Jackie and Campy (6 page)

Smith, the sports editor for the largest black newspaper in circulation, was at the forefront of the black press’s campaign to integrate Major League Baseball as the key to creating equal opportunities in other sectors of American life.
37
Smith had been promoting Robinson along with
two other talented Negro Leaguers, Marvin Williams of the Philadelphia Stars and Sam Jethroe of the Cleveland Buckeyes. Smith’s influence as a journalist allowed all three players to secure big league tryouts. He had already wrangled tryouts from the Boston Red Sox that April, but despite the impressive performance of all three players Manager Joe Cronin passed on the opportunity to sign a single one.
38
Williams later revealed that the tryout was “more of a publicity stunt to promote Robinson” and that he, realizing the importance of integration, had “cooperated fully in the effort.” Before the trio traveled to Boston, Smith informed them that he was “going to give Jackie more publicity because he had a degree from
UCLA
and he was a second lieutenant in the army.” “If Jackie can fight alongside white soldiers,” said Smith,” he certainly should be able to play with them.”
39

At the April 16 tryout Robinson, Williams, and Jethroe joined a dozen white prospects at Boston’s Fenway Park. After shagging flies in the outfield and taking infield, they were called in to bat and immediately demonstrated their ability to hit at the big league level. “We hit that Green Monster real hard—all of us,” recalled Williams, referring to Fenway’s legendary left-field wall. “We tried to tear it down. Jackie said, ‘If we can’t go over it, let’s just knock it down.’”
40
Robinson confirmed the impressive performance. “In my view, nobody put on an exhibition like we did,” he wrote in his 1972 autobiography. “Everything we did, it looked like the Lord was guiding us. Every ball the pitcher threw up became a line drive someplace. We tattooed that left field wall, that is, Marv and I did—and Jethroe was doing extremely well from the left side, too.”
41

The three players were not naïve, though. “Not for one minute,” Robinson later admitted, “did we believe that the tryout was sincere.” While Cronin and Coach Hugh Duffy praised their performances and had them fill out applications, the players were “certain that they wouldn’t call us.”
42
According to Williams, President Roosevelt’s “unexpected death and the national mourning that followed resulted in the cancellation of another tryout with the Boston Braves.” Soon afterward, Smith “launched a big publicity campaign to get Jackie into the majors.”
43

It isn’t clear if Smith asked Rickey for a tryout or if he simply requested that a scout be assigned to look at Robinson. What is certain is that until Smith approached him, Rickey had not entertained Robinson as a seri
ous candidate to break the color line. What’s more, Rickey did not initially trust Smith. He believed that the black sports editor was allied with the American Communist press, which also promoted baseball’s integration as part of a much larger campaign to end segregation in all phases of American life and to attract support from the working class and African Americans.
44
The Dodgers’ president, who considered himself a “patriotic American,” had good reason to be concerned.

During the 1940s there was a growing partnership between the civil rights movement and the American Communist Party, focusing on the issue of black trade unionism. Approximately 1.5 million blacks migrated from the South to northern cities, where they found better jobs. Related to this development was the significant increase in black membership in labor unions, a trend inspired by such New Deal institutions as the National Labor Relations Board and the Fair Employment Practices Commission as well as the inclusion of blacks in the Congress of Industrial Organization (
CIO
). Some of the labor leaders were Communist sympathizers, if not active members in the Party. They recruited working-class blacks by emphasizing the common goals of economic justice and racial equality, and
CIO
unions often worked with such civil rights organizations as the National Negro Congress and local branches of the
NAACP
in order to advance these goals. In New York, for example, labor unions with large black memberships addressed housing discrimination, police brutality, and racial discrimination in hiring practices.
45

Labor civil rights were embraced by several left-oriented black leaders, including labor leader A. Philip Randolph; Paul Robeson, a former All-American football player who turned to opera singing and acting; and Benjamin J. Davis, a Harvard Law School graduate who sat on the New York City Council. These leaders viewed the integration of baseball as a major test case of civil rights in the labor sector and actively pursued that goal in the early to mid-1940s.
46
Davis, a member of the American Communist Party, was especially active on the issue. In 1945 he sought reelection to the New York City Council by making the integration of baseball the central theme of his campaign. Introducing a resolution to integrate the city’s three Major League teams, Davis secured the Council’s unanimous endorsement and sent copies of the resolution to the owners of the Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants.
47
Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia followed up
the resolution by appointing a committee to investigate the reasons for the absence of black players on the teams. Among those to serve on the committee were Davis, Branch Rickey, and Larry MacPhail, president of the New York Yankees, who constantly ran interference for the owners. When committee members contended that “there is racial prejudice in the majors” and that professional baseball “should assume the development of black players” rather than “leaving the responsibility to the Negro Leagues,” MacPhail countered that Negro Leaguers were “under contract” and that “the owners were unwilling to disregard those contracts” because it would result in “costly court action.” Committee Chairman John H. Johnson disagreed, stating that Negro League contracts were “loose” and that many of the players “jumped their contracts in mid-season and no action was taken.”

Changing course, MacPhail argued that “many who are familiar with Negro baseball feel that the teams meet a need among the local Negro community that would not be met even if their players were integrated into the white leagues.” Other committee members rejected the Yankee president’s premise, accusing him of “placing the onus of present Jim Crow practices on the Negroes themselves.” “Organized Negro baseball would not have been necessary had Negroes been integrated into the system in the first place,” they argued. “Thus, the Negro leagues, which arose from an evil, would become the reason for their perpetuation. Most people admit that the Negro leagues, under present arrangements, can never produce players qualified for big league competition. The leagues are powerless to bring themselves into Organized Baseball and no one from within the profession has seen fit to organize them into leagues capable of participating in such competition.”
48

Rickey, fed up with MacPhail’s rhetoric, resigned from the committee. The episode also reinforced his distrust of politicians and journalists who were exploiting the integration issue to advance their careers, especially those who were Communist. Rickey actively avoided any association with left-oriented writers like Lester Rodney of the
New York Daily Worker
and Joe Bostic of Harlem’s
Peoples’ Voice
, who tended to filter integration through a radical lens that championed equality for all social and economic classes. Rodney in particular was more interested in social justice than baseball and sought to further labor civil rights by attacking segre
gation in the game on political grounds. Beginning in 1939 he organized petitions of New York baseball fans to end segregation and routinely sent those petitions to Commissioner Landis, National League president Ford Frick, and American League president Will Harridge.
49
He also promoted Negro League stars to Major League owners and cultivated a working relationship with the black press.
50
To that end, the
Daily Worker
often followed up on stories in the black newspapers that supported desegregation in baseball and sometimes reprinted, in their entirety, stories written by Smith in the
Pittsburgh Courier
.
51
Such activities served as proof, in Rickey’s mind, of an alliance between the black and Communist presses.

Rickey didn’t care for Bostic either. On April 6, 1945, the Dodgers’ president became infuriated with the Communist writer when Bostic approached him at the club’s Bear Mountain, New York, training camp to request a tryout for Terris McDuffie, a pitcher for the Newark Eagles, and Dave “Showboat” Thomas, a first baseman with the New York Cubans. Later Rickey publicly attacked the Communist press as well as the Negro Leagues, which he accused of being “dominated by gamblers” and rife with “shoddy business practices.” Instead the Dodgers’ president praised the recently established all-black United States League, founded that January by Gus Greenlee, former president of the Negro National League. Rickey also announced that he would establish his own team, the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers, to play in the new league.
52
While he was severely criticized by Negro League owners for his remarks, Rickey’s assertion that he intended to create his own black team may have been a ruse to detract from his own covert activities in scouting their teams for a player to break the color barrier.

To be sure, Rickey purposely distanced himself from any organization or individual who he felt threatened his plan to integrate the Dodgers. Most likely he questioned Wendell Smith’s motives until he was convinced that the sportswriter was genuinely committed to his cause and, just as important, “wanted to be completely divorced from any communist influence.”
53
Only then did Rickey act on Smith’s suggestion to scout Jackie Robinson and assigned two of his assistants, Wid Matthews and George Sisler, to the task.

Once they established mutual trust, Rickey and Smith were in constant contact throughout the 1945 season. Smith later admitted that he
was “tempted to write about the Dodgers’ interest in Robinson,” but Rickey had “sworn him to secrecy.” Besides, Robinson did not always present himself as the best candidate. Angered by the poor conditions and pay in the Negro Leagues, he threatened to quit the Monarchs on two occasions that summer. Worse, Robinson threatened to punch an umpire who he believed was baiting him. At one point Rickey expressed his concern to Smith over whether “Jackie was a belligerent type of individual.” While the journalist didn’t want to admit that Jackie was “tough to get along with,” he did concede that the shortstop “had a sizeable temper when he was aroused.” “But to survive in the Negro leagues,” Smith added, “he couldn’t be a Mickey Mouse.”
54
Whatever personality problems may have existed, Robinson’s exceptional athletic ability overshadowed Rickey’s concerns about them. When favorable reports came back from Matthews and Sisler, the Dodgers’ president followed up with Clyde Sukeforth, his chief scout.

Sukeforth, a native New Englander, had been a catcher for the Cincinnati Reds in his playing days. Like many backstops who went on to become managers and coaches, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the game and a keen eye for Major League potential. Predictably he enjoyed Rickey’s utmost trust and respect. In late August he was sent to Chicago to scout Robinson, who was there for a game against the Negro League’s American Giants. “Mr. Rickey told me, ‘I want you to pay particular attention to a shortstop named Robinson,’” Sukeforth recalled in a 1997
New York Times interview
. “He told me: ‘I want you to identify yourself and tell him I sent you. If you like this fellow’s arm, bring him in.’ Mr. Rickey didn’t tell me what he wanted Jack for, but I thought I knew.”
55

When Robinson came out of the dugout to take the infield, Sukeforth called him over and introduced himself.

“Why is Mr. Rickey interested in me?” asked Robinson.

“I have no authority to answer that question,” replied Sukeforth, deflecting the inquiry. “I just work for him. But I can assure you that there’s a lot of interest in you in Brooklyn.”

After Robinson informed the Dodgers’ scout that a sore throwing arm prevented him from playing that night, Sukeforth asked that they meet at the team’s hotel after the game. At that meeting, the two men “talked for about an hour and a half.” “The more I talked with him, the more I
was impressed with his determination, intelligence and aggressiveness,” recalled Sukeforth. “I asked him to meet me in Toledo where I had to see a double header the next day.”
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Robinson agreed and, after the doubleheader, the two men traveled by train back to New York.

By the time the legendary meeting between Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson took place, Rickey had maneuvered himself into a position of control within the Dodgers’ organization. Just two weeks earlier, on August 13, 1945, he and his associates purchased 50 percent of the franchise, and Rickey, who was already team president, began acting as general manager as well.
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He now had the administrative and financial authority to integrate the club, and he was prepared to partner with Robinson in order to realize that longtime ambition.

On Monday morning, August 28, 1945, Sukeforth accompanied Robinson to the Dodgers’ executive offices at 215 Montague Street in Brooklyn, where he introduced him to Branch Rickey.
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Like Irvin and Campanella, Robinson was under the impression that he was being considered for another Negro League team, but Rickey quickly dismissed that notion.
59
Greeting the shortstop with a vigorous handshake, he confessed that he was interested in him “as a candidate for the Brooklyn Dodgers.” “Jack, all my life I’ve been looking for a great Negro ballplayer and I have reason to believe you might be that man,” confessed the stocky, beetle-browed executive.
60

Robinson was speechless. He was cynical toward all baseball club owners, especially white ones. It was a natural defense to protect him from any personal disillusionment.