Rickey & Robinson (6 page)

Will fix us
,

Said Rickey, the boss . .
.

Over nine big-league seasons, Eddie Miksis would bat .236, but not even a chain of dismaying Dodgers could depress me in 1944. Moving from poetry to hyperbole, Rickey promoted at least four other infielders as “the next Pee Wee Reese.” Here are their names, the club to which Rickey sold their contracts and their lifetime big-league batting averages:

♦ Claude Corbitt, Cincinnati Reds, .243

♦ Tommy Brown, Philadelphia Phillies, .241

♦ Bob Ramazotti, Chicago Cubs, .230

♦ Bobby Morgan, Cubs, .233

Looking back, Rickey’s hustling of pseudo Reeses may seem amusing, shipping inferior players to other teams, also inferior. But as I have mentioned Rickey pocketed 15 percent of each sale and to O’Malley that fiscal leak out of the Dodger bank account was a serious matter. O’Malley had advanced from Dodger club lawyer to part owner on stock he purchased with a loan from George V. McLaughlin, president of the Brooklyn Trust Company. O’Malley, called the Big Oom, quietly fumed at what he considered Rickey’s unconscionable double-dipping. Sometime back then—there is no exact date—O’Malley began scheming to take over the Dodgers for himself.

As a young man I knew nothing of the byzantine Brooklyn front office. Youth is about hope, and I understood Rickey’s history of building
championship teams in St. Louis. So I hoped and trusted that given time he would bring a consistent winning team to my hometown, which up until then had zero history of consistent winners. While the New York ball clubs, the Yankees and the Giants, became ongoing powerhouses, success for the Dodgers had been rare and episodic. (The team was then known as the Robins after their portly, genial manager, Wilbert Robinson. The Dodger nickname became popular during the 1930s.) Only two pennants between 1900 and 1940, and after each a dismal loss in the World Series. In Game 2 of the 1916 Series, which the Boston Red Sox won in five games, a young Red Sox left-hander defeated the Dodgers, two to one, in 14 innings. His name was George Herman Ruth. During the 1920 Series, which Cleveland won handily, a Dodger pitcher named Clarence Mitchell hit into an unassisted triple play. Next time up Mitchell hit into a double play. “Two swings, five outs,” my father remarked in his droll way. “Hard to do.”

Rickey was always intensely serious about religion, and when he came to Brooklyn in 1943, he found his new house of worship within a few blocks of 215 Montague Street, the Dodger offices. That was the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, at 75 Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights, a vibrant and historic Congregational institution founded in 1847.

Henry Ward Beecher, the most prominent American pastor of the 19th century, long presided at the Plymouth Church, which became a bastion of abolitionism. (His sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
.) Abraham Lincoln twice worshiped at the Plymouth Church. It is the only church in what is now New York City that Lincoln ever attended. Beecher invited a dazzling roster to speak from his pulpit: Clara Barton, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, William Thackeray, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. But across the years Beecher remained the star. Mark Twain described his preaching style like this: “Sawing his arms in the air, howling sarcasms this way and that, discharging rockets of poetry and exploding
mines of eloquence, halting now and then to stamp his foot three times in succession to emphasize a point.”

Beecher was also given to pomposity, which led Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to compose a witty limerick:

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher

Called a hen a most elegant creature
.

The hen, pleased with that
,

Laid an egg in his hat
,

And thus did the hen reward Beecher

Long after Beecher’s sudden death in 1887, the pulpit of the Plymouth Church remained a podium for social reform and a prized spot for Congregational ministers. The Reverend Dr. L. (for Lawrence) Wendell Fifield, a tall, bespectacled and rather solemn theologian, became pastor at the Plymouth Church in 1941 and stayed through 1955, the year the Brooklyn Dodgers finally won the World Series. Fifield was 10 years younger than Rickey, but the men shared a Midwestern background: Fifield had graduated from Oberlin College, not far from Rickey’s beloved Ohio Wesleyan. He rose to prominence as pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Seattle where, among other activities, he presented weekly book reviews on Wednesday evenings, open to the public and widely attended. He headed a Red Cross emergency drive, served on a committee charged with handling the problems of servicemen and, in 1940, received an award from the King County Association of Realtors as “First Citizen of Seattle.”

He and Rickey, successful, high-achieving, outspoken religious Christians, bonded when Rickey came to Brooklyn. The first person to learn of Rickey’s momentous decision to sign Robinson was his wife, Jane Moulton Rickey. Walter “Red” Barber, a great sportscaster but a distressingly self-important man, long claimed that he was the first person outside the Rickey family to get the news. “Mr. Rickey
took me to Joe’s, a very fine restaurant on Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn,” Barber told me in 1972, “and outlined his daring plan. He wanted to know if I would come aboard. I can still see those strong catcher’s hands of his, trembling with intensity as he began to break a hard roll.”

Barber had a worshipful following in Brooklyn and his background in the segregationist South was widely known. “The Ol’ Redhead,” as he liked to call himself, spiced his broadcasts with phrases he had picked up in the rural South. A player doing well was “sittin’ in the catbird seat.” The Dodgers rallying late were “tearin’ up the ol’ pea patch.” He spoke and of course broadcast with a refined but unmistakable Southern drawl.

From the start, Barber championed Robinson and the cause of baseball integration. Early in 1947, Robinson’s rookie season in Brooklyn, Barber delivered a brief, powerful statement during an afternoon game. Turning away from the action, he said he found Robinson to be not only a fine ballplayer but beyond the diamond a fine human being. With great fervor, Barber concluded, “I hope he bats 1.000.”

Robinson’s signing was a lightning rod for controversy, and since Rickey’s relations with the New York media were uneven, Barber’s support was indispensable. But the Ol’ Redhead was not the first person beyond family to hear about Rickey’s grand design. Convinced that in signing Robinson he was following the path of righteousness, Rickey still grappled with concern and doubt and worried about his survival in the racist world of baseball. That led him to the study of the Plymouth Church and a memorable meeting with the Reverend Fifield.

June Fifield, the minister’s wife, composed a description of the meeting for a book she hoped someday to write. As far as I know that book was never completed. The account that follows, written in 1965, has not previously been published.

BRANCH RICKEY’S “DAY OF DECISION”

By June H. Fifield

News of the passing of Branch Rickey, a treasured friend of my late husband, Rev. Dr. L. Wendell Fifield, came to the world on the day that I sat writing an anecdote about a game we saw with him at Ebbets Field, for one of the chapters of a book based on my husband’s life and works.

It was a strange, mystical experience to me to have been so surrounded by the spirit of Mr. Rickey that I should be writing about him at that time. It seemed, somehow, a sign that the time had come to tell a story I had long hesitated to write because it seemed privileged material. Dr. Fifield had shared the feeling that Jackie Robinson and the rest of the world should know the story but that it should not be told in Rickey’s lifetime without his permission.

I had always felt that Mr. Rickey would be the first to approve, for his own life was so bound up in this young man, his affection so deep and his expectations so high. His affection, shared by his wife and “Auntie,” the sister in her eighties who never missed a game and kept an impeccable box score, was evidenced to us many times. “Auntie” gave us her own witness once when we dined at the Rickeys’ home. She said, “When we have the team over for refreshments, Jackie is the one who offers to lend a hand, and he unfailingly says a word of appreciation when he leaves. He has the best manners of the bunch!”

I write this in the spirit of a tribute and a plea: a tribute to Branch Rickey and L. Wendell Fifield—two men, strong of character, pastor and parishioner, whose rapport was a quick mutual outpouring of meaningful forces that drew them together inextricably as friends; a plea to Jackie Robinson to realize what went into the launching of his career—that someone cared enough to grope for wisdom beyond himself, to call upon God’s guidance—and that the man who did this was, in common erroneous parlance, “white.”

One day, as my husband sat working at his desk in the study of the church house, his secretary buzzed to say, “Mr. Rickey is here and asks to come in.” No appointment was ever necessary for someone with an urgent problem, and my husband’s “Certainly, show him in” carried with it more than casual interest. He was always warmed by the presence of this friend whose busy schedule of travel and activity allowed him little time for communication on a social level. In high hopes of a long chat, Dr. Fifield rose to greet him at the door.

“Sit down, Wendell,” said Mr. Rickey. “Don’t let me interrupt. I can’t talk with you. Keep right on with your work. I just want to
be
here. Do you mind?”

Without another word, Branch Rickey began to pace the floor. He paced, and he paused, he paced and he paused. Occasionally he gazed out the window at the sooty gloom of Brooklyn Heights, slightly relieved by the church garden struggling for beauty below. Pace, pause, pace, pause; turn, gaze, pace, pause.

Once in a while my husband glanced up from his work, but he spoke no word. He knew that whatever brought Mr. Rickey to his presence was an extremely important and personal matter, and he gave him the privacy of his struggle. Mr. Rickey stood with eyes closed and seemed to draw his great frame up to a new height. Then he’d sag again and pace. As the pauses grew longer, my husband once caught a kind of glow about Mr. Rickey as he stood in silence. Then, back to the pacing and pausing—and silence.

Forty-five minutes of this can be a long, long walk. I believe, on the average, allowing for pauses, about three miles. It proved to be a mighty significant three-mile hike, in the equally significant atmosphere of a minister’s study. At the end of the time, Branch Rickey, his face aglow under those famous outthrust eyebrows, bent over my husband’s desk, his eyes piercing, and cried:

“I’ve got it!” He banged his huge fist on the desk, rattling
everything from fountain pen to intercom. “I’ve got it!” he banged again, elated, transported.

It was too much for Dr. Fifield. He’d waited long enough to know what was going on in his own home base. “Got what, Branch? How much longer before I find out what you’re up to—pacing around here and banging on my furniture and keeping the whole thing to yourself? Come on, out with it!”

Branch sank, exhausted, into the nearest chair, fortunately big and overstuffed, as he was himself in those days of generous teeming good health and vigor.

“Wendell,” he said, “I’ve decided to sign Jackie Robinson!”

Moisture glistened in Mr. Rickey’s eyes. He blew an emphatic blast of his famous big nose, while my husband awaited the rest of the story.

It scarcely need be pointed out to anyone who reads that, in 1945, Jackie Robinson was the first Negro major league basball player to be signed, a step in professional athletics that had worldwide repercussions and opened the way to careers for Negroes in virtually every phase of the sports world hitherto denied.

“Wendell,” Branch said, when he regained his composure, “this was a decision so complex, so far-reaching, fraught with so many pitfalls but filled with so much good, if it was right, that I just had to work it out in this room with you. I had to talk to God about it and be sure what He wanted me to do. I hope you don’t mind.”

Remembering this, I understand better a remark a young friend made recently when I chided myself at still missing my husband so terribly 18 months after his passing. He said, “What can you expect of yourself? It was a great experience for anyone just to be in the same room with him. Of course you’ll miss him—forever.”

Mr. Rickey straightened his bow tie and reached for his old battered hat. “Bless you, Wendell,” he said, and was off. He went from the study that day out into the fray where he
loved to do battle, armed with a strength from his God whom he trusted. He revolutionized athletic practices and attitudes in this country and beyond, during that forty-five minute walk with God in the warmth of my husband’s presence in the environment of the church study. He had humbled himself and sought to communicate with a Presence and a wisdom and a power beyond his own, for he knew that, alone, he was insufficient to the task of knowing right from wrong, as we all are.

He went from that encounter in confidence and in faith. In the certainty of God’s guidance, he launched a young man, Jackie Robinson, who rose to great heights, and has taken thousands of his brothers with him, earning the respect and adulation of all races.

I hope Jackie will see his fellow man in a new light, knowing this story. May he ever remember Branch Rickey’s soul-searching in the presence of the God of us all, on his own “Days of Decision.”

Unfortunately Mrs. Fifield did not provide the date of this remarkable meeting, and now all the principals, including Mrs. Fifield, are dead.

When considering Rickey’s motive in signing Robinson, the words of June H. Fifield are convincing. It was overwhelmingly a moral decision, indeed a modern revelation, as powerful, in its way, as the revelation on the road to Damascus that knocked St. Paul off his horse.

I
NTEGRATION IN AMERICA SURGED FORWARD throughout the 10 major-league years of Jackie Robinson. During Robinson’s turbulent and triumphant seasons, baseball was the unquestioned leader of American sport and Robinson was its most exciting player.