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Jazz/Jerry Jazz Musician/Scott Simon, NPR Journalist, discusses the life of baseball legend Jackie Robinson in a Jerry Jazz Musician interview
Printer Friendly Version
Scott Simon,
author of
Jackie
Robinson and the Integration of Baseball
________________
The integration of baseball in 1947 had undeniable significance for the civil
rights movement and American history. Thanks to Jackie Robinson, a barrier
that had once been believed to be permanent was shattered -- paving the way
for scores of African Americans who wanted nothing more than to be granted
the same rights as any other human being.*
In our exclusive Jerry Jazz Musician interview, NPR Weekend Edition host
Scott Simon, author of Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball,
discusses how Robinson's heroism -- and that of Dodger general manager Branch
Rickey -- got America to face the question of racial equality.
________________
photo
National
Archives
"I know that I have a certain responsibility to my race, but I've got
to try not to feel that way about it because it would be too much of a strain...I
also know that I've got to hit. I'm going to hit, all right, and I'm
not going to worry at any time."
- Jackie Robinson, 1947
Trumpeter George Rabbai plays
Take
Me Out to the Ballgame
________________
JJM You wrote of Jackie Robinson, "When he was summoned
by history, he risked his safety and sanity to give history the last full
measure of his strength, nerve, perseverance. In the end, real heroes give
us stories we use to reinforce our own lives." How did Jackie Robinson touch
your life prior to your writing of this book?
SS I believe he more or less touched all
of our lives. Many of us grew up in a substantially better country because
of what he did. I did not know a time when major league sports was not
integrated, and that was just the first installment. I grew up during a time
schools were integrated, and when job opportunities were much more ecumenical.
None of this is to say that all of the important business has been done and
certainly wasn't when I was a youngster, but a lot of that can be, at least
chronologically, traced to Jackie Robinson's achievement in 1947. As I write
in the book, when he stepped on to a major league baseball field in 1947,
lynchings in the United States were commonplace. That is the environment
into which he stepped. It is not just that schools are named for him that
the story is known, or that his number has been retired on every major league
team. It can be difficult to absolutely fathom the kind of every day routine
adversity that he faced, and that is something that doing the book made me
appreciate all over again.
JJM What is an example of Robinson's heroism
around the issue of race prior to baseball?
SS The most prominent example that stands
out is when he refused to move to the back of the bus while at the Fort Hood,
Texas, Army base, which was segregated at the time. A small-town-Texas bus
driver reported Robinson to the authorities for sitting next to who he thought
was a white woman. The woman, Virginia Jones, was in fact an African American
woman who was married to a fellow officer in the African American unit at
Fort Hood. It was the kind of prosecution Robinson could have easily avoided.
He was in the right, undeniably, because the private bus carrier had agreed
not to abide by local segregated statutes so that African American officers
and enlisted men could get around easily. But Robinson chose not to duck
that issue, even though he was arguably the best-known college athlete in
the country. He chose not to stand on legalism. He chose to resist, and did
so very energetically.
While a very thoughtful man, Jackie Robinson was an athlete. Like a lot of
athletes who focus on their careers, I don't think he had given a lot of
larger social issues much of a thought for many years. What seemed to sharpen
his awareness was the experience of his brother Mack, who was the sliver
medalist in the 1936 Olympics, finishing right behind Jesse Owens. When he
returned to the United States following the Games, Mack Robinson couldn't
get a job in Pasadena, California other than that of a garbage collector.
While there is nothing wrong with being a garbage collector, it seemed to
be the job in which he was relegated as opposed to one in he aspired toward
and was qualified for. That probably sharpened Jackie Robinson's idea of
racial equity and equality of opportunity in the United States. It opened
his eyes to the fact opportunity was denied because of race. Here he was,
perhaps the most accomplished athlete in the nation, yet it was not possible
to continue on in a career in athletics before he integrated the sport himself.
Sporting News photo
Soldier Jackie Robinson
Mack Robinson
JJM When was having a black player in major
league baseball first discussed by Brooklyn Dodger general manager Branch
Rickey?
Branch Rickey
Photograph by
Harold Rhodenbaugh
SS When it was first discussed by Rickey
is difficult to say. During the early days of World War II, he had a
substantially different idea about scouting. Most of the major league teams
decided that the good players were in the Armed Services. As a result,
it was not a time to spend much money on scouting. Rickey believed, on the
contrary, that since other teams weren't doing it, this was a time for the
Brooklyn organization to step up its scouting opportunities. He knew that
the largest source of unscouted and unsigned baseball talent in the hemisphere
resided in the Negro Leagues and the Latin American Leagues, where a number
of African American players were applying their trade. So, the two ideas
were a companion in his mind. He decided that if anyone was going to break
the stranglehold the Yankees seemed to have year after year of getting into
and winning the World Series, he would have to find resources of talent that
were being overlooked by the major league clubs.
There were obviously some very great players that were available in the Negro
Leagues. He casually mentioned that he wanted to step up his scouting program
to Brooklyn Trust, the people who held the note on the Dodger team, by way
of suggesting that they were going to step up their scouting activities in
the Latin American leagues. The bankers didn't blanch at hearing that because
scouting in the Latin American leagues was fairly inexpensive in those days.
Then he said they were going to look at the Negro League as well.
Perhaps because the Brooklyn Trust was made up of bankers who were already
doing business with many African American families in Brooklyn, they didn't
blanch at that suggestion either. Branch Rickey remembered that one of the
bankers said, "Why not? Maybe we will find somebody."
JJM Was there some community or political
pressure that helped accelerate the process of assimilating a black player
into the league?
SS I am not sure "pressure" is the word because
it is hard to figure out what exactly that pressure would have been. Political
interest concerning this issue had been building up, really, at times dating
back to the twenties. I will add parenthetically it seemed to be all around
the political spectrum. The communist newspaper The Daily Worker had
a very distinguished sports section. As I say in the book it's a shame they
weren't as clear about Joe Stalin as they were about Joe DiMaggio. They had
been one of the early editorialists concerning the issue of integrating baseball.
On the other hand, so had right wing columnists, as well as an outspoken
sports columnist like Shirley Povich, who was then writing in the very segregated
city of Washington, D.C. The idea had been debated out there since the early
twenties and seemed to gain over the years. In Boston, a city councillor
named Isadore Muchnick proposed a law that would have prohibited the sale
of liquor during Sunday ball games unless the Boston clubs at least gave
a try out to a Negro League player. In fact, because of this, Jackie Robinson
received a try out in Boston five months before he was signed by Branch Rickey
and the Dodgers, but the Red Sox chose not to sign him, creating what I think
is the true curse that has hung over their ball club ever since.
Near the end of his term, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia said very explicitly
that he thought it was wrong for him to be pressuring New York corporations,
factories and industries to hire people of all races if major league baseball
was a glaring contrary example to that. He talked very openly that
if the major leagues didn't take it upon themselves to integrate, he might
try and ask the city council to pass laws to do so. So, it was important
to Branch Rickey to be able to act before that law was passed, because, to
be sure, he wanted credit for his place in history. He didn't want it to
seem as if it had been the politician's idea.
JJM Abraham Lincoln was very important to
Rickey. Was he motivated to create a legacy for himself that Lincoln would
be proud of?
SS It was often observed that he had a picture
of Lincoln hanging in his office. He was born just sixteen years after Lincoln
had been assassinated, and grew up in southern Ohio among people who had
very vivid memories of Lincoln the man, Lincoln the president, and of his
funeral train as it passed through town on its way to Lincoln's Springfield,
Illinois burial ground. So, Lincoln was a hero to him. However, prior to
his work with the Dodgers, Branch Rickey was the general manager of the St
Louis Cardinals in the late thirties, and he made no attempt to integrate
the game then. However, as I have often said, Lincoln wasn't Lincoln all
at once either.
I think there was a social and political component in this for Rickey. He
was a man of large ambition. He didn't believe baseball was just a game,
he felt it was a game that made the country better. He felt he had an opportunity
to help make the country better by integrating major league baseball in advance
of other prominent institutions in the United States. First and foremost,
he was a baseball man, and I don't think he had to offer any apology for
the fact that virtually the first words out of his mouth to Jackie Robinson
were, "Jackie, I want to win a pennant for Brooklyn and I need the ballplayers
to do it. Do you think you can do it?" There ultimately would have been something
patronizing if all he wanted to do was integrate the sport for social reasons.
He also understood that there was a potential championship waiting to be
claimed by the organization with the nerve to integrate their team.
JJM He wanted to beat the damn Yankees!
SS Exactly.
JJM Did the greatness of pitcher Satchel Paige
accelerate the integration of baseball?
SS I think in a way it absolutely did. Satchel
Paige was the biggest draw in baseball -- not Joe Dimaggio and not Ted Williams.
He was the highest paid player in baseball, as well as being co-owner of
the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. Every newspaper in America
was more or less writing about Satchel Paige in one way or another. If you
were a baseball fan and hadn't seen him play it was impossible not to be
curious about what a good pitcher he was. People read accounts of exhibition
games between the Negro League teams and major league stars, and from them
knew Paige was the guy who struck out Babe Ruth and Joe Dimaggio. They understood
what a great ballplayer he was. There were white players who counted themselves
as bigots who were perfectly happy to play against Negro League teams for
money, even if they weren't all at once willing to play alongside Negro League
stars as their teammates. The prominence of Satchel Paige made Negro League
ball players, generally, more recognized in society and his stardom got people
to notice the artificial separation that existed between a black league and
a white league.
JJM One of the reasons Paige was not under
consideration is because he was a pitcher and there was some concern about
him throwing bean balls. With him out of the picture, how did they settle
on Jackie Robinson?
Monte Irvin
SS It is important to say that there
must have been 75 or more Negro League athletes who could have been signed
and who would have succeeded brilliantly, but Jackie Robinson had the most
desirable combination of circumstances. It was also possible for Branch Rickey
to have brought up Jackie Robinson, Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella at the
same time to diffuse the attention and the burden, as well as the identity
of Robinson's achievement. That being said, he had the best possible combination
of circumstances. As the best college running back in the nation, and perhaps
the most versatile athlete, he had played under intense national scrutiny
before. Baseball was arguably not even his best sport. He was a brilliant
shooting guard in basketball, a great track star, a great football runner.
He could have potentially even been an inter-collegiate golf champion if so
many courses hadn't been segregated at that point. So, he knew how to play
under the scrutiny of national attention because he had done that in college.
The fact that Robinson was college educated was also appealing to Rickey
because he understood the person he selected would be subjected to a great
deal of national interest. Additionally, Robinson was a veteran. Rickey felt
it was important that since so many American men and women served in the
Armed Forces that the person he selected also be an Army veteran. Ironically,
because he had been discharged from the Army in 1944, Jackie Robinson was
available to be signed. There were other great Negro League athletes
who had some of the same combination of talents and resume items as Robinson
who were not available to play. For example, Monte Irvin of the Newark Eagles
was still on duty in the Army in 1945, serving with the occupation forces
in Germany. So, when Branch Rickey wanted to end the summer of 1945 by signing
an African American ball player, Irvin wasn't available. Irvin was also a
college educated veteran who had many of the same qualifications Jackie Robinson
did, he just didn't happen to be available. As you mentioned, Robinson wasn't
a pitcher, so Rickey didn't have to worry about signing somebody who threw
the bean ball. Also, he was such a versatile athlete they didn't have to
worry about him only being capable of playing a specific position. They knew
that he could play the outfield, the infield, or whatever position came open.
He never played first base before yet they turned him into a first baseman,
where he became an all star player. So, every possible qualification required
seemed to lead back to Jackie Robinson.
JJM The fact that he was dishonorably discharged
from the Army seemed to be a component of his resume that Rickey found
attractive.
SS Yes, Rickey knew the story. Clyde Sukeforth,
the man who scouted Jackie Robinson for the Dodgers, had made some careful
inquiries and knew the story and thought it was terrific. Rickey was not
in any way put off by his Army discharge, and in fact thought that the
circumstances of it spoke well for the character of the man he wanted to
sign.
JJM What was the immediate reaction in
the Brooklyn community to Robinson being on the Dodger roster?
SS As a generalization, Brooklyn considered
itself the most progressive territory in the United States at that point
in time. It was politically and socially very liberal, and it was a community
that was integrated in a larger sense, although often segregated block by
block. They were PM magazine readers and Roosevelt lovers, and from
Paul Robeson to Pistol Pete Reiser, Brooklyn loved "lefties." In a way, the
signing of Jackie Robinson called on Brooklyn to live up to its own best
social and political convictions. It was also a distinction for Brooklyn,
which was always a little conscious of being overlooked in contrast to Manhattan.
They felt that, in a funny way, they were summoned by history to play a role,
and to demonstrate something about themselves. For the most part they certainly
lived up to that.
Ebbets Field
Painting by
Jerry
Jazz Musician
JJM Robinson was an instant sensation. While
he experienced a couple of slumps early on, they were never enough to create
tension about him staying with the club. What would Rickey have done, do
you suppose, if Robinson failed as a player? Was there someone else waiting
in the wings?
Game
6, 1956 Series
SS I have thought about that and I don't
know for sure. I think he was genuinely convinced that Robinson would not
fail. As you note, although he had a brilliant minor league season, he began
the season with a slump. Yet, Rickey knew that he was the type of player
who could do so many other things for his team. For example, his base running
was often so good that it kept him in the game and it still made him a factor
in games even when he was going 0 for 4 and 0 for 5 at the plate. Rickey
was convinced Robinson would succeed, and he was intent on assuring that
by not pulling him when he slumped. When Robinson got into slumps later in
his career, I think managers would not think much of benching him for a game
or two, as you would any player, but Rickey wasn't about to do that when
he was starting his career, when it became known as the "great experiment."
If they had gone a few months without on field success, I don't believe he
would have sent Robinson to the minors, he may have brought up Roy Campanella,
making the decision that the "experiment" was going to succeed even if it
wasn't with Robinson. He wasn't going to totally bet on the one person who
he thought was the best bet. I think he would have just kept trying until
one player or another had broken through. As it happened, he didn't have
to worry about that.
JJM Larry Doby came up with the Indians of the American
League in the same season…
SS Yes, he was signed in July by the Cleveland
Indians, and they did not send him up through the minors. They brought him
up directly from the Negro Leagues to the majors.
JJM Your chapter on Robinson's experience
in the minor leagues was very interesting. It's easy to forget that he was
also the first black minor league player affiliated with a major league
franchise. The fact that he joined a team that had a Canadian city as its
minor league property probably had a lot to do with the Dodgers being the
first team to have a black player as well.
SS Yes, Boston often cited that that was
the reason they couldn't sign Jackie Robinson.
JJM Because Boston's minor league team was
in Louisville?
SS Yes, their farm club was in Louisville,
although if Boston had been genuinely interested in signing Robinson there
were other things that they could have done. I think the answer is that they
were genuinely not interested in signing Robinson.
JJM They have had the wait and see approach
to baseball for as long as I have been a fan of baseball, and as you say,
not signing Robinson was probably a more damning curse than that of the Bambino.
SS I certainly think that. Obviously, baseball
never should have been segregated, but if we get past that premise in which
I deeply believe, this could have happened in Chicago, and probably should
have. The White Sox should have signed a Negro League player. It certainly
could have happened in any of the other teams in New York, and it could have
happened in Detroit. It arguably could have happened in Washington, DC, the
nation's capitol, but it didn't. It took the right combination of circumstances,
including the community of Brooklyn and a general manager with a sense of
history and the nerve of Branch Rickey.
JJM How did Jackie Robinson spend his
life after baseball?
SS As I noted earlier, prior to his being
a ballplayer, he had not spent much time worrying about social and political
issues. But the process of becoming a national hero -- a term I use adviseably
-- sharpened his conscience and his identity. He knew how important his story
and achievements had become to so many people across the United States.
Immediately after retiring he became a personnel executive for Chock Full
O' Nuts, where his specific mandate was to work on minority hiring. He also
became a social and political activist. He supported the work of Martin Luther
King, and he worked for Governor Nelson Rockefeller in New York. He was a
very active liberal Republican at a time when people like Rockefeller, Ken
Keating and Jacob Javits were in the Party. These men were real supporters
of the civil rights movement, whereas the Democratic Party at the time was
often typified by people like Strom Thurmond and Richard Russell of Georgia.
So, he became a political activist. He wrote a column for the Harlem Voice
and the Amsterdam News, endorsed political candidates, and supported
Dr. King's non-violent campaign for racial integration. He maintained himself
as a factor in American life because he was so acclaimed as a hero, and
understood that from that moment on, what he did, believed in, and endorsed
were important to millions and millions of Americans.
________________
Jackie
Robinson and the Integration of Baseball
by
Scott Simon
_______________________________
Read
an excerpt from the book
Listen
to NPR host Bob Edwards discuss the book with Scott Simon
Scott Simon products at Amazon.com
_______________________________
This interview took place on December 18, 2002
*
If you enjoyed this interview, you may want to read our interview with Pulitzer Prize winning author Diane McWhorter on Birmingham, Alabama and the events leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
*
_______________________________
Other
Jerry Jazz Musician interviews
* Text from publisher
Copyright 1998 - 2004 Jerry Jazz
Musician, LLC
Development by JAM & Associates
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