Rickey and Robinson (21 page)

Sidney Heard would sit with his childhood friend on the stoop in the California evenings and muse about old times and learn about the people in Brooklyn and what Ebbets Field was like. “Jack did a lot of talking about Rickey. He used to tell us how he loved Branch Rickey; he used to tell us how Branch Rickey was the only father he ever remembered.”

“Jack would talk to Mother and ask her to pray for him, to pray for all of the Dodgers,” remembers Willa Mae. “And how she did. She was called the praying mother for the whole team. She went to church every Sunday and prayed. It wasn’t just Rickey and the ballplayers that helped Jack. It was the Lord working through him.

“My mother was always concerned about Jack, but she was worried about Pee Wee [Reese], too. My mother prayed for Jack, and she prayed for Pee Wee. I always prayed for Pee Wee, too.”

The family was deeply moved by an incident in Cincinnati early in Jackie’s career. The ballpark was jammed, and thousands of country people had come down from the hills of Kentucky. The atmosphere was racially charged. When the top of the first inning ended, the Dodgers took the field. Reese stopped to talk to Robinson and placed his right arm around the black man’s shoulder. The gesture triggered absolute silence in the stands.

Much has been made of that incident as the one that symbolized the Reese-Robinson friendship. Much has been made of the gesture of the white arm on the black shoulder. Reese today claims he does not even remember doing anything. “I put myself in Jackie’s shoes,” says Reese. “I think of what it must have been like for him. I think of myself trying to make it in an all-black league. I know I couldn’t have done it. I remember people in the stands calling Robinson a watermelon-eater. I never went up to get anybody for saying that because Jackie Robinson could take care of himself. I know he always talked a lot about my putting my arm around his shoulder in Cincinnati, but I don’t even remember doing it.”

Rachel Robinson admits she is as subject to the myths that had developed as anyone else. Like Reese, she intimates that the media and the public at the time sought to come up with symbols that fit their own needs. “Pee Wee was a good working colleague, a good team man,” she says. “He was able to put aside the racial prejudice that allegedly was in his family. We were friendly with the Reeses, the Hodgeses, the Erskines, the black players and their families, especially.”

On the playing field, Robinson was a part of it all. Off the field, those who knew him saw him as a complicated man, set apart from his colleagues. “There was respect, but also a lot of ambivalence in his relationship with the other blacks on the Dodgers,” Irving Rudd recalls. “They were not home-and-home visitors.”

For the Robinsons, home at the start was the tiny spot at the McAlpin Hotel in Manhattan, then an apartment at Bainbridge Street in Brooklyn. As the Robinson family grew, their need for space grew. The Robinsons moved from their tiny apartment to 5224 Tilden Avenue in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, not too far from Ebbets Field. A daughter, Sharon, was born on January 13, 1950, and on May 14, 1952, a second son, David, was born. There was another move to a larger house on 177th Street in St. Albans, Queens. Some of the Robinsons’ neighbors were Roy Campanella, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie.

While Robinson may not have been much of a socializer and while he may have had his differences with some of the black players on the Dodgers, he made a difference in their careers and their lives. “The drunks at Toots Shor would talk about stand-up guys,” Irving Rudd recalls. “What they meant was that if you stood a guy up against the bar and he didn’t fall down, he was a stand-up guy. But Robinson really was a stand-up guy. What a firm friend to have.”

“I was pitching one day in Pittsburgh,” recalls Don Newcombe. “I had an eleven-run lead. I let up a little and loaded the bases. Ralph Kiner was coming up. Jackie came over from second base to talk to me. ‘If you don’t want to pitch,’ he shouted, ‘go back to the hotel. Get the heck out of here.’ I got so mad I struck out Kiner and got out of the inning. The next day Jackie told me, ‘The only time you pitch good is when you get mad. That’s why I said what I did. From now on I’m going to keep you mad.’ And when- ever I needed it, he got on me.”

Robinson used the opposite approach with Joe Black. “It was the first time I ever pitched in St. Louis,” recalls Black. “Stan Musial was at bat. A voice in the Cardinal dugout called out, ‘Stan, you shouldn’t have any trouble seeing that white ball against that black background.’ I was furious. Robinson called time. ‘I know you want to punch that guy in the mouth,’ he said. ‘Forget it. Pitch.’ That calmed me down. I got Stan out and pitched a good game. Later Stan apologized for what his teammate had said.”

Robinson felt an obligation to all his teammates, the white players as well as the blacks, the average ones as well as the stars. “I wasn’t a star when I pitched for the Dodgers,” recalls Ed Roebuck, “and they had so many stars on that team that I was almost in awe of them. But Jackie—who
was
the Brooklyn Dodgers—made me feel more at home. He’d come out to the mound. He knew how I felt. ‘C’mon, Ed,’ he would say. ‘You can do it. You can pitch up here. We all know you can.’”

Robinson also felt an obligation to all black players, not just his teammates. Even Willie Mays sometimes received advice. “Jackie would call me up at night at home and give me little tips, how to get the jump on certain pitchers, but not the Dodgers,” explained Mays. Of course, Robinson’s concern for the young Mays didn’t get in the way of his competitive drive. Once he into the wall at Ebbets Field going after a line drive and collapsed on the dirt warning track. “The next thing I knew,” recalled Mays, “Jackie was out there, turning me over, checking to see if the ball had dropped out of my glove.”

In 1951, the Giants, propelled by the twenty-year-old Willie Mays, and the Dodgers, powered by thirty-two-yearold Jackie Robinson, battled through 53 games of the 54- game schedule. On the final day of the season, the two teams were tied for first place. It was deja vu for Brooklyn. Knocked out of the pennant by the Phillies on the last day of the 1950 season, the Dodgers were again pitted against Philadelphia on the final day of the 1951 season. “What happened on that day,” Rachel recalls, “always ranked as one of Jack’s biggest thrills in baseball.”

In the seventh inning of their game, the Dodgers received the news that the Giants, behind Larry Jansen, had nipped Warren Spahn and the Braves, 3-2. It was the seventh straight win for the Giants, and clinched at least a tie for the pennant.

Stan Lomax went into the Giant dressing room anxious to “get something on tape for my radio show, to get one or two of the Giants to say We won it all; we won the pennant.’ They would not say anything. One of them explained, ‘The Dodgers are still playing in Philadelphia—Robinson is there—anything can happen.’”

The Dodgers scored three times in the eighth inning to tie up their game, 8-8. More than thirty-one thousand watched the action play out as darkness descended over Philadelphia. Sunday blue laws prohibited them from turning on the lights.

In the bottom of the twelfth inning, with the score still tied, Eddie Waitkus of the Phillies slammed a low liner over second base. Robinson, moving with the crack of the bat, made a lunging, bellyfl.opping grab of the drive to stave off the threat. Jackie’s elbows were jammed into his chest and he lost consciousness for a few moments, but he held on to the ball. Another player at that point would have left the game, but Robinson, shaken and smarting, stayed.

“I was on third base,” remembers Robin Roberts, who was pitching against the Dodgers that day. “Robinson dove for the ball. I still think that he trapped the ball. I touched home and thought the game was over, but I was told by the umpire that Jackie had caught the ball. Years later I met Robinson at a dinner and asked him if he really caught the ball. He smiled and asked me, ‘What’d the umpire say?’”

In the top of the fourteenth inning, with the score still tied, Robinson came to bat. There were two out. He slammed Roberts’s pitch into the upper left-field stands for a home run. Deliriously happy, his Dodger teammates hoisted him onto their shoulders. The game-saving catch of the Waitkus liner and the game-winning home run by number 42 set the stage for the second playoff in National League history. Robinson, who had batted .338 and recorded his fifth straight year of thirty or more doubles, had been a Montreal Royal when Brooklyn and St. Louis met in the first playoff in 1946.

The Giants and Dodgers split the first two games of the playoff. After seven innings of the third and final game, the score was tied, 1-1. Newcombe announced in the Brooklyn dugout that he was too exhausted to continue. “We’re all tired,” Robinson exploded at the huge pitcher. “You’ve got two more innings to go-six outs. You just go out there and pitch!”

The Dodgers scored three times in the top of the eighth inning. Robinson’s fury seemed to spur Newcombe on. He struck out the side in the bottom of the eighth inning, but he faltered in the ninth. The Giants scored once. With runners on second and third base, Newcombe exited and Ralph Branca came in to relieve.

On the job, in schoolrooms, in prisons, on car radios, and in candy stores, New York City was plugged into the war between the two historic rivals, the Jints and the Bums.

The precise moment was 3:58P.M., October 3, 1951. Bobby Thomson smashed a home run over the wall in left field, less than 315 feet from home plate. Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” gave the Giants a stunning comefrom-behind pennant victory. An instant before, the huge Polo Grounds crowd had been mesmerized by Branca pitching to Thomson. Now thousands were climbing out onto the playing field. “Holy hell broke loose all over,” recalls former Giant Wes Westrum. Only Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn defenders in the field remained at his position. Hands on hips, a scowl on his face, he waited and watched to make sure that Thomson, trotting out the home run, touched every base. “That was so characteristic of Jack,” observes Rachel Robinson. “It was typical of his need to win.”

Even when Robinson tried to relax, his competitive instinct asserted itself. Irving Rudd recalls one winter weekend in 1954 spent with Robinson. “My wife Gertrude and I and Jackie and Rachel were up in Grossinger’s Hotel in the Catskills,” he remembers. ‘We were all near the ice-skating house, where there was also a toboggan ride.

“‘Hey, Jack,’ I said, ‘Let’s hit the toboggan!’

“He gives me a withering look. ‘Who you racing against?’ he asks. ‘You skate?’

“‘Not very well.’

“‘C’mon,’ he says, ‘let’s go skating anyway.’

“I said okay, and we all go to the ice house. We put skates on. The wives go to the rail to watch. He goes out on the ice and proceeds to lose his balance and fall flat on his back. GeeeezI The image of [Walter] O’Malley came into my head. I just blew my job. He fractured something, and why didn’t I stop him from skating? He gets up . . . brushes himself off.

“‘C’mon, Irv, let’s race!’ He gives me that big smile.

“So the two of us go like two drunks around the rink at Grossinger’s. He’s flopping on his knees, I’m sliding on my ass. We get up and keep going and flopping and going, and he beats me by five yards.

“‘Let’s do it again,’ he says.

“Around we go. This time he beats me by about twenty yards.

“‘One more time,’ he says.

“One more time we go. By the third time around he is really skating. He’s such a natural, gifted athlete, he’s skating like a guy who has been at it for weeks. It’s no contest. He almost lapped the field on me . . . that was it. Now there’s a crowd around me and they’re cheering. He puts his arms around me. He wasn’t a demonstrative man. ‘Irv,’ he says, ‘am I glad you were here this weekend. I had to beat someone before I went home!’”

Chapter Twelve

Winding Down

On November 6, 1950, after having carefully evaluated all employment possibilities with his circle of loyalists and his family, Rickey moved on to Pittsburgh. “He saw it as a challenge,” explains Mal Goode. “It was a last-place team, and the idea of getting lots of kids and building a third National League power was very appealing to him.”

Installed as executive vice-president and general manager of the Pirates by his old college friend John Galbreath, Rickey was granted total freedom to do as he wished to rejuvenate the hapless team.

“Rickey’s Boys” followed him to the new challenge. George Sisler came along to head the “Buc’s” scouting department. Ironically, it was George’s son, Dick, who had hammered a home run on the last day of the 1950 season to defeat the Dodgers and give the Phillies the pennant.

Branch Rickey, Jr., was placed in charge of the Pirate farm system. Milt Stock and Clyde Sukeforth, former Brooklyn coaches, came over to help. Bob Cobb, owner of the Hollywood team in the Pacific Coast League, ended his working agreement with the Dodgers. “I don’t know Mr. Rickey’s plans,” Cobb said when Rickey was removed as Brooklyn general manager, “or even if he’s continuing in the baseball business. I’m going to follow him even if he goes into the laundry business. I’ll fill the Hollywood park with washing machines and get a working agreement with him. I’m a Rickey man to the finish.”

The sixty-nine-year-old Rickey sold his farm in Chesterton, Maryland, along with its duck blinds and its pits for shooting wild geese. Across the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh, in Fox Chapel Township, he purchased one hundred acres with a large house. He contracted for the building of a combination stable and barn to house ponies for his grandchildren. With his usual thoroughness, he sent scouts east, west, north, and south to focus on new sources of talent. The commitment was made to spend money and to go after black and Hispanic youths.

One of his first actions was to claim a player from the Brooklyn Dodger farm system whom Rickey had signed to a complicated minor-league bonus arrangement. The Dodgers tried to hide him in the low minors, but Rickey knew all about him and claimed him for a sum of $8,000. His name was Roberto Clemente. He would join the Pirates in 1955 and star in their outfield until his tragic death in 1972.

The entire Pittsburgh farm system was overhauled. Sweeping changes were made in the Pirate roster. Veteran players were discarded, and a brigade of “bonus babies” began to take their place. Rickey described the bonus system as insanity, but realized that the only way to build the Pittsburgh team was from the ground up. His five-year plan, begun in 1951, was disrupted by the Korean War. High school and college youths that he had signed were taken into the armed forces. “Things cannot be considered normal,” he said, “and it will not be possible to make the progress desired until our boys start to come out of the service as fast as they are now going in.” At one point, 174 players in the Pittsburgh organization were in the armed forces.

Rickey looked on with mixed emotions as the 1952 Dodgers won 96 games and the National League pennant. They followed this by winning 105 games and another pennant in 1953. Their star-studded lineup was Rickey’s legacy: Pee Wee Reese, Billy Cox, Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Carl Furillo, Roy Campanella, Preacher Roe, Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine. Robinson batted over .300 both seasons; a second baseman in 1952, he switched to left field in 1953 with· the arrival of Junior Gilliam, another Rickey product.

Proud of the Dodger team he had built, Rickey scuffled about attempting to improve the Pirates. He had very little to work with; they had the home-run-hitting Ralph Kiner, but not much else. By 1952, Rickey’s spending had exceeded the profits of the Pirates. John Galbreath’s private funds were used to make up the deficit. Other stockholders refused to contribute. In spring training that year, Rickey sent Galbreath a letter citing twenty reasons why Ralph Kiner should be traded. “This· relates only to his baseball value,” the Mahatma said, “and certainly not to his personality. He is one of the nicest boys I’ve ever met, but Ralph satisfies my requirements in only one respect—as a home run hitter. To me, that isn’t enough.”

Kiner, today a broadcaster for the New York Mets, recalls the first time he met Branch Rickey in contract negotiations, in 1952. “He was extremely difficult. There was a saying that he had all the money and all the ballplayers and he never let the two get together.”

Kiner was the 1952 National League home run leader with thirty-seven. “Rickey offered me a twenty-five percent cut in salary,” the affable Kiner recalls. “That was the maximum cut allowed at the time. I held out for two weeks, and I ended up getting a shade more than he first offered. He more or less told me to take it or leave it. . . . I couldn’t have left it,” jokes Kiner. “I would have had to go to work for a living.”

The 1952 Pirates finished in last place, fifty-four and a half games behind the Dodgers. Kiner led the league in home runs for the seventh straight season. The Braves offered Rickey seven players and $150,000 for Kiner. Rickey was not permitted to make the trade. ‘’You’ve got to win the pennant without Kiner or contend for it with him,” a Pittsburgh official warned Rickey. ‘’You can’t trade him now.” Kiner was an institution at Forbes Field. Even when the Bucs were hopelessly out of a game, fans would linger just to see Kiner bat one more time, hoping to see him hit one more home run.

With the franchise losing both games and money, Rickey borrowed $200,000 against future earnings and plowed it back into Pittsburgh stock. “It’s not a good buy now,” he said, “but it may be if I work hard enough. I’ve just got to work to make it worth more.” Investment in the future was a way of life for Rickey. He had organized a corporation for the production of fiberglass batting helmets, the American Baseball Cap Company, and involved friends and relatives in the venture. All of them lost money that first year of 1952, but five years later the helmet was standard equipment in the major leagues. Three hundred thousand helmets were produced in 1957, and the corporation made a substantial profit.

In 1953, the man who had traded Dizzy Dean and Rogers Hornsby and Dixie Walker traded Ralph Kiner. The slugging outfielder moved on to the Cubs, along with catcher Joe Garagiola, pitcher Howie Pollet, and infielder George Metkovitch. The Bucs received pitcher Bob Schultz, catcher Toby Atwell, first baseman Preston Ward, infielder Gene Freese, outfielders Gene Hermanski and Bob Addis, and $100,000.

“It was a typical Branch Rickey operation,” notes Kiner. “I found out about the trade from manager Fred Haney. In fact, we took batting practice in Pittsburgh Pirate uniforms and the trade was consummated after batting practice. We moved next door to the Chicago Cub dressing room in Forbes Field and changed uniforms. I don’t think I ever talked to Branch Rickey after that.”

Joe Garagiola remembers the trade with a certain degree of humor. The wisecracking announcer recalled that a couple of days before the trade Rickey greeted him on the playing field: “We’ve got big plans for you, Joe, big plans.”

With Ralph Kiner gone, and no real rooting interest left, attendance at Forbes Field dropped below six hundred thousand for the first time in a decade. The I 953 Pirates scored the fewest runs of any team in the league, recorded the lowest team batting average, and gave up more than five runs a game.

Frustrated by the ineptitude of the Pirates, and not totally enamored with manager Fred Haney, Rickey looked over to the Brooklyn organization for a new pilot. He attempted to obtain Pee Wee Reese, but was told the little shortstop was not available. His next choice was Walter Alston, a manager in the Dodger farm system for thirteen seasons, but O’Malley had plans of his own for the native of Darrtown, Ohio.

When the 1953 season ended, Charlie Dressen, who had replaced Burt Shotton as Dodger manager, demanded a twoyear contract. He argued that he had won two straight pennants, 298 games in three seasons, that Durocher had just signed a three-year contract with the Giants and that his record was better than Durocher’s.

O’Malley was not impressed with Dressen’s arguments for job security. In Alston, the man Rickey had praised so highly, he found a man who would be content with a oneyear contract. He replaced Dressen with Alston, signing him to the first of twenty-three consecutive one-year contracts to manage the Dodgers.

The dour, taciturn Alston was a bland counterpoint to the effervescent Dressen, the man they called “Jolly Cholly.” Alston was an O’Malley man; Dressen was openly for Jackie Robinson. “Give me nine guys like Jackie Robinson,” he had said, “and I’d never lose.”

With Rickey struggling at Pittsburgh and with Dressen gone, Robinson became involved in contentious coexistence with the two Walters, neither of whom was his type of man.

There were also many differences of opinion between Robinson and Buzzy Bavasi, who had taken over most of Rickey’s duties. Bavasi had his own ideas about how to motivate his players. “One night Bavasi came into the Dodger dugout,” recalls Irving Rudd, “and he started to berate the players as a whole. He called them a bunch of ingrates, a bunch of dogs, etc. Robinson was livid. ‘I hope you’re smiling when you say that, Buzzy,’ he said. Bavasi clammed up, but you could see the tension and the friction between the two of them.”

The friction between Alston and Robinson was even more evident. In a 1954 game, Duke Snider pounded the ball into the left-field stands as the Dodgers played the Cubs at Wrigley Field. The ball came back onto the field. Umpire Bill Stewart ruled that the ball had hit the wall and awarded Snider a double. Robinson thought a fan had touched the ball and that Snider should have been given a home run. Screaming and in a rage, Robinson raced out of the Dodger dugout to protest. Alston stood near the third-base coach’s box, hands on hips, staring at Robinson. Number 42’s rhubarb with Stewart lasted several minutes, but the umpire would not change his decision. Robinson went back to the dugout.

Later a teammate told Robinson that Alston had expressed anger at what he called “Jackie’s temper tantrum.”

“The team might be moving somewhere,” snapped Robinson, “if Alston had not been standing on third base like a wooden Indian. The run meant something in a close game like that, so whether or not I was right or wrong, it paid to protest to the umpire . . . but not according to Alston. What kind of a manager is that?”

The following day a newspaper photo revealed that Robinson had been correct. A fan had touched the ball. The “wooden Indian” comments also appeared in the newspapers. The Robinson-Alston rift widened.

In spring training, and throughout the exhibition season in 1955, Robinson rode the Dodger bench. Alston was evasive about his plans for number 42. Robinson was frustrated. He had batted .311 in 1954, alternating between third base and the outfield. He went to
New York Daily News
reporter Dick Young and made inquiries about Alston’s plans. Robinson’s query proved to be a mistake. Alston heard about it.

At a team meeting, Alston went into a long tirade about cowardly players who went to the press. Robinson shouted that if there was better communication between Alston and his players there would be need to go to outside sources.

Alston was enraged. Both men began to shout at each other. They were ready to fight and would have fought had it not been for Gil Hodges. The muscular Dodger first baseman seized Jackie’s arms. “Cool down, buddy,” he said. “It’s not worth fighting about. Take it out on the other teams.”

It was very hard for Robinson to take it out on the opposition in 1955. It was a season of nagging injuries, reduced playing time, and acrimonious exchanges with Alston and O’Malley. It was a year of discontent and frustration that saw his batting average drop to .256.

The slogan of Brooklyn fans after each World Series defeat by the New York Yankees had always been “Wait ‘Till Next Year.” The slogan was becoming a way of life for the fans of “Dem Bums,” and for Robinson; it was a nettling, unsettling frustration to lose year after year to the Yankees. Robinson’s Dodgers were defeated by the Bronx Bombers in 1947, 1949, 1952, and 1953.

As the Yankees and Dodgers squared off once again in the 1955 World Series, “this year” it seemed the Brooks had the talent to prevail. They had stolen more bases, scored more runs, and hit more home runs than any other team in the National League in 1955: they had the highest team batting average and the top slugging percentage; their pitching staff had the most saves, the most strikeouts, and the best earned-run average. Snider, Hodges, and Campanella each drove in more than a hundred runs. Snider, Furillo, and Campanella each batted over .300. The talent was there, but so was the Yankee hex.

Robinson missed almost one-third of the Dodgers’ games in I 955, had just sixteen extra-base hits, drove in only thirtysix runs. Fans and sportswriters did not view him as much of a factor in the World Series. He was dubbed “the old gray fat man,” by some writers, for his gray hair and the paunch about his middle. His legs ached from the all the years of football and baseball, all.the turns and tumbles and twists. His exceptional speed belonged to memory.

Whitey Ford opposed Don Newcombe in the first game of the World Series onSeptember 28, 1955· In the top of the eighth inning, the Yankees were ahead, 6-4. There were two men out. Robinson was the runner at third base. His speed may have belonged to memory, but he still had desire. He stole home l “I took off and didn’t care whether I made it or not,” Robinson said later. “I was tired of waiting.” The Yankees won the game 6-5, but the Dodgers were given a huge psychological lift by Robinson’s steal of home.

Her brother’s dramatics in that first game of the 1955 Series will always remain as Willa Mae Walker’s greatest baseball thrill. “Yogi [Berra] always bragged about what Jack couldn’t do against him. He said, ‘Nobody, not even Jackie Robinson, will steal home on me.’ So Jackie tried it. Years later the two got together and Yogi said he never touched Jackie at home plate, and Jackie said he never touched home plate:”

The Yankees swept the second game at Yankee Stadium, and once again it looked as if the Dodgers would have to “wait ‘till next year.”