Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game (37 page)

There was no work stoppage by the Cardinal players when Robinson made his first appearance at Sportsman’s Park. Still, many people in the baseball world assumed that there had in fact been discussions of a strike and that Slaughter and Cardinal center fielder Terry Moore, Slaughter’s best friend on the club, were the ones who had tried to organize it. “Tradition had it then, and still has it,” said Dodger broadcaster Red Barber in a 1982 book, “that Enos Slaughter led the Cardinals in their threatened revolt against Robinson.”

Slaughter dismissed those allegations as “just a lot of baloney.” He said he was interested only in playing baseball—not registering social opinions. “I ain’t never opened my mouth,” he later explained. “It was never brought up in no shape, form or fashion that the Cardinals were going on strike.” (“I don’t think,” said his daughter Gaye many years later, “that my father would have known what a strike was.”)

Terry Moore had a similar reaction. In 1994, he retained an attorney when he learned of a book proposing to say that he and Slaughter had “tried to persuade their Cardinal teammates to go on strike in May 1947 to protest Jackie Robinson’s admittance to the National League.” Moore’s attorney advised the publisher that, in his client’s view, the allegation was “an out-and-out falsehood.”

The recollections of other Cardinal players supported the reactions of Slaughter and Moore. Stan Musial, the team’s All-Star first baseman, acknowledged that he heard talk that was “rough and racial” but that the story of the planned strike “was made up.” “The facts are,” added second baseman Red Schoendienst, “that nothing was said with the Cardinals about going on strike.”

Similar sentiments were expressed by Chuck Diering, a rookie outfielder with the team in 1947. “I never heard of anything like that talked among the team members,” he told me many years later. Marty Marion, the Cardinal shortstop (and also the National League player representative at the time), agreed, saying that “there was nothing about going on strike.” When asked about the possible roles of Slaughter and Moore in the rumored strike, Marion was equally assertive. “That is a mistake,” he told me. “I don’t care where you got your information from. I was on the team.”

In an autobiography published many years later, Ford Frick confirmed that
The New York Herald Tribune
’s story was overblown, that Breadon himself had told Frick that the rumored strike was merely “a tempest in a teapot,” and that no telegram had been sent by the commissioner’s office to the Cardinal players. Frick quoted Breadon as later acknowledging that “a few of the players were upset and were popping off a bit, but they really didn’t mean it. Just letting off a little steam.” For his part, Frick said that “the Cardinals were unfortunately marked publicly as the great dissenters when, in reality, their players adjusted more quickly than many of the other players.”

There are some who nonetheless maintain that the strike was in fact discussed. Perhaps it was so. But Slaughter was never presented with any information during his lifetime that contradicted his statements concerning a strike to protest Robinson’s appearance at Sportsman’s Park. Still, rumors of that strike—and Slaughter’s alleged leadership role in it—no doubt helped to fuel a furor when Slaughter spiked Robinson in a close game at Brooklyn the following August.

It happened in the eleventh inning with the score tied at 1-1. The Cardinal outfielder was running hard down the first-base line after hitting a ground ball that was fielded by Robinson. Everyone agreed that Slaughter’s spikes touched some part of Robinson’s right leg when he reached the bag, but there was disagreement about the details. Dodger pitcher Rex Barney, who watched events unfold from the dugout, said that Slaughter “was out by ten feet” but that “he jumped, not on Jackie’s foot, but up on the thigh of his leg, and he cut him.” Ralph Branca, who was pitching the game, recalled something different, saying that “Enos stepped on his leg just below the calf” but that Robinson was not “cut badly.” Robinson himself said that “Slaughter deliberately went for my leg instead of the base and spiked me rather severely.” In his
New York Times
story the following day, Roscoe McGowen reported that “Slaughter’s foot landed on Robinson’s right foot, which was not on the bag but against it. Jackie hopped around a minute or so and Doc Wendler came out, but Robbie stayed in the game, apparently not seriously hurt.”

Whatever the details, it was not unreasonable for Robinson and his teammates to assume that Slaughter’s action was a manifestation of racism. After all, the Cardinal outfielder was from North Carolina, a state where segregation was still an accepted part of community life and where blacks were commonly referred to as “niggers” (a reference which sometimes sprinkled Slaughter’s speech as well). Beyond that, fresh in the team’s memory was the vile vituperation that Robinson had encountered—first from his own teammates in spring training and then from almost every team the Dodgers encountered in their drive to win the National League pennant.

Still, some of those who witnessed the incident were unsure of Slaughter’s motivation. “My guess,” said Red Barber in 1982, “is that if he had been asked if he cut Robinson deliberately, he would have spit tobacco juice and answered two words in that harsh voice of his that rasped and grated, ‘Hell, no.’” Barber knew what he was talking about. Five years later, a seventy-one-year-old Enos Slaughter was asked about the incident in an interview for the Hall of Fame. “Whoever said I intentionally stepped on Jackie Robinson,” he growled, “I’ll look them in the eye and call them a son of a bitch, and I don’t give a goddamn. If he wants to fight, I’ll knock him on his ass right today.”

The denial was rooted in Slaughter’s approach to the game. He was a hard-nosed ballplayer who would sacrifice his own welfare for the good of the team—even if it meant spiking an opposing white player (which he had done on many previous occasions). Indeed, a
Saturday Evening Post
article in May 1947—three months before the Robinson incident—highlighted Slaughter’s win-at-all-costs approach. “Slaughter, following always his play-to-win code, doesn’t spend much time reflecting on ethical values,” the article reported. “He is one of the few present-day exponents of that rowdy game which is wistfully recalled by some of the old-timers.” Slaughter’s base running received particular attention. “Far from the fastest man on the paths,” said the article, “he is still the game’s most feared base runner.”

From Slaughter’s perspective, the incident with Robinson was nothing more than a reflection of that competitive zeal. The Cardinal outfielder claimed that Robinson, a converted shortstop who was still a novice at playing first, had his right foot on the bag (not on the side of the bag) when he took the throw and that Enos had every right to do whatever he could do to break up the play—even if it meant planting his spikes on Robinson’s foot. In Slaughter’s view, the base paths belonged to the runner, and Robinson had to suffer the consequences if he was even slightly out of position. (“I don’t care if my mother had been out there,” he later told his daughters. “I would have run
her
over.”)

Of course, many eyewitnesses took issue with Slaughter’s claim that Robinson was out of position, but there would be other incidents to suggest that the spiking was nothing more than a reflection of Slaughter’s excessive zeal. A few years later, he narrowly missed stepping on the foot of Monte Irvin, another black player who was the New York Giants’ first baseman, as he was running out a ground ball. “Watch your feet,” Slaughter yelled to Irvin. “I’m still catching hell for stepping on Robinson.” On another occasion in 1949, the North Carolina native spiked Dodger first baseman Gil Hodges as he ran out a bunt, causing Dodger manager Burt Shotton to say that Slaughter was “a dirty player.” And then there was the ground ball that Joe DiMaggio hit in the 1947 World Series. As Roger Kahn reported in one of his baseball books, Robinson was “covering first awkwardly,” and the miscue was not overlooked by DiMaggio as he charged down the first-base line. “I could have stepped on his heel,” the Yankee center fielder later said. “Play hard. That was my way. But if I did, it could have been a fight and then it would have been the niggers against the dagos, and I didn’t want that.” It may be that Slaughter, unlike DiMaggio, was more focused on winning the game than worrying about the social consequences of his aggression.

There was, of course, no way to verify Slaughter’s actual thoughts as he ran down the first-base line in that 1947 game. Still, many players and writers continued to believe that a man with Slaughter’s Southern background had to have been motivated by racially discriminatory motives. Word spread after Slaughter retired that the spiking incident, coupled with his reported involvement in the Cardinal strike, explained his failure to be elected to the Baseball National Hall of Fame despite a statistical record that compared favorably with many other outfielders who had received the honor. And then—after Slaughter was finally elected into the Hall of Fame by the Veterans’ Committee—the controversy flared again in 1994 with the broadcast of Ken Burns’ celebrated documentary on baseball.

One of the segments focused on the abuse Robinson had endured in his rookie year. According to the documentary, “the most serious incident” occurred in a game against the Cardinals: “Enos ‘Country’ Slaughter, although out at first by at least ten feet, nonetheless jumped into the air and deliberately laid open Robinson’s thigh with his spikes.” The dramatic description appeared to mirror Rex Barney’s recollection but differed from the observations of other eyewitnesses. But the details were—in one respect—irrelevant. The allegation was racial abuse, and it really mattered not whether Robinson was cut in the thigh, by his heel, or on his foot. Whatever the damage, it was—or so it was said—an intentional infliction of physical harm motivated by racial bias.

Then living in retirement on his farm in Roxboro, the seventy-eight-year-old Slaughter was not pleased when he learned of the statement in the Burns documentary. And he was not one to sit idly by while others accepted as truth something he believed to be inaccurate. As Burns remembered, Slaughter pursued him “relentlessly” in search of a retraction. The former Cardinal was particularly upset because Burns had never contacted him to get his side of the story.

Burns first learned of Slaughter’s pursuit at a White House dinner that included many former baseball players. During the dinner, one Hall of Fame veteran warned Burns that Slaughter “was after him.” Burns was saddened by the disclosure. From his perspective, there was not much, if anything, he could do. He was a film producer—not an investigative journalist. He did, of course, have a research staff to review books, articles, and other resources. But he did not interview many former baseball players for the documentary. “I wanted writers and historians to provide commentary,” he later explained to me. So his failure to contact Slaughter was not an inadvertent omission but a reflection of Burns’ artistic approach.

In retrospect, it may not have made a difference. Burns knew, of course, that it was “impossible to know to a certainty” what was in Slaughter’s mind at the time of the Robinson incident in 1947. But he rechecked his sources after he first learned of Slaughter’s inquiry and found documentation to support the statement in the broadcast. Still, he said that he was prepared to make changes in the documentary if there was proof of error—but Slaughter obviously could not provide any objective proof of his motivations at the time. The statement in the Burns film was not changed and remained a source of frustration to the North Carolina native for the rest of his life.

However much he may have later resented the description in Ken Burns’ documentary, the spiking episode did not have any impact on Slaughter’s career on the diamond. He remained a stalwart of the Cardinal offense, continued his aggressive ways on the base paths, and played with the same drive that had brought him fame and satisfaction. (“Full of zing as a rookie,” said one sportswriter of Enos during spring training in March 1950, “eager for the game to start as though he’d never been in one before.”) Slaughter finished the 1947 season with a .294 batting average and thirteen triples, which tied him for second in the league with Stan Musial. He raised his average to .321 in 1948 and to .336 in 1949 (placing him third in the league behind Musial and Robinson, who led the league with a .342 average).

By then he had replaced Terry Moore as the team captain. It was a fitting tribute to Slaughter’s achievements on the field and the affection that he felt for the Cardinals. As he told a jammed Sportsman’s Park on a night held in his honor in 1948, “I love St. Louis as much as I think St. Louis loves me. Never played for any other team since I came into organized ball, and I hope I never do.”

For years afterward, it seemed that Slaughter would get his wish of remaining in St. Louis for his entire career. The Cardinals rewarded his 1949 performance with a $25,000 salary for the 1950 season, and, while his batting average slipped to .290 in that year, he drove in 101 runs—five more than he had in the previous season—and made the National League All-Star team for the seventh consecutive year. Unfortunately, the Cardinal management was not impressed. His 1950 record was not as good as his 1949 record, and so they cut his salary to $20,000.

In retrospect, it may have seemed like the right decision. An assortment of injuries and ailments—the flu, a broken finger, and then a mysterious rash on the lower part of his body that made it “murder to put on the uniform and take it off”—resulted in a 1951 season record that was less than satisfactory: a .281 batting average in 123 games with only four home runs and sixty-four runs batted in. But there was cause for hope. In the last thirty-two games of the season he batted .330 and was credited by manager Marty Marion as one of reasons for the Cardinals’ ability to win twenty-three of those games and pull themselves into third place.

Not surprisingly, the thirty-five-year-old Slaughter scoffed at any suggestion that he was nearing the end of his career. “The old kid is far from through,” he told one sportswriter shortly after the season ended. “Just wait and see.” And see they did. The unyielding drive to succeed paid dividends for the longtime Cardinal in the 1952 season. He raised his batting average to .300 in 140 games, hit twelve triples (second in the league), and drove in 101 runs (fifth in the league). The improved performance did not escape notice in baseball circles, and the Associated Press chose the Cardinal right fielder as “the comeback of the year.”