Jackie and Campy (24 page)
Sportswriter Red Smith tried to capture the difference between these two civil rights pioneers shortly after their playing careers ended. “In the great social contribution which baseball has made to America since 1946,” he wrote, “Jackie Robinson was the trail blazer, the standard bearer, the man who broke the color line, assumed the burden for his people and made good. Roy Campanella is the one who made friends.”
26
While Smith celebrated Robinson’s example, anticipating the popular deification that followed his death, he was tremendously unfair to Campanella. In fact Campy’s great achievement was destroying the stereotype of the talented black athlete who buckled under pressure. He demonstrated the athletic prowess, intelligence, and determination that opened the door for many other talented African American athletes in professional sports. Like Robinson, he also furthered the integrationist and egalitarian goals of the civil rights movement, and did so in a national pastime that captured the attention of most Americans in the post–World War II era.
To diminish either man’s contribution because of their different approaches to civil rights is just as irresponsible as idolizing them. The civil rights movement would not have been successful without accommodation
and
direct action. While Robinson and Campanella assumed the role of pioneers, their examples would have meant little without popular support, both black and white, for civil rights. When we idolize them we fail to recognize their humanity. When we criticize them, we fail to acknowledge the meaning of their contributions as well as their sacrifices. Neither man would want that. Therefore if we seek to do justice to the examples of Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, we must look at the condition of contemporary race relations and ask ourselves, “What can I do?”
Notes
Introduction
1.
Branch,
Parting
the Waters
, 203–4.
2.
The most complete biography of Martin Luther King Jr. is Oates,
Let the Trumpet
Sound
.
3.
Martin Luther King Jr. to Wyatt Tee Walker, quoted in Falkner,
Great Time Coming
, 237.
4.
King to Walker quoted in Chris Lamb, “Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training,”
American Legacy
, Spring 2007, 20.
5.
Roy Campanella quoted in Tye,
Satchel
, 189.
6.
According to Don Newcombe, Dr. King did credit other black Dodgers for their contributions to integrating baseball. Twenty-eight days before he was assassinated, King dined with Newcombe and his family and confided to the retired Brooklyn pitcher, “Don, I don’t know what I would’ve done without you guys setting up the minds of people for change. You, Jackie, and Roy will never know how easy you made it for me to do my job.” Newcombe quoted in Fussman,
After Jackie
, 61.
7.
Robinson and Duckett,
I Never Had It Made
, 17–18.
8.
Rampersad,
Jackie Robinson
, 34, 50–52, 65–66, 102–3.
9.
Rampersad,
Jackie Robinson
, 154–155, 180, 255.
10.
Tom Gallagher, “Jackie Robinson,” in Shatzkin,
The Ballplayers
, 927–29.
11.
Steven Greenfield, “Roy Campanella,” in Shatzkin,
The Ballplayers
, 149–50.
12.
Sam Lacey quoted in Rampersad,
Jackie
Robinson
, 291–92.
13.
Bob Broeg, “Campy, a Man Paid to Play a Boy’s Game,”
Sporting News
, July 24, 1971, 18; Dick Young, “‘Campy Envied Me,’ Busy Robby Hastens to Explain,”
New York Daily News
, January 19, 1957; Dick Young, “Campy Ridicules Robinson: ‘I’ll Catch 5 More Years,’”
New York Daily News
, January 20, 1957.
14.
Jackie Robinson to Rachel Robinson quoted in Rampersad,
Jackie Robinson
, 292.
15.
A. S. “Doc” Young, “A Feud Grows in Brooklyn,”
Los Angeles Sentinel
, January 27, 1957.
16.
Washington,
Up from Slavery
.
17.
Booker T. Washington, “Atlanta Exposition Speech” (1895), quoted in Franklin and Higginbotham,
From Slavery to Freedom
, 296.
18.
Franklin and Higginbotham,
From Slavery to Freedom
, 297–98.
19.
Du Bois, “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” in
The Souls of Black Folk
, 87. Du Bois failed to recognize that Washington anticipated a future where full integration of the races would be achieved. He only advocated vocational education as the means by which blacks would achieve that integration. See Washington quoted in Franklin and Higginbotham,
From Slavery to Freedom
, 298.
20.
Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth,” in Washington,
The Negro Problem
, 31–32.
21.
Franklin and Higginbotham,
From Slavery to Freedom
, 300–303.
22.
For a more complete account of Du Bois’s life, see Lewis,
W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
; Lewis,
W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality
; Balaji,
Professor and the Pupil
.
23.
Neil Lanctot, who has written the most comprehensive account of Roy Campanella’s life and baseball career, contends that Rickey seriously considered making Campy the first Negro Leaguer to integrate the Majors. While Lanctot also acknowledges Campanella’s and Robinson’s contrasting approaches to civil rights, he focuses more on the personal feud between the two teammates, largely a result of a dispute over postseason barnstorming. See Lanctot,
Campy
, 207–13, 310–11. Roger Kahn acknowledges that the “contrasting styles” of Robinson and Campanella “fed an ironic rivalry” and that both players, “in the competition of seasons, forgot that their divergent roads led toward one goal.” Kahn also admits that those sportswriters who covered the Brooklyn Dodgers were “driven toward one or the other” and that he “drew closer to Robinson because his bellicosity fit my preconception of what black attitudes should be” (
The
Boys of Summer
, 356–57). Similarly Michael Shapiro contends that the rift was “not surprising” because Campanella and Robinson “had nothing in common but baseball and race.” Even so, they “did not polarize the team” because they “wanted to win too much to allow that” to happen. See Shapiro,
The Last Good Season
, 162–68.
Conversely Carl Erskine, a Brooklyn Dodgers teammate, insists that “Campy and Jackie saw eye to eye on everything; only their methods differed.” The press “kept pining for divisions between the two” but could “never find them because the two loved and respected each one another” (Erskine and Rocks,
What I Learned from Jackie Robinson
, 107).
1. Brooklyn’s Bums
1.
McGee,
Greatest Ballpark Ever
, 63–64.
2.
McGee,
Greatest Ballpark Ever
, 59–62.
3.
Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 236–37.
4.
McGee,
Greatest Ballpark Ever
, 64–65.
5.
Ritter,
Lost Ballparks
, 51–52.
6.
McGee,
Greatest Ballpark Ever
, 69.
7.
McGee,
Greatest Ballpark Ever
, 65–66.
8.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
, April 6, 1913.
9.
Brooklyn Daily Standard Union
, April 6, 1913.
10.
McGee,
Greatest Ballpark Ever
, 24–28.
11.
John Day quoted in McGee,
Greatest Ballpark Ever
, 28–29.
12.
Jackson,
The Encyclopedia of New York City
, 148–49.
13.
Jackson,
The Encyclopedia of New York City
, 151.
14.
Simon,
Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball
, 33–34.
15.
Robert Gruber, “It Happened in Brooklyn: Reminiscences of a Fan,” in Dorinson and Warmund,
Jackie Robinson
, 43.
16.
Jackson,
The Encyclopedia of New York City
, 152; Robbins and Palitz,
Brooklyn
, xv.
17.
Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 232–33.
18.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
, January 23, 1897.
19.
Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 233–234.
20.
Voigt,
American Baseball
, 164, 238.
21.
Voigt,
American Baseball
, 238, 267.
22.
Frederick Ivor-Campbell, “Brooklyn Dodgers’ Team History,” in Thorn and Palmer,
Total Baseball
, 70.
23.
Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 235.
24.
Frank Graham Jr., “Casey Comes to Town,” in Robbins and Palitz,
Brooklyn
, 20–21.
25.
Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 236–37.
26.
Kavanaugh and Macht,
Uncle Robbie
; Golenbock,
Bums
, 20.
27.
Ritter,
Lost Ballparks
, 54–55; McGee,
Greatest Ballpark Ever
, 107.
28.
Rice,
Seasons Past
, 213.
29.
White,
History of Colored Baseball
, 31.
30.
Chadwick,
When the Game Was Black and White
, 29–30.
31.
Clark and Lester,
The Negro Leagues Book
, 27.
32.
Wilder,
A Covenant with Color
, 131–32.
33.
Willensky,
When Brooklyn Was the World, 1920–1957
, 103–4.
34.
Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 45–46.
35.
Pritchet,
Brownsville, Brooklyn
, 26–52.
36.
U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Negroes in the United States, 1920–32
, 62.
37.
Wilder,
Covenant with Color
, 113; Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 53.
38.
Wilder,
Covenant with Color
, 121.
39.
McCullough,
Brooklyn
, 198–99; Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 43.
40.
Wilder,
Covenant with Color
, 145.
41.
Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 53.
42.
Wilder,
Covenant with Color
, 162.
43.
Bill Reddy quoted in Golenbock,
Bums
, 155–56.
44.
Joe Flaherty quoted in Golenbock,
Bums
, 155–56.
45.
Interview of James A. McGowan, Newtown
PA
, January 5, 2005.
46.
Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 239.
47.
Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 240; McCullough,
Brooklyn,
174.
48.
Golenbock,
Bums
, 185.
49.
Dan Parker, “Leave Us Go Root for the Dodgers,”
New York Daily Mirror
, 1942.
50.
Ivor-Campbell, “Brooklyn Dodgers’ Team History,” 70.
51.
Thorn and Palmer,
Total Baseball
, 822.
52.
New York Herald Tribune
, October 6, 1941.
53.
Brooklyn Eagle
, October 7, 1941.
54.
Golenbock,
Bums
, 185.
55.
Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn
, 240.
56.
Golenbock,
Bums
, 186.
57.
Ritter,
Lost Ballparks
, 55.
58.
Ward and Burns,
Baseball
, 275.
59.
Golenbock,
Bums
, 75–80.
60.
Branch Rickey quoted in
New York Times
, February 12, 1943.
61.
Lowenfish,
Branch Rickey
, 325–26.
2. Rickey’s Choice
1.
Lowenfish,
Branch Rickey
, 323.
2.
Ward and Burns,
Baseball
, 284.
3.
Lowenfish,
Branch Rickey
, 14–16.
4.
Interview of Branch Rickey III, Colorado Springs
CO
, July 21, 2008.
5.
Branch Rickey quoted in
Baseball: The Game
, part 1, Heritage Public Affairs Interviews, produced by
WQED
-
TV,
Pittsburgh, 1959; Ward and Burns,
Baseball
, 128.
6.
Lowenfish,
Branch Rickey
, 22–24.
7.
Rickey quoted in Mann,
Branch Rickey
, 216. When asked about the incident in the 1950s, Charles Thomas, who had become a dentist in Albuquerque, claimed that it was “exaggerated” and that he was “quite sure that Mr. Rickey didn’t say what the reporters enlarged upon” (Falkner,
Great Time Coming
, 105).
8.
Lowenfish,
Branch Rickey
, 24–38.
9.
Ward and Burns,
Baseball
, 129–30, 149, 179.
10.
Branch Rickey quoted in
Baseball: The Proving Ground of Civil Rights
, part 3, Heritage Public Affairs Interviews, produced by
WQED
-
TV
, Pittsburgh, 1959.
11.
Lester Rodney, “White Dodgers, Black Dodgers,” in Dorinson and Warmund,
Jackie Robinson
, 93.
12.
Branch Rickey and George McLaughlin quoted in Mann,
The Jackie Robinson Story
, 11; Ward and Burns,
Baseball
, 284.
13.
Mann,
Branch Rickey
, 213; Lowenfish,
Branch Rickey
, 326.
14.
Merl F. Kleinknecht, “The Negro Leagues: A Brief History,” in Clark and Lester,
The Negro Leagues Book
, 15–19. Among the best treatments of Negro League players are Hogan,
Shades of Glory
; Peterson,
Only the Ball Was White
. In addition there are several fine film documentaries on the Negro Leagues:
There Was Always Sun Shining Someplace: Life in the Negro Leagues
;
Before You Can Say Jackie Robinson: Black Baseball in America in the Era of the Color Line
;
Black Diamonds, Blues City: Stories of the Memphis Red Sox
;
Kings on the Hill: Baseball’s Forgotten Men
.
15.
Chadwick,
When the Game Was Black and White
, 16; Bankes,
The Pittsburgh Crawfords
, 63.
16.
Campanella,
It’s Good to Be Alive
, 94–95.
17.
Veeck and Linn,
Veeck as in Wreck
, 171–72. According to David M. Jordan, Larry R. Gerlach, and John P. Rossi, Veeck “falsified the historical record” in order to “polish his own place in baseball history,” among other reasons. In fact, Veeck “did not have a deal to buy the Phillies. He did not work to stock any team with Negro League stars. No such deal was squashed by Landis or Frick” (“Bill Veeck and the 1943 Sale of the Phillies,” 3–13). On the other hand, Veeck’s claim might have some validity since he was the first owner to integrate the American League; in the summer of 1947 he signed Negro Leaguer Larry Doby to a contract with the Cleveland Indians.
18.
Mann,
Jackie Robinson Story
, 12.
19.
Interview of Gene Benson, Philadelphia, December 9, 1998.
20.
Interview of Stanley Glenn, West Chester
PA
, December 7, 1999.
21.
Tye,
Satchel
, 182, 190–199.
22.
Interview of Mahlon Duckett, West Chester
PA
, May 12, 1999.
23.
Frommer,
Rickey and Robinson
, 96; Tye,
Satchel,
199; Holway
, Josh and Satch
, 180; “Joshua Gibson,” in Clark and Lester,
The Negro Leagues Book
, 41–42. Josh Gibson died on January 20, 1947, in Pittsburgh. He was thirty-five.
24.
Franklin and Higginbotham,
From Slavery to Freedom
, 451–52, 458–60.
25.
Franklin and Higginbotham,
From Slavery to Freedom
, 454–55, 466–67.
26.
Franklin and Higginbotham,
From Slavery to Freedom
, 492–93.
27.
Dickson,
The Unwritten Rules of Baseball
, 20.
28.
Albert “Happy” Chandler quoted in Polner,
Branch Rickey
, 174.
29.
Cool Papa Bell quoted in Adomites et al.,
Cooperstown
, 213.
30.
For the most complete account of Monte Irvin’s life, see Irvin and Riley,
Nice Guys Finish First
.
31.
Interview of Monte Irvin, Houston, August 21, 2007.
32.
Campanella had been exempted from the draft because he was married and the father of two children (Campanella,
It’s Good to Be Alive
, 93).
33.
Campanella,
It’s Good to Be Alive
, 103–6.
34.
Branch Rickey III interview.
35.
According to Neil Lanctot, Campanella’s biographer, Campy, though married, had a well-known reputation for carrying on extramarital affairs, which resulted in two broken marriages. See Lanctot,
Campy
, 65–66, 76, 345, 369, 371, 399, 400–401.
36.
Rampersad,
Jackie Robinson
, 292.
37.
Falkner,
Great Time Coming
, 96.
38.
Smith learned that Isadore Muchnick, a liberal Jewish council member from Boston, had been pressuring the Red Sox and Braves to integrate. Muchnick threatened to impose Sunday blue laws on the two teams if they didn’t offer tryouts to Negro Leaguers. Not wanting to be deprived of Sunday baseball—the most profitable day of the week—the two teams agreed. See Falkner,
Great Time Coming
, 101; Tye,
Satchel,
185–86.
39.
Interview of Marvin Williams, Conroe
TX
, August 4, 1999.
40.
Williams interview.
41.
Robinson and Duckett,
I Never Had It Made
, 41–42.
42.
Robinson and Duckett,
I Never Had It Made
, 41–42.
43.
Williams interview.
44.
Kelly E. Rusinack, “Baseball on the Radical Agenda: The
Daily Worker
and
Sunday Worker
Journalistic Campaign to Desegregate Major League Baseball, 1933–1947,” in Dorinson and Warmund,
Jackie Robinson
, 75–85.
45.
Franklin and Higginbotham,
From Slavery to Freedom
, 492–95. See also Naison,
Communists in Harlem
.
46.
Franklin and Higginbotham,
From Slavery to Freedom
, 496.
47.
Franklin and Higginbotham,
From Slavery to Freedom
, 496–97.
48.
Excerpts of the Mayor’s Report on the Integration of Baseball quoted in Dan Daniel, “New York Report Criticizes Negro Leagues in Probe of Organized Baseball Color Bar,”
Sporting News
, November 29, 1945. In November 1945 the committee made public its findings: there is “no difference between the potential ability of Negro and white youth,” and the only reason blacks are excluded from Organized Baseball is “sheer prejudice”; “‘moral principle’ demand[s] that Negroes not be excluded from Organized Baseball”; there is “no rule in Organized Baseball prohibiting Negroes from the game” and thus Organized Baseball has a “responsibility of taking positive, aggressive activity [toward integration].” Although these findings were released after Jackie Robinson had already been signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers, they forced the owners to come to terms with the reality that the complete integration of
Major League Baseball was only a matter of time. See New York City Council, “Report of the Major League Steering Committee: November 20, 1945,” National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, New York.
49.
Rodney, “White Dodgers, Black Dodgers,” 90–91.
50.
Rusinack, “Baseball on the Radical Agenda,” 80–81.
51.
Daily Worker
, September 19, 1939, September 17, 1940, January 25, 28, 1943;
Sunday Worker
, October 15, 1939.
52.
Rampersad,
Jackie Robinson
, 123.
53.
Wendell Smith made his opposition to the American Communist Party known as early as 1943, when a delegation of Negro newspaper publishers persuaded the baseball owners to hear an appeal for integration from Paul Robeson. According to Sam Lacey, a black sportswriter for the
Chicago Defender
and later the
Baltimore Afro-American
, Robeson’s appearance before the owners was a strategic blunder on the part of the black press. His affiliation with the Communist Party was not popular with the American public and could be used to the owners’ advantage in defending the “gentleman’s agreement.” See Falkner,
Great Time Coming
, 100; Roberts and Klibanoff,
The Race Beat
, 20.
54.
Wendell Smith quoted in Falkner,
Great Time Coming
, 109.
55.
Clyde Sukeforth quoted by Dave Anderson, “The Days That Brought the Barrier Down: 50 Years Later, Robinson’s First Manager Recalls the Integration of the Majors,”
New York Times
, March 30, 1997.
56.
Sukeforth quoted by Anderson, “The Days That Brought the Barrier Down”; Falkner,
Great Time Coming
, 106.
57.
Craig Muder, “Branch Rickey Takes Control of the Dodgers,”
Inside Pitch: Newsletter of the National Baseball Hall of Fame
, August 13, 2010, 1.
58.
Robinson recounted in detail his first meeting with Rickey in his autobiography. See Robinson and Duckett,
I Never Had It Made
, 42–47. But historians consider Jules Tygiel’s
Baseball’s Great Experiment
the definitive account of the Robinson-Rickey meeting (65–67).
59.
“Rickey Claims That 15 Clubs Voted to Bar Negroes from Majors,”
New York Times
, February 18, 1948.
60.
Sukeforth in Anderson, “The Days That Brought the Barrier Down.”
61.
Robinson and Duckett,
I Never Had It Made
, 42–43.
62.
Tygiel,
Baseball’s Great Experiment
, 66.
63.
Robinson and Duckett,
I Never Had It Made
, 43–44.
64.
Robinson and Duckett,
I Never Had It Made
, 46; Rampersad,
Jackie Robinson
, 126–27.
65.
David Falkner argues that there were at least two different meetings between Rickey and Robinson before the Dodgers actually signed the Negro League star (
Great Time Coming
, 106–12).
66.
Sam Lacey quoted in Jerelyn Eddings, “Special Report on Race,”
U.S. News & World Report
, March 24, 1997, 54.
67.
Irvin interview.
68.
Branch Rickey III interview.
69.
See interviews of Monte Irvin; Gene Benson; Marvin Williams; Mahlon Duckett; Bill Cash, West Chester
PA,
April 18, 1999; Stanley Glenn, West Chester
PA,
December 7, 1999; Wilmer Harris, Philadelphia, December 9, 1999.
70.
Robinson and Duckett,
I Never Had It Made
, 10–11.
71.
Branch Rickey III interview.
