Rickey & Robinson (29 page)

After a travel day, the teams met again before a noisy sellout crowd at Ebbets Field. The Cards went with right-hander Murry Dickson, who threw curves, changeups, sliders and knucklers. The
Dodgers started a journeyman left-hander, Joe Hatten. The Dodgers reached Dickson for a run in the first inning, but the Cards came back with 2 in the second and 3 more in the fifth. They won handily, 8 to 4 (and would go on to defeat the Boston Red Sox in the World Series).

The Dodgers’ performance in the playoff was not terrible. It was simply f lat. Suppose Rickey had promoted Jackie Robinson and brought into the major-league playoff series this arrow of dark fire. Would Jack have ignited the dormant Dodgers? I like to think so. Rickey did not like to think so. In truth, no one can say.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation
.

That is not Branch Rickey I am quoting, but someone else prominent in the annals of St. Louis history.

T. S. Eliot, who was born there in 1888.

By all accounts the crowd that assembled in Parkway Field in Louisville on September 28, 1946, was ugly. Some were surprised there was any crowd at all.

When it became increasingly likely that the Royals, including Robinson, were coming south to play the Colonels in the Little World Series, a vocal group plainly demanded that the series be canceled. Twenty years before, Jack Dempsey had been forced to terminate a series of exhibition bouts in the South because his sparring partner, Big Bill Tate, was a black man. One Southern newspaperman wrote: “Should Dempsey slip, the crowd would see a nigra standing over a white man. That plainly is intolerable.”

Bruce Dudley, the president of the Colonels, had opposed Montreal’s signing of Robinson, but now he kept his opposition in check. Robinson’s contract had the tacit approval of commissioner Happy Chandler, himself, as we have noted, a Kentuckian. Chandler later
claimed he sent a message to Dudley saying, “The colored boy has every right to play.” No sane minor-league executive who wanted to stay employed would dare to defy the commissioner of baseball.

A second consideration for Dudley was simply practical. The first three games were scheduled for Parkway Field and total attendance would run to at least 50,000 customers, paying for tickets, then buying ballpark hot dogs and swilling ballpark beer. In the battle, racism versus receipts, cash triumphed. As Calvin Coolidge remarked, “The business of America is business.”

The Negro section of the stands at Parkway Field had room for only 466 people. A good estimate is that 20,000 Louisville blacks wanted to buy tickets to see Robinson. Dudley refused to increase the number of seats available to blacks. He said he was afraid a large crowd of blacks inside Parkway Field would lead to a race riot.

“I knew I was going to catch hell,” Robinson said. “This was a trying time. I was segregated away from my teammates and Rachel couldn’t be with me. She developed some problems with her pregnancy and flew home to California where her mother, Zellee Isum, could help look after her. As for me, I was pretty much alone that afternoon.”

As soon as Robinson jogged onto the field, the whites booed. A number of fans chanted, “Get your black ass back to Canada.” Others shouted “watermelon eater,” “shoeshine boy” and, inevitably, “nigger.” Otey Clark, a veteran Colonels pitcher from Boscobel, Wisconsin, said, “Everything he did, they booed him. I remember our starting pitcher that day, Jim Wilson, knocked him down, and the fans cheered. Robinson didn’t seem to pay any attention to any of it, but if you cared about fair play, and I did, it made for one miserable afternoon.” That day Robinson went 0 for 5, but the Royals won, 7 to 5. The jeering continued in harsh crescendos for the next two days and the Colonels won both games. Robinson came to bat 10 times in Louisville. He made out 9 times.

Although racism was popular in Louisville, it was not universal. The
Courier-Journal
published an editorial saying that “a blight” had descended on the baseball season. “The blight,” an editorial writer observed, “was inflicted partly by demonstrations of prejudice against Montreal’s fine second baseman. A more deeply bitter taste, which may last a long time, came of the management’s policies toward Negro patrons.” The paper also ran a letter signed by “A Group of Fort Knox GIs.” They wrote, with more passion than clarity, “Louisville has now emerged as a city of obnoxious futility.”

One for 10 or 10 for 10, Robinson was changing the times.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

IT HAD BEEN SNOWING in the province of Quebec. That happens in Montreal, a great winter carnival of a town, in September and it also happens in April. According to one of my Canadian friends, “The sort of storm that totally shuts down Washington, DC, is what up here we call a dusting.”

The Royals returned to their home ballpark, Delorimier Downs on East Ontario Street, and found it choked under seven inches of snow. It had also been laid out for football. Plows cleared the playing area, but with football yard markers chalked along the base paths, the place had a schizophrenic split-sport appearance. Baseball, however, is decidedly malleable. You can play on cement, dirt, plastic grass and even in an arena marked for football. (To give old Delorimier Downs its due, before it was demolished in 1971—11 years after the wrecker’s ball destroyed Ebbets Field—Delorimier had been the home field for several baseball Hall of Famers, including Roberto Clemente, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider and Don Drysdale.)

Montreal sportswriters had described the unfortunate behavior of Louisville fans in both English and French newspapers. “By this time,” the late columnist Dink Carroll told me, “Robinson was established as
a genuine local hero. People felt that if you insulted Jack you were insulting Montreal. That was one point on which the Québécois and the Anglos stood together. And the Jewish fans of Montreal felt the same way.” Someone summed up the general feeling accurately if inelegantly: “Southern hospitality, my ass. The bums in Louisville showed our guy only Southern hostility.”

Despite the snow and cold, a goodly crowd, 14,685 fans, paid their way into Delorimier on the night of October 2. They came to cheer Robinson and to hoot the Louisville Colonels. “It was something,” Al Campanis remembered. “When the announcer read off the Louisville lineup, the fans booed every single name. And face it, there were actually some pretty good fellers like Sam Mele [a Queens native] on that Louisville squad. But the fans hooted each and every one, and cheered for all of us. Jackie got a standing ovation.”

Louisville broke well and moved out, 4 to 0. Going into the ninth inning Louisville held a 5-to-3 lead. But the Royals scrambled back, playing a waiting game as right-hander Otey Clark lost his touch and walked three men. Two scored. The second and game-tying run came home in the person of Jackie Robinson.

In the bottom of the 10th inning the Royals rallied against relief pitcher Mel Deutsch. With two men on base, Nemo Leibold, the 54-year-old manager of the Colonels, chose deliberately to walk Marv Rackley and pitch to Robinson. Rackley was a decent minor-league hitter, but in retrospect Leibold’s decision suggests he was a candidate for a brain transplant. Cheered by his fans, challenged by his opponents, Robinson cracked a sharp line single into left that scored the winning run. Montreal, 6. Louisville, 5. The Little World Series was tied.

The weather moderated the next night and the crowd for Game 5 reached 17,758 on a Canadian evening that belonged to Jackie Robinson. He doubled in the first inning and scored on Tom Tatum’s single. He tripled in the seventh and scored when Lew Riggs doubled. In the eighth, with Campanis on third, Robinson dropped a bunt along the
line for a run-scoring single. The Royals won, 5 to 3, and stood within a game of the championship of the minor leagues. “I’m beginning to believe,” Dink Carroll said, “that if Robinson bunted every time he came to bat, he’d still hit .300. Is there anything that Jackie can’t do?”

Old Curt Davis was lean and long. He came from Greenfield, a small town in rural Missouri, and he long retained his backwoods manner. Some nicknamed him “Coonskin Curt.” He threw sidearm, low stuff, breaking balls and sinkers, and his forte was control. He owned the outside two inches of home plate. When you watched Curt Davis pitch, as I did many times, you saw an artist.

Because his stuff was not overpowering, Davis did not break into the major leagues until he was 30 years old. But once there he stayed around for 13 seasons and forged a distinguished career. He broke in with the Phillies, moved on to the Cubs and the Cardinals before coming to the Dodgers on June 12, 1940, in a memorable trade. The dealers were those two masters, Larry MacPhail in Brooklyn and Branch Rickey in St. Louis. The Dodgers acquired Davis and Joe Medwick, one of the great right-handed hitters of the time, in exchange for four lesser players. MacPhail tapped the Brooklyn Trust Company and clinched the deal by throwing in $125,000 borrowed from the bank. Rickey was pleased to get the cash. Most of Brooklyn was thrilled to get Medwick. “He’s the meanest, roughest guy you can imagine,” said mean, rough Leo Durocher. “He just stands up there and whales the ball—doubles, triples, homers, all over every park.”

Just six days after the trade the Cardinals came to Ebbets Field, and Bob Bowman, a rangy right-hander from West Virginia, beaned Medwick. There were no batting helmets back then and as the barely conscious Medwick was carried from the field on a stretcher, the Brooklyn crowd erupted. Billy Southworth, the Cards’ manager, pulled Bowman from the game “to avert a riot.” As Bowman walked off the field toward the visitors’ clubhouse, MacPhail jumped out of
his box and punched Bowman, knocking off the pitcher’s red Cardinal cap. Two Dodgers, coach Charlie Dressen and catcher Babe Phelps, then restrained MacPhail, who subsequently demanded that Bowman be arrested and charged with attempted murder. Authorities declined. They said that they lacked conclusive evidence. Medwick recovered quickly and returned to the lineup within three days. But he was not again quite the fearsome hitter he had been. (Within four years Bob Bowman dropped back to the minors.)

Coonskin Curt was as quiet a character as Ducky Medwick was flamboyant. During a World War II drive to donate blood to the armed services, one Dodger remarked, “Davis will give a pint of blood, if he has a pint of blood.” But he proved a durable pitcher for the Dodgers, starting as many as 32 games in a season. He twice was chosen to pitch on Opening Day and in 1941 he pitched the first game of Brooklyn’s World Series against the Yankees. Davis worked reasonably well but lost, 3 to 2.

By 1946 Davis had reached the age of 43. Time had taken its toll on his strong arm and the Dodgers sent him down to Montreal. Baseball salaries were modest back then and pitchers kept playing ball as long as they could “to keep the pork chops coming to the table.”

Clay Hopper knew Rickey’s credo—young position players and veteran pitchers—and he sent old Coonskin Curt to pitch Game 6. The largest crowd in the history of Delorimier, 19,171, piled in and the middle-aged hillbilly did not disappoint. Robinson cracked out two hits and scored the final run and Davis shut out the Colonels, 2 to 0. In the ninth, with Louisville threatening, Robinson ranged far to his right to start a game-saving double play.

Champions now, the Royals fled to the safety of their dressing room. A joyous crowd overran police and ushers and crowded onto the field. They chanted and they sang,
Il a gagné ses épaulettes
(“He won his bars”).

When Clay Hopper appeared in a dugout, the crowd lifted him shoulder high and carted him around the field. Davis appeared. The crowd carted him around as well. Robinson, happy but uncertain, remained in the locker room. The fans chanted his name over and over.
Roh-been-son Roh-been-son
. Finally a delegation of ushers came into the clubhouse and asked Jack please to make an appearance. “People won’t leave until they see you and until they leave we can’t close up the ballpark. The season’s over. We want to go home.”

Finally Robinson emerged. “There came a demonstration seldom seen here,” wrote Sam Maltin. “The crowd was hugging Jack and kissing him. He tried to explain he had to catch a plane. They wouldn’t listen. They refused to hear him.”

Finally Jack was able to burst free. He ran through an exit and down a street to a car that would carry him off. The crowd ran after him, shouting and cheering breathlessly.

As Robinson ran, he began to weep. “I’ll tell you what made me cry,” he told me. “I realized here was a big white crowd chasing after a lone Negro, not with lynching in their hearts, but love.”

Has there ever been a finer moment in sport?

R
ED BARBER, THE GREATEST OF DODGER broadcasters, was a formal, churchy man who seldom used profanity. But Barber summed up 1947 with expletive force. It was, he said, “the year all hell broke loose in Brooklyn.”

Back then the black community in Brooklyn was confined to an east-central section called Bedford Stuyvesant. My great-grandmother, Lillie Lazar Weill, owned a formidable four-story brownstone in “Bed Stuy,” at 702 Greene Avenue. For years I was lugged there every Thursday afternoon, when the housekeeper was off, and Nana Lillie peppered me with advice. At the age of six, was I self-occupied. Nana Lillie said, “You ain’t the only pebble on the beach.” Was I rejecting family discipline? “You dasn’t do that,” Nana Lillie warned. “Gawd will punish you.”

Unlike certain other members of my family, she was not intellectual. Her favorite song was no Schubert Lieder, but “On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine.” The book she loved most dearly was
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch
, a lightweight bestseller first published in 1901. But she was practical, living modestly, guarding her inheritance, and as she stared down at me through her pince-nez, a formidable grand dame.

Nana Lillie died at a great age in 1936 and the family put the brownstone up for sale. Ten years later, it was no longer an imposing single-family home. Like most of the other brownstones in rapidly changing Bedford Stuyvesant, it was broken into a warren of single-room-occupancy apartments. My family was long gone. Now poor blacks lived and died there. Slumlords ruled.