Jackie and Campy (7 page)

“Have you got a girl?” Rickey asked, wanting to make sure that Robinson had the personal support necessary to succeed in such a risky venture.

“Yes,” replied the Negro Leaguer, referring to Rachel Isum, whom he’d met when they were students at
UCLA
. “She’s a nurse and we’re engaged to be married.”

Satisfied with the response, Rickey continued his examination. “So, what about it? You think you can play for Montreal?” he asked, referring to the Dodgers’ top farm club.
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Awestruck, Robinson managed to say yes. He realized that if he made good at Montreal, he had an excellent chance to make the Major Leagues. “I just want to be treated fairly,” he added.

“You will
not
be treated fairly!” Rickey snapped. “‘Nigger’ will be a compliment!”

For the next three hours, Rickey interrogated the star shortstop. With great dramatic flair, he role-played every conceivable scenario that would confront the first black player to break baseball’s color barrier: first he was a bigoted sportswriter who wrote lies about Robinson’s performance; next he was a southern hotel manager refusing room and board, then a racist Major Leaguer looking for a fight, and after that a waiter throwing Robinson out of a whites-only diner. In every scenario Rickey cursed Robinson and threatened him, verbally degrading him in every way imaginable.
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The executive’s performance was so convincing that Robinson later said, “I found myself chain-gripping my fingers behind my back.” When he was through, Rickey told Robinson that he knew he was a “fine ballplayer.” “But what I need,” he added, “is more than a great player. I need a man who will take abuse and insults for his race. And what I don’t know is whether you have the guts!”

Robinson struggled to keep his temper. Insulted by the implication that he was a coward, he could “feel the heat coming up into [his] cheeks.” “Mr. Rickey,” he retorted, “do you want a Negro who’s afraid to fight back?”

“No!” Rickey barked. “I want a ballplayer with guts enough
not
to fight back. We can’t
fight
our way through this. There’s virtually nobody on our side. No owners, no umpires, virtually no newspapermen. And I’m afraid that many fans will be hostile too. They’ll taunt you and goad you. They’ll do anything to make you react. They’ll try to provoke a race riot in the ball park.”
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As he listened, Robinson became transfixed by the Dodgers’ president. He felt his sincerity, his deep, quiet strength, and his sense of moral justice. “We can only win,” concluded Rickey, “if we can convince the world that I’m doing this because you’re a great ballplayer and a fine gentleman. You will symbolize a crucial cause. One incident, just one incident, can set it back twenty years.”

To reinforce his point, Rickey produced an English translation of Giovanni Papini’s
Life of Christ
. Flipping through the pages, he landed on a quote from Jesus, who admonished his followers, “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Rickey, who collected a thick file of information on the Monarch shortstop, knew he too was a devout Methodist. Now he was adding religion to his performance to convince Robinson of the necessity of breaking the color barrier without resorting to physical violence.

Robinson was a proud man who had actively fought back in the face of racial discrimination. “Could I turn the other cheek?” he asked himself
as he listened to Rickey’s speech. “I didn’t know how I would do it. Yet I knew I must. I had to do it for many reasons . . . for black youth, for my mother, for Rae [his fiancée] and for myself. I had even begun to feel as if I had to do it for Branch Rickey.”

“Mr. Rickey,” he finally said, “I think I can play ball in Montreal. I think I can play ball in Brooklyn. If you want to take this gamble, I will promise you there will be no incident.”

The agreement was sealed by a handshake. Until Rickey gave the word, Robinson would have to keep the arrangement secret.
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Over the years the Rickey-Robinson meeting has taken on a mythology of its own. Since all the principal actors at the meeting are deceased there is no way of confirming the details. Questions remain over what exactly transpired and whether there was more than one meeting before they reached an agreement.
65
Some believe that Rickey couldn’t have been as intrusive as the legend maintains. Was it necessary, for example, to ask whether or not Robinson had “a girl”? At least one sportswriter, Sam Lacey of the
Baltimore Afro-American
, believes that Robinson’s marital status was important for Rickey to ascertain and probably did inquire about it. “The fact that he was engaged to be married meant that Jackie wouldn’t go after white women,” said Lacey. “Rickey needed to be sure about that because it could destroy the entire enterprise.”
66

Similarly Monte Irvin wonders how necessary it was for Rickey to repeatedly provoke Robinson with name-calling and racial epithets. “He had one hell of a lot of nerve to do that,” said Irvin in a recent interview. “It wasn’t necessary to call Jackie a nigger to provoke him. Jackie had been called a nigger before. I’m sure he understood that he couldn’t fight back even though it went against human nature to restrain yourself when attacked like that. He knew if he did, he’d be setting the process of integration back for some time.”
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But Branch Rickey III believes that it was necessary for his grandfather to provoke Robinson in order to ascertain “his capacity for confrontation.” “It wasn’t just the vocabulary he used, either,” added Rickey. “My grandfather provoked him with the look of an eye, by the tightening of muscles in his face. Jackie’s response to those confrontational scenarios allowed him to understand how successful the experiment would be.”
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In addition there is a common belief among Negro Leaguers in particular that Rickey was motivated primarily by financial considerations, believing that breaking the color barrier would result in opening a new pool of talent to the Majors that would attract both black and white fans by the tens of thousands. In other words, integration was a matter of “dollars and cents.”
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Although Robinson himself does not discount the financial motive, he insists that there was “more than just making money at stake.” According to Robinson, Rickey was taking “a big gamble.” His health was “undermined by the pressures placed upon him by peers and fellow baseball owners” who wanted him “to change his mind,” as well as by the press, who “condemned him as a fool and a demagogue.” Some told Robinson that those “pressures” were simply a part of the price Rickey had to pay if he wanted to be successful at the gate and that the Dodgers’ president was exploiting him for financial gain. But near the end of his life Robinson flatly rejected the notion, stating that Rickey was like “the father I had lost as a child” and that he had nothing but “admiration and respect for him.”
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Like Robinson, Branch Rickey III insists that the financial considerations were secondary to his grandfather’s fierce desire to do what was “morally right”:

To be sure, that “invisible thread” went back further than even his grandson acknowledges. It can be traced to Rickey’s Methodist upbring
ing and the fierce resolve he possessed for doing what was morally right. That moral necessity not only inspired the Dodgers’ president’s quest to integrate baseball but convinced him to choose Jackie Robinson for the difficult task. Together Rickey and Robinson would improve the Brooklyn Dodgers’ fortunes at the gate and on the playing field. In the process they would also correct a long-standing social injustice that plagued the national pastime.

3.

Jackie and Campy

Jackie Robinson was assuming the burden of responsibility for the hopes and dreams of black America. He might have been an athlete by profession, but he would quickly become the most recognizable civil rights leader in the nation, a pioneer for social justice in an industry that had discriminated against blacks for nearly three-quarters of a century. His success or failure would have the most profound implications in the black struggle for full U.S. citizenship. But he was not alone.

Roy Campanella became Robinson’s partner in the quest to integrate baseball, though he would not gain the same recognition for his efforts. While the two men did not know each other personally, they were well acquainted with the other’s talent, having played against each other in the Negro League’s East-West All-Star Game in 1945. Their relationship began in late October, when the two men crossed paths at Harlem’s Woodside Hotel as they prepared to travel to Venezuela to barnstorm on the same Negro League All-Star squad. Engaging in a friendly game of gin rummy, the men began to shoot the breeze, and eventually the subject turned to Branch Rickey. Only then did Campanella learn that Jackie had signed with Montreal, the Dodgers’ top farm club.

When Robinson confided that he was “going to be the first Negro in organized ball,” Campy was flabbergasted. He had met with Rickey himself just a week before and was led to believe that the Dodgers’ president wanted him for a Negro League team he was starting. “I’m really happy for you,” he told Jackie. “I know you’ll make it and I wish you all the luck in the world.” Privately, Campy “could have given [himself] a good, swift kick.” “Here, Mr. Rickey might have been trying to sign me for the big leagues,” he later admitted, “and I thought he just wanted me for anoth
er colored team.” He worried that his lack of enthusiasm during the interview might have cost him the very same chance that Jackie had been given. Before parting ways, Robinson swore the black catcher to secrecy.
1

It’s unclear whether Rickey seriously considered choosing Campanella over Robinson. Both Negro Leaguers possessed certain attributes as well as liabilities in terms of playing experience, temperament, and background. In fact no two men could have been more different. Jackie Robinson was defined by a fire that burned deep inside of him. It burned white-hot in the heat of athletic competition, where winning was the sole motivation that drove him. But racial discrimination fueled the flames of that deep-seated fire. Like W. E. B. Du Bois, Jackie believed that equality for the black man could only be achieved by challenging directly the segregated society in which he lived. Unless blacks actively pursued social, political, and economic equality, they would never be accorded the respect that comes with full citizenship. For Robinson, no less than for Du Bois, racial discrimination was emasculating. It attacked his manhood by demeaning his intelligence and fundamental worth as a human being. In the past Jackie had protested, sometimes subtly, sometimes with verbal or physical violence. He was not one to turn the other cheek.

Unlike Robinson, Campanella let racial abuse roll off his back. He refused to dignify racism by allowing it to affect him personally or professionally. Instead he dismissed the name-calling, racial epithets, and overly aggressive play as simply “part of a game where tension is sometimes at fever pitch.”
2
Like Booker T. Washington, Campanella believed that protesting against discrimination was a futile exercise. Self-reliance was the key to securing social and economic advancement in baseball or any other walk of life. He also realized that upward mobility depended on winning the support of the white baseball establishment by working hard and leading a clean moral life. Campanella was no different from an earlier generation of blacks who supported Washington’s accommodationist philosophy and conducted themselves accordingly.

If Jackie was defined by the fire that burned inside him whenever he was confronted with social injustice, Campy’s most distinguishing trait was his coolness under the very same pressure. He was the original “ice man” who could survey a potentially volatile situation and defuse it with a quip and a smile. There was a softness to his personality that allowed him to
cushion himself from the blows of racism without appearing cowardly. In fact he could take a racial slight and turn it to his advantage by revealing the offender for the bigot he was. That kind of poise made Campanella a leader by example, something that carried over to the baseball diamond. To be sure, both men were products of the environment in which they were raised. That simple fact would influence their approach to baseball as well as to civil rights.

Robinson learned at an early age that the world was not a very kind or forgiving place. Growing up in poverty, he came to realize that he would have to compete for anything he hoped to achieve and to fight back when provoked. These were matters of self-respect. But his early life had also taught him perseverance and discipline, virtues that tempered a natural instinct for retribution when provoked.

Born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, Jack Roosevelt Robinson was the grandson of a slave and the fifth child of a sharecropper. His father, Jerry Robinson, worked on a plantation for $12 a month. Just six months after Jackie was born, Jerry deserted his wife, Mallie, and their five children. Relocating her family to Pasadena, California, Mallie worked as a domestic to support the household. Her salary was so meager that she begrudgingly accepted welfare and even then was barely able to make ends meet.
3
But she still managed to teach her children the importance of family unity, religion, and sympathy for others, though the last was not always easy to learn.

Raised in a predominantly white neighborhood, Jackie and his siblings were verbally ridiculed as “niggers” and frequently pelted with rocks by neighbors. White residents signed several petitions to have the family evicted from their home on Pepper Street. Instead of enduring the humiliation, the boys formed a gang and began to return the fire. Known as the Pepper Street Gang, the group was composed of poor black, Japanese, and Mexican kids who indulged in petty theft, pranks, and occasional fisticuffs with the white kids who abhorred their presence in the neighborhood. Their activities did not go unnoticed by the Pasadena Police, whose sheriff once arrested Jackie for taking a swim in the city reservoir because the local public pool prohibited blacks from swimming there.
4

During his adolescence Jackie struggled with a fragile self-esteem, which was aggravated by the racial abuse and lack of a father to men
tor him. He once admitted that he would probably have become “a full-fledged juvenile delinquent had it not been for Carl Anderson and the Reverend Karl Downs.” Anderson, a neighborhood auto mechanic, and Downs, the pastor of the local Methodist church, were “interested and concerned enough to offer me the best advice they could.”
5
With their encouragement Jackie distanced himself from the Pepper Street Gang and focused on sports; it saved him from more serious trouble.

At John Muir Technical High School, Robinson distinguished himself as a quarterback on the football team and a shortstop and catcher on the baseball team, though he also enjoyed remarkable success in basketball and track. One teammate, Ray Bartlett, admitted that Robinson “was a hard loser.” “He liked being the best,” said Bartlett. “The rest of us might shrug off a loss, but Jackie couldn’t let go of it.”
6
Robinson’s versatility earned him an athletic scholarship to Pasadena Junior College, where he led the football team to a perfect 11-0 record and became a standout in basketball, track, and baseball as well. With a student body of just four thousand,
PJC
was a small college with no more than seventy black students. Jackie mostly circulated among a small group of blacks and continued to feel the sting of racism.

When some of the white football players attempted to freeze out their black teammates, Robinson threatened to transfer to a rival school. After the head coach ended the rebellion, Jackie realized the value of protesting social injustice as well as how to exploit his value as a star athlete. At the same time, he emerged as a leader among his teammates, both black and white. As quarterback he made sure to spread the scoring to include the very same players who had discriminated against him. “It was smart to share the glory,” he admitted. “In the final analysis, white people were no worse than Negroes, for we are all afflicted by the same pride, jealousy, envy and ambition.”
7

Robinson continued to apply these lessons when he transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles in 1939. There he became the school’s very first four-letter man, earning varsity letters in football, basketball, baseball, and track as well as All-American honors on the gridiron. What distinguished him was a genuine desire to place the welfare of the team above personal glory. He treated his white teammates with the same respect as those who were black. But he also grew more intolerant of racial abuse, which led to occasional clashes with the law.

On September 5, 1939, for example, Robinson confronted a white motorist who had called him a “nigger.” A crowd of some forty to fifty young blacks gathered at the scene, but when a Pasadena police officer arrived
they quickly dispersed. Jackie stood his ground and was arrested. Refused the right to make a phone call, he spent the night in jail. The next morning he pleaded not guilty to charges of hindering traffic and resisting arrest, paid the $25 bond, and was set free. For this and a similar incident, Robinson was acquitted, most likely because he was a talented, well-known college athlete.

These were defining experiences for him. Not only did they strengthen already existing personality traits—competitiveness, combativeness, impatience, and irascibility—but they also resulted in the myth that during his college years he was “frequently tossed into jail on a Friday night only to be released for Saturday’s game.”
8
However, Arnold Rampersad, Robinson’s most recent biographer, has shown that the Pasadena Police did not consider Jackie a troublemaker but understood that he wouldn’t allow a racist remark to go unnoticed. “Despite Robinson’s quick temper in the face of racial discrimination,” contends Rampersad, “he lived, on the whole, a life of discipline, restraint and self-denial. He thought of himself and his future in terms of moral and social obligation, rather than privilege and entitlement.”
9

Convinced that “no amount of education would help a black man get a good job,” Robinson left
UCLA
in March 1941 without completing his degree.
10
But he also left with something much more valuable, a soul mate who would help him survive the difficult demands he would face in the future. Rachel Isum, a freshman nursing student, met Robinson during his senior year. “What I liked about him was his smile and the confident air he had about him without being cocky in person,” she recalled. “He also wore his color with such dignity, pride and confidence. He was never, ever, ashamed of his [black] skin color.”
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Rachel complemented Jackie. Where he was introverted and impulsive, she was more open, organized, and practical. Where Jackie’s identity was already fixed, hers was still evolving. Rachel quickly became a trusted confidant.

While Rachel continued her college education, Jackie looked for ways to channel his love of sports into a job. During the next year he would play football for the semipro and racially integrated Honolulu Bears and work construction at Pearl Harbor. Drafted by the army in the spring of 1942, he was assigned to a segregated unit at Ft. Riley. Kansas. He then applied to be admitted to Officers’ Candidate School but was denied admis
sion because of his race. His application was eventually approved, however, thanks to the help of boxing legend Joe Louis, who was stationed with Jackie at Ft. Riley.

Commissioned a second lieutenant on January 28, 1943, Robinson continued to defy discriminatory practices within the military. In an interesting case of double standards, he was barred from the Ft. Riley baseball team because of his color but asked to join the football team because of his All-American college status. He declined the invitation after learning that he would not be permitted to play against the University of Missouri, which refused to take the field against an opponent with a black player. Robinson was quickly labeled a troublemaker and transferred to Camp Hood, Texas, which was notorious for its Jim Crow regulations. In July 1944, when Jackie refused to move to the rear of a military bus, he was charged with insubordination and court-martialed. But the case against him was weak—the army had recently issued orders against such segregation—and a good lawyer won his acquittal.
12
Although he received an honorable discharge in November 1944, Robinson’s time in the military had left him feeling vulnerable and uncertain about the future.