casey ignored the signal and threw a fastball instead. The hitter launched the pitch into the upper deck. On the way back to the dugout, Campanella told the offending hurler, “You should never shake off one of my signs. I’m smarter than you, and you should know I’m smarter than you. I’m smarter than most of the pitchers on this team. That’s why I call the signals.”
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No sooner had Campy completed his lecture than shortstop Pee Wee Reese, the team captain, got in Casey’s ear. “Hugh,” said the Kentucky Colonel, “maybe we better listen to Campy when he calls for a curve ball.”
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Elwin Charles “Preacher” Roe, a southpaw from Arkansas, was a more receptive pupil. Roe, who’d been a hard-luck pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, turned his career around when he came to the Dodgers in 1948 because he listened and learned from the black catcher. “Campy immediately set himself in charge of things,” recalled Roe. “He’d say: ‘Now you just do what Ol’ Campy tells ya and I guarantee we’ll get by,’ and it’d be
that way.”
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With Campanella behind the plate, Roe became one of the Dodgers’ greatest pitchers, compiling a record of ninety-three wins and thirty-seven losses for a .715 winning percentage, 632 strikeouts, and a 3.26 earned run average during his seven years in Brooklyn.
34

Ironically Durocher, who pushed for Campanella’s promotion, had already sealed his own fate with Brooklyn. Rickey had had enough of his manager’s outspoken opinions, his off-field antics, and his antagonistic treatment of Robinson. On July 16, just two weeks after Campy’s return, the Dodgers’ president fired “Leo the Lip” and brought back the more sedate Burt Shotton, who had guided Brooklyn to the pennant the previous season. At the same time, Rickey quietly ensured that the fiery little manager would have a job in baseball by finagling an elaborate scheme with the rival New York Giants, who simultaneously fired their own manager, Mel Ott, in order to hire Durocher.
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Over the next decade Leo and the despised Giants would offer the Dodgers their stiffest competition in the National League.

Rickey and Shotton almost immediately retooled the Dodgers’ lineup. With Campanella behind the plate, Gil Hodges was made the regular first baseman, a move that strengthened the team at two positions. Campy went on to hit .258 with 9 home runs and 45
RBI
s, while Hodges (.249, 11 home runs, 70
RBI
s) provided consistency both at the plate and in the infield. Veteran Pete Reiser, whose arm was gone, was demoted to pinch hitter, and Gene Hermanski (.290, 15 home runs, 60
RBI
s) took his place in the outfield. Shortly afterward, Duke Snider, a good-looking young power hitter, was called up from the Minors and contributed 21 homers to the offensive attack. Together with Hermanski and Carl Furillo (.297, 44
RBI
s), Snider would form one of the strongest outfields in the National League. Rickey also promoted Carl Erskine, a compact five-foot-ten, 165-pound fastballer, from St. Paul. Erskine, who went 6-3 with an impressive 3.26 earned run average in just seventeen games that season, would prove to be one of the gutsiest pitchers in the game over the next decade.
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Finally, with Durocher off his back, Robinson managed to turn his season around. He went on a hitting tear, boosting his average to .296 and leading Brooklyn to a 31-15 record over a six-week period. His fielding also improved as he and shortstop Pee Wee Reese developed into a strong double-play combination. But Robinson’s “personal highlight” came in a game against Pittsburgh when he was ejected for “heckling an umpire.” The incident occurred when Butch Henline, the home-plate umpire, called Gene Hermanski out on strikes. Several of the Dodgers began to protest what they believed was a bad call. He gave them a warning to quit, but Jackie continued to heckle him. Losing his patience, Henline tore the mask off his face and threw Robinson out of the game. There was nothing unusual about an umpire ejecting a player for overzealous bench jockeying, but that’s exactly why Robinson valued it. “Henline didn’t pick on me because I was black,” he said. “He was treating me exactly as he would any ballplayer who got on his nerves. That made me feel great, even though I couldn’t finish the game.” One sportswriter titled the next day’s story “Jackie Just Another Guy.” “It was the best headline I ever got,” said Robinson.
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By September 2 the Dodgers were in first place by half a game. Unfortunately the team went into a tailspin after that. Reese, the lead-off hitter, slumped, managing just two hits in forty-seven at-bats. Without their offensive catalyst, the Dodgers’ attack came to a grinding halt. The Boston Braves won the pennant, with St. Louis finishing second and the Dodgers a half-game behind the Cardinals in third.
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Nevertheless Rickey had as
sembled the core of a remarkably talented team. His anticipated dynasty was taking shape.

Just as important, Robinson found someone with whom he could share the burden of being a black player in a white man’s game. With Campanella’s promotion to the Dodgers, he had someone to talk with, to serve as a sounding board when he vented his anger, and to watch his back. “I roomed with Jackie when I first came up,” said Campy. “We discussed [the racial abuse] every night when we’d go to bed. Jackie got into a few arguments, and I tried to tell him to just cool it. All we were out there to do is to prove we could play ball.”
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Robinson reciprocated by taking his younger teammate under his wing, spending time with him on the road, and preparing him for the life of a Major Leaguer.

The friendship blossomed over the course of the season. As the only African American Dodgers, they were not always given accommodations in the same hotels or restaurants as their white teammates, so they lodged and ate together on the road. When the Dodgers played in Philadelphia, a city notorious for segregated hotels, Campy invited Jackie and Rachel to spend the weekend at his parents’ house on Kerbaugh Street. The two players also confided in each other. Jackie offered baseball advice, and Campanella often deferred to him out of affection as well as the tremendous respect he felt toward his teammate for all the racial abuse he suffered. They became closer in the off-season after Jackie accepted a position as athletic director at the Harlem
YMCA
. He persuaded Roy to join him in working with disadvantaged youth, teaching them good sportsmanship, refereeing basketball games, playing checkers, and occasionally shooting pool with them. In addition, Campanella and Robinson made frequent appearances at public schools across the city, conducting baseball clinics after school hours.
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The teammates became so close that in January 1949, when the Campanellas purchased a house in the affluent Addisleigh Park section of St. Albans in southeast Queens, the Robinsons relocated there as well. Separated by just a few blocks, now even their families spent much of their time together.
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Baseball’s noble experiment with integration appeared to be evolving just as Branch Rickey had planned. Other African American players were already in the Dodgers’ farm system and would be promoted to Brooklyn in the near future. And Jackie and Campy would provide the leadership to ensure their success.

6.

Striking Back

Jackie Robinson reported to spring training in March 1949 in great anticipation of the coming season. Having shunned the winter banquet circuit, he weighed 190 pounds, thirty pounds lighter than at the start of the ’48 campaign. The lighter weight enabled him to cover more ground defensively and improve his offensive production by stealing more bases and bunting for base hits. Jackie planned to show the National League his true worth not only as a player but as a man.

For two seasons Rickey had sworn his star second baseman to a Christ-like existence of turning the other check, and Robinson had responded with “courage far beyond what [Rickey] had asked.” But at the end of the ’48 season Rickey realized that it was time to “issue an emancipation proclamation” for Robinson. He knew that “burning inside Jackie was an intense pride and determination” that could be stifled no longer. Rickey had seen the “tensions build up over two years” and worried that his “filial relationship with Robinson would break with ill feeling if . . . he didn’t tell him he was on his own.”
1

“Jack knew by 1949 that he was going to be able to be himself,” said Rachel Robinson. “I saw it in terms of his greater spirits because now he didn’t have to take anything from anybody. He just started the season that way, and the greater freedom was clear in his play, too.”
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In fact Robinson didn’t wait for the regular season to begin. He exhibited his newfound freedom in the very first intrasquad game that spring at Vero Beach, Florida. The game pitted Pee Wee Reese’s squad of veterans against a younger group of Dodgers captained by catcher Bruce Edwards. By the third inning, Reese’s team was being shellacked and Gene Wade, a brash twenty-year-old rookie outfielder, began to ride the veterans. Robinson, assigned
to Reese’s squad, took exception and returned the fire. The jockeying and profanity became worse as the game progressed.

In the seventh inning, Chris Van Cuyk, a six-foot-five, 220-pound pitcher, entered the game for Edwards’s squad. Van Cuyk, who had won fourteen games at Double-A Fort Worth the previous season, was considered a top prospect. He was also a vitriolic bench jockey who’d been riding the veterans throughout the game. When he took the mound, Robinson showed no mercy.

“You’ll be a 20-year man in Class D,” he mocked, standing in to face the rookie pitcher. After Van Cuyk threw him two quick strikes, Jackie lined the third pitch over third base for a single and tore down the line shouting insults at the young hurler. Then, taking a sizable lead off first, he proceeded to heckle Van Cuyk with further taunts as well as false breaks toward second. “You do a lot of talking, Chris,” Robinson goaded. “Why don’t you do a little talking off that mound and see what happens.”

When Robinson came to bat again in the ninth, Van Cuyk brushed him back with a letters-high fastball. The next pitch was also tight, this one around the knees, and Jackie had to dance out of the batter’s box. Infuriated that a rookie was trying to intimidate him, Robinson lashed out at the next pitch, popping up to the catcher. “That’s where your power is, Robinson!” shouted Van Cuyk.

Jackie said nothing. But after the game, as the players headed for the clubhouse, he confronted the rookie pitcher and warned him not to throw at him again. Before fists could fly, Campanella, ever the peacemaker, interceded. Stepping between the two players, Campy defused the situation with his quick wit and a smile, something he would do often over the next seven months.
3

Arch Murray of the
New York Daily News
learned about the altercation and was waiting for Robinson in the parking lot to get the scoop. When asked about the incident, Jackie confirmed that Branch Rickey had lifted the ban and that opposing teams had “better be rough on me this year because I’m sure going to be rough on them.”
4

Concerned about the veiled threat, Commissioner Happy Chandler visited the Dodgers’ training camp to urge Jackie “not to spoil a good record.” Robinson assured him that he “had no intention of creating problems,” but that he was “no longer going to turn the other cheek to insults.”
Chandler claimed to understand his position but cautioned him about the adverse implications of his behavior for other black players, like pitcher Don Newcombe, who had just been promoted to the Majors.
5
Chandler had put his job on the line by supporting the Dodgers’ experiment with integration, and he didn’t want Robinson to jeopardize his credibility with the owners. He emphasized the responsibility that the star second baseman had not only to himself but to other African Americans as well as to baseball itself.

Once the regular season began, Jackie, no longer saddled with Rickey’s ban, protested calls and taunted opponents and umpires on a regular basis. Nor did he ever back down when challenged. Once, in Philadelphia, Robinson was caught in a run-down between third and home in a tie game against the Phillies. Phils third baseman Puddin’ Head Jones and catcher Andy Seminick were already positioned along the third base line, as shortstop Granny Hamner, second baseman Mike Goliat, and pitcher Russ Meyer rushed over to prevent him from scoring. The Phillies threw the ball back and forth, but Jackie, anticipating their throws, lunged, leaped, and stopped, evading a tag. He stayed in the run-down for more than forty seconds. Then, after an errant throw, Robinson sprinted for home. Meyer, who was covering home plate, dropped to his knees and grabbed Jackie’s legs to prevent him from scoring. Undeterred, the Dodgers’ second baseman bounced a hip off Meyer’s head and scored, saying, “What the hell are you trying to do?!”

“Under the stands, Robinson,” said Meyer, challenging him to a fight.

“Right now,” snapped Jackie.

But the Philadelphia police beat them to the proposed ring, and the game resumed.
6

Such incidents only served to show that Robinson not only won games, but he infuriated the losers in the process. Opposing players considered him “thin-skinned,” while teammates tended to look the other way.
7
“I saw the wraps come off and watched him fight back,” said Brooklyn center fielder Duke Snider. “And, believe me, he could dish it out. He was mean, sarcastic and caustic. I was somewhat embarrassed by some of the things he did or said in retribution. Then I’d think back and remember what he had gone through, so I figured he earned the right to do and say those things.”
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Snider’s mixed emotions were shared by pitcher Carl Erskine, who was befriended by Robinson when he was promoted to Brooklyn the previous season. Although Erskine believed that the unattractive behavior was “overkill on Jackie’s part,” he was sympathetic toward Robinson “because he’d been trying to control his anger for so long.”
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Still, Erskine admitted that “even Rickey wound up thinking it was a mistake to lift the ban” when he did.
10

Campanella tried to get Robinson to restrain himself. He encouraged his teammate to have his say and then back off, allowing the manager and coaches to fight his battles. But as the season progressed, Campy realized the futility of his efforts.
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Brooklyn fans, on the other hand, gave Robinson their full sympathy. Their blue-collar background celebrated rough-and-tumble heroes. “Retributive justice” was part of the game, especially if it was exacted against the hated Giants. “When I was six-years-old, Jackie Robinson filled my imagination,” recalled Doris Kearns-Goodwin, the Pulitzer prize–winning historian. For Kearns-Goodwin, who first saw Robinson play in the summer of 1949, Jackie’s umpire-baiting, taunts, and aggressive play against a racist opponent were indistinguishable from his competitive drive, which manifested itself in his “diving head-long to snag a line-drive and taking a huge lead to provoke the pitcher.” She simply viewed his behavior as that of a “fiery second baseman” and swore that “with nine Jackie Robinsons we’d never lose a game.”
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Others, like the noted author Roger Angell, a devout Dodgers fan, believed that Robinson’s controversial behavior reflected the bitterness he harbored over the tremendous responsibility he was asked to accept as the first black player to integrate the game. Seated in the Ebbets Field bleachers that season, Angell watched as Robinson “tore into an umpire without warning” and “for no immediate reason that his teammates or the opponents could discern.” “After that moment,” Angell admitted, “I knew that we had asked him to do too much for us.”
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Still others empathized with Jackie. Louis Uhlberg, a deaf freelance writer, had felt the sting of discrimination all his life because of the hearing impairment. Once he attended a Dodgers-Cardinals game where Robinson was purposely spiked on the base paths. Brooklyn fans expressed their outrage by standing and screaming “
JACKIE
!
JACKIE
!
JACKIE
!” Uhlberg, following their lead, stood and
joined the chorus. But since Uhlberg couldn’t pronounce words clearly, his screams sounded like “
AH
-
GHEE
!
AH
-
GHEE
!
AH
-
GHEE
!” The incident made a profound impression on his young son, Myron:

Louis Uhlberg, like other disabled fans, embraced Robinson because they too had experienced discrimination. They too had been made to feel less than human because of their condition. If Jackie sought retribution, they would understand and perhaps even admire him for it. Even heroes are human.

To be sure, there were times when Robinson’s controversial behavior benefited his team. Once, in Chicago, Jackie taunted Cubs pitcher Sam Jones so severely that it altered the outcome of the game. “I’m going to get you, Sam,” he threatened from the on-deck circle. “Just wait until I get in that batter’s box.”

After Duke Snider flied out, Robinson stepped up to the plate and continued to harass the Chicago hurler. “C’mon Sam,” he chided, “throw that thing in here so I can do something with it, unless you’re afraid.”

Unnerved by all the taunting, Jones let fly a wild pitch that hit Robinson on the arm. It was exactly what Jackie wanted. Now on base, he could inflict even greater damage. Heckling Jones as he danced off first, Robinson forced the pitcher to make an errant pick-off throw. The ball rolled down the right-field line, enabling Jackie to reach third.

Having ruined Jones’s concentration, Robinson closed in for the kill. Taking a huge lead off third, he watched as the embattled Cubbie threw a curve ball in the dirt. As the ball skidded past the catcher, Jackie trotted home with what proved to be the winning run.
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Robinson could be just as tough on teammates too. “If a guy didn’t hustle,” said Ralph Branca, who pitched for the Dodgers from 1944 to 1953, “Jackie would get on his case.” Before that, he’d just mind his own business and keep quiet. But now that the ban was lifted, he could argue with umpires and get on the other team. It opened the door for him to just be natural.”
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At the same time, Jackie understood that his pioneering role was much larger than the national pastime. Embraced by the nation as an American sports hero, he graced the covers of magazines and was offered many opportunities to appear on national television. As a hero to millions, he needed to find a way to reinforce that awesome responsibility off the playing field. He found an outlet with the Harlem
YMCA
, a multimillion-dollar institution that served as an employer, hotel, soup kitchen, recreation center, and counseling office for literally tens of thousands of blacks in an impoverished community. Recruited by Rudolph Thomas, the director, Jackie agreed to serve as the Harlem Y’s youth director working with at-risk children and encouraging them to improve their minds as well as bodies. The job not only protected the Dodgers’ second baseman from charges that he cared only about himself and was exploiting his star power for his own gain, but it also gave him additional prestige within the civil rights movement.
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African Americans viewed Jackie as nothing less than a civil rights leader. They saw him breaking down the barriers that prevented them from securing equal opportunity in the workplace. Accordingly there were those blacks who applauded Robinson’s combative behavior on the playing field, his outspokenness in the press, and his occasional challenge of Dodgers management. Others, black and white, did not appreciate his controversial style. Realizing that he needed the support of both races in order for integration to be successful, Robinson was extremely careful to draw the line at physical violence, even when provoked.
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“Jack was profoundly a nonviolent person,” insists his wife, Rachel. “He never felt that violence was going to accomplish anything. He feared it, and rejected it as an option.”
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Robinson restrained himself when he realized that striking back could lead to physical violence. His mettle was first tested on April 8, when the Dodgers, playing their way north from spring training, were scheduled for a three-game exhibition series against the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association. Since Robinson and
Campanella were slated to start those games—and Don Newcombe would undoubtedly pitch in one—the first game would represent the first interracial athletic event in Georgia’s history.

As early as January, when the exhibitions were first scheduled, Dr. Samuel Green, the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, tried to stop them, contending that Georgia’s segregationist laws prevented whites and blacks from playing with or against each other in a sporting contest. Governor Herman Talmadge gave Green his unconditional support. When Branch Rickey learned of the attempt to scuttle the games, he insisted, “No one anywhere in this country can tell me what players I can or cannot play.”
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Georgia’s attorney general Eugene Cook backed Rickey, declaring that while the state had laws “dealing with segregation in the school system, transportation and marriage, there [was] no prohibition against Negroes playing baseball with white people.” Nor were there any county or city ordinances barring interracial sporting competitions, though blacks were prohibited from attending such events as spectators. In addition, a local survey revealed that 90 percent of the Atlantans polled were eager to see the Dodgers play the hometown Crackers.
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