Jackie and Campy (22 page)

When Campanella was asked for his reaction to the bombings, he said that such violence could be prevented if blacks “stopped pressing to get too far too fast.” He simply couldn’t understand why blacks felt compelled to challenge civil law, even if those laws violated their constitutional rights. His own experience taught him that acceptance by white society was the reward for patience and conformity. Robinson was infuriated. “I’m irked that Campy, a Negro with children, should blame the bombings on Ne
groes who were asking only for their constitutional rights,” he told the sportswriters. “If I had a room jammed with trophies and awards,” he added, referring to his teammate’s baseball achievements, “and a child of mine came to me and asked what I had done in defense of black people, and I had to tell that child that I had kept quiet, I would have to mark myself a total failure in the whole business of living.” Jackie’s personal jealousy of Campanella had become tied to his disillusionment with the catcher’s passive stand on civil rights. O’Malley joined the fray by taking Campy’s side and criticizing Robinson for making “ill-timed and intemperate” comments in the press.
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Routinely put off by Jackie’s outspokenness, O’Malley seized the opportunity to let the star third baseman know that his patience was wearing thin. He preferred more docile blacks, like Campanella, who sometimes willingly, sometimes unwittingly, supported white racism. Stronger criticism came from Bill Keefe, sports editor of the
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, who wrote that the Supreme Court’s “new law [banning segregated seating on buses] received a push from the insolence of Jackie Robinson.” Identifying the Dodgers’ star as “the most harmful influence the Negro race has suffered,” Keefe mused, “The surprising part is that he wasn’t muzzled long ago.”
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As the 1956 season unfolded, Robinson distanced himself from his teammates, with the exceptions of Reese, Hodges, and Erskine. “Jackie didn’t let many people get close to him to begin with,” recalled teammate Don Zimmer. “He was closest to Pee Wee. Some of the players might have had differences with him, but you could understand why Jackie was careful after all the things he went through. It was also his last year, and his feud with Alston seemed to simmer in the background that season. The two of them never really got along.”
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In fact Robinson could be a snob, considering many of his teammates “boorish” and “ignorant.” He especially disliked their locker-room humor, profanity, and promiscuity.
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On the other hand, the few he liked commanded both his respect and unflinching loyalty. Erskine, one of his closest friends, struggled with severe arm problems early in the season but continued to pitch with the pain. Robinson felt bad for him and was angered by a quotation he read in the New York newspapers on Saturday, May 12. According to Tom Sheehan, the chief scout of the New York Giants, the Dodgers were “over the hill” and Erskine couldn’t “win with the garbage he’s been throwing up there.”
Jackie cut out the column and saved it. That afternoon Erskine was scheduled to pitch against the Giants at Ebbets Field. Willie Mays stepped up to the plate in the fifth inning of a scoreless game and blistered the ball down the third-base line. Robinson dove to his right, speared the ball, and threw Mays out at first. It proved to be the pivotal defensive play of the game. Erskine went on to pitch a rare no-hit-no-run masterpiece. “After I retired the Giants in the ninth,” recalled the Dodgers’ pitcher, “Jackie rushed to the mound, shook my hand, and then turned and raced to the Giants’ dugout, where Tom Sheehan was seated. He reached into his hip pocket, pulled out the clipping, and waving it at Sheehan, shouted, ‘How do you like that garbage?’”
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Before a Sunday afternoon game at Milwaukee in late August, Braves pitcher Lew Burdette began taunting Robinson from the dugout with the term
watermelon
. First baseman Gil Hodges, interpreting the remark as a racial slur, told Burdette to “knock it off.” When the Braves’ hurler decided to berate Hodges as well, Robinson, who was taking ground balls at second base, purposely fired a ball over the first baseman’s head right at Burdette in the Milwaukee dugout. Then he challenged the pitcher, “Meet me outside the park after the game.”
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Jackie’s friendship with Pee Wee Reese was the strongest, dating to his first year in the Majors, when the shortstop repeatedly defended him in the clubhouse and publicly on the playing field. Realizing that their playing days were numbered, Robinson began promoting the Dodgers’ captain as a managerial candidate among the sportswriters. “Pee Wee Reese is one of the finest men I have ever met,” he insisted. “Pee Wee sees things in everyone. He remembers everyone he meets. I’ve learned so many things from him. He knows the temperament of all the guys and treats them accordingly. That’s an important feature of a manager, and I hope Pee Wee becomes one. He knows baseball. He knows people.”
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Brooklyn managed to eke out another pennant in 1956 to face the Yankees one last time in the Fall Classic. The Dodgers won the first two games at Ebbets Field by scores of 6–3 and 13–8. But their fortunes turned when the Series shifted to the Bronx, with the Yanks taking the next two contests, 5–3 and 6–2. With the Series tied at two games apiece, Game Five, played on October 8 at Yankee Stadium, would prove to be one for the record books. Sal Maglie started for the Dodgers and held the Yanks hitless
until Mickey Mantle’s two-run homer in the fourth. But New York’s Don Larsen was even better, hurling a 2–0 shutout for the first perfect game in World Series history. Refusing to be denied, the Dodgers bounced back the following day, in Game Six. The game was a pitcher’s masterpiece as Brooklyn’s Clem Labine and Yankee Bob Turley held each other in check for nine innings in a scoreless deadlock. With two outs in the bottom of the tenth, Robinson lined one of Turley’s fastballs over the head of the left fielder, scoring Jim Gilliam from second base and forcing a decisive Game Seven. Unfortunately for Brooklyn, the finale was anticlimactic. The Dodgers suffered a 9–0 whitewashing, and once again, the Yankees were world champs. Campanella, unable to throw well or hold a bat comfortably because of a calcium deposit protruding from his right thumb, hit just .182 with 7 strikeouts. Robinson was more effective, hitting .250 with 6 hits, 2
RBI
s, and 1 home run, though he struck out to end the Series.
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It would be the last time either man appeared in the Fall Classic.

Even before the 1956 World Series had begun, Robinson had had his fill of baseball. He’d been secretly negotiating with Bill Black, president of Chock full o’ Nuts, to become vice president in charge of personnel for the restaurant chain, which employed a sizable African American labor force. About the same time,
Look
magazine approached Jackie and offered him $50,000 for an exclusive story on his impending retirement.
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Since neither deal had been finalized, though, Robinson said nothing of his plans to Dodgers president Walter O’Malley or general manager Buzzie Bavasi. Instead he continued to tell the press that he intended to return to the Dodgers for the 1957 season.
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On December 12 he agreed to terms with Chock full o’ Nuts. Although he was scheduled to meet with O’Malley the following day to discuss his future with the club, Bavasi phoned him to say that he’d been traded to the New York Giants for $30,000 and pitcher Dick Littlefield.
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Cheated out of the opportunity to preempt Dodgers ownership, Robinson would later consider the trade O’Malley’s penultimate insult.
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Stunned and angry, he wanted to tell Bavasi that he was “no longer the Dodgers’ property to be traded,” but he held his tongue so that
Look
could break the story.
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To that end, he contacted Horace Stoneham, owner of the Giants, and unsuccessfully tried to persuade him not to announce the trade. As soon as the deal was made public, Dodgers fans rallied indig
nantly to Jackie’s side and teammates paid him endless tributes.
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One of the shrewder tributes came from Jimmy Cannon of
Newsday
, who managed to capture Robinson in all of his complexity: “You are Jackie Robinson, who is consumed by rage and pride. You’re a complicated man, persecuted by slanderous myths, using anger as a confederate. No athlete of any time has been assaulted by such aching loneliness which created your personality and shaped your genuine greatness.”
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Jackie could have reconsidered retirement.
Look
had not gone public yet. Besides, the Giants were a perennial contender and had a brighter future than the aging Dodgers. Willie Mays, the young star of the team, was ecstatic about being united with his boyhood idol. Mays craved a mentor like Jackie, and the Giants planned to make them roommates.
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But Robinson had no intention of playing for the Giants, whom he despised. He also likened Mays to Campanella, a docile, uneducated black ballplayer who refused to take a public stand on civil rights, fearing that it might jeopardize his success in baseball.
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After all the acrimony with Campy, Jackie certainly didn’t want a similar situation with Mays. Thus Jackie prepared for the inevitable announcement that he was through with baseball.

In early January a
Look
employee leaked Robinson’s decision to retire. Jackie was excoriated for his duplicity. Red Smith of the
Herald-Tribune
criticized him for misleading the Dodgers, the Giants, the fans, and the press by selling the news of his retirement to
Look
and holding the announcement for the publication’s deadline. “Robinson has embarrassed the Dodgers, dislocated the plans of the Giants and deceived the fans as well as the working newspapermen who thought they had his confidence,” wrote Smith. “Of all the qualities Robinson displayed in the past, the most attractive was candor. In the end, it was candor that he sacrificed to mislead the club that brought him into baseball and paid him for eleven years, the club that committed itself in good faith to pay him this year, the fans and the individual members of a press who have contributed hugely to his fame.”
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Predictably O’Malley now dismissed Robinson as a “mercenary” and “ingrate” who was “always seeking publicity.” Bavasi, who apparently believed that he had no obligation to inform Robinson that he was about to be traded to the Giants, scorned the
Look
article as a ploy by Jackie to pilfer more money out of the Giants. Insulted by the suggestion of greed, Robinson insisted that no amount of money would make him “ever play baseball again” and that Bavasi’s “unwarranted criticism in the press insulted my integrity.”
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On June 8, 1957,
Look
ran “Why I’m Quitting Baseball” by Jackie Robinson. There were no more rumors; Robinson’s retirement was now official. Although the Giants pleaded with him to reconsider and offered him a $35,000 contract, Jackie informed Stoneham that he was “too old to help the Giants” and dismissed the notion that his decision to retire was based on being “traded to [the Giants] organization.” Instead Robinson stated his intention to “devote his full time to the business opportunities that have been presented to [him].” After receiving the letter, Stoneham wished Jackie success and happiness, adding his regret over “not having you on our side for a year or two.”
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“The Dodgers should have allowed Jack to retire with dignity and honor and celebration instead of selling him for thirty pieces of silver to the Giants,” insisted Rachel Robinson some forty years after the trade. “I just
thought that was a violation of some kind of code of honor. But he expected it to happen, so when he was told he was traded, Jack already had a job with Chock full o’ Nuts. It was exciting to be able to defend himself and not have to do something he didn’t want to do, which was play for the enemy Giants.”
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Naturally Robinson was more defensive. “The way I figure it,” he wrote in his 1972 autobiography, “I was even with baseball and baseball was even with me. The game had done much for me and I had done much for it.”
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Robinson’s retirement should have marked the end of his feud with Campanella. Instead the former teammates continued to snipe at each other in the newspapers. Appraising the Dodgers’ prospects for the upcoming season shortly after his retirement, Robinson gave an interview to Dick Young of the
New York
Daily News
, expressing doubts about Campy’s ability to rebound from an injury-plagued season and saying he was “washed up.” Always eager to capitalize on—as well as create—controversy, Young reported the observation to Campanella, who admitted that he “wasn’t surprised by the remark.” Insisting that Robinson “doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Roy said he was “far from through with baseball,” predicting that he’d “catch five more years for Brooklyn and at least 100 games in each of the next three years.” Then he proceeded to launch a reprisal: