Today
is Jackie Robinson’s Birthday. He was born 100 years ago on January 31st.
All day news stories and sports trivia will help
to celebrate this extraordinary ball player. Jackie Robinson deserves his place
in baseball history.
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was not only the man who was the
subject of “baseball’s greatest
experiment”, who put a face on the color change in baseball, he also changed
the chemistry of America’s pastime as well as its color.
Sports writer Mike
Lupica says of Robinson: “He played with flash and made ferocity an art.
Baseball did not look the same after Jackie Robinson.”
But
we have to remember that history rarely happens in big events and single
moments. There were other people who were critical to Robinson’s being able to
do take those courageous steps on April 15, 1947.
Jackie Robinson was not the first black to
play professional baseball. It might be more correct to say that he was the
first black to cross the color line who
was allowed to stay.
The very first
black to play professional baseball in America was Moses Fleetwood Walker.
Walker holds the dubious honor of being the first black to play pro ball and
the last to still be playing before the final shut out of blacks in baseball by
Jim Crow laws. Walker, a catcher from
Ohio, was educated at Oberlin College and the University of Michigan and played
ball at both schools before joining Toledo’s professional team in 1884. Moses Fleetwood Walker set a precedent.
The
refusal to allow blacks in pro ball meant that black ball players had to form
their own teams and their own leagues. This formation of all black teams led to
one of the most glorious periods in baseball history.
There is a tendency I think for baseball fans
to look at the Negro Leagues as the poor cousin to “real” baseball. Stories of
barnstorming days give the sense that black baseball was an inferior game and
organization. This could not be farther from the truth.
Most of the bad
conditions for Negro leaguers came after integration of the game. In their
prime The Negro Leagues were multi-million dollar operations, among the largest
black businesses in the United States, which sent millions of dollars into and
through the community. .
Negro
League star Josh Gibson was the greatest player of that time. He is now
considered by most baseball historians to be the greatest baseball player of
all time. One of the games most natural hitters, Gibson played for Pittsburgh’s
Homestead Grays. Gibson’s hitting prowess outshined Babe Ruth. In one season
Gibson hit 89 home runs, 29 more than Ruth’s record. And Gibson is the only
player to ever hit a home run out of Yankee Stadium.
Without
Josh Gibson Jackie Robinson’s moment would never have come. Josh Gibson showed
fans what black ball players could do and he showed major league owners what
black fans could mean to the business of baseball. The Homestead Grays, who played in any town
that had a ballpark available for rent, set attendance records in most of the
big league parks along the east coast and through the mid west. Josh Gibson was
the hot draw and fans- black and white -- came from all over and sold out every
game to see him play.
Those
sold out houses were not lost on another important baseball man, Branch Rickey,
president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Rickey had been managing
baseball teams all of his adult life, and when he came to the Dodgers he
inherited an aging team and declining audience.
He wanted to win a pennant and
he knew that the hottest talent in the game was in the Negro Leagues. Rickey
knew that the draw for those games while mostly black included white fans who
loved the more energetic brand of baseball played by the all black teams.
Rickey
spent more than two years orchestrating Robinson’s first step onto Ebbets Field.
Rickey was willing to endure the scorn of all of the other major league owners
and managers.
But
ultimately it was Jackie Robinson who had to step onto that field, and who
agreed to Rickey’s offer and Rickey’s terms. And the terms were tough: Robinson
promised, “no reaction, no matter what” for three years. That was not easy for
Jackie. He had to put up with bean balls aimed at his head, spikes aimed at his
shins and the ugly names aimed at him and at his family.
Rickey
admitted later that, “Jackie had to turn the other cheek so often that he had
no other cheek left – both were beaten off.” But Jackie Robinson was not Jesus
and not Gandhi. It is unfair to characterize him as a man of superior spiritual
character who took his enemies racist hatred and returned compassion and
forgiveness. He did not.
Robinson swallowed a lot of that hatred. He was smart
enough to know that this was the only way the “experiment” would work and he
was wise enough to know that the men waiting behind him in the Negro Leagues
depended on his fitting in.
Robinson
was the man who took the risk, who played the game and who changed its play in
so many ways. But Branch Rickey can also be a role model for showing us that
winning and making a profit do not have to be separate from making important
social change.
Looking
at these others who set the stage for Jackie Robinson doesn’t take anything
away from him on this special day. Rather it may let us take away something
that we can apply to our lives. There are many parts to play in making great
social change. Most of them come without recognition and they can, like
Rickey’s, come with very mixed motivations.
Few
of us will have the opportunity to be the man or woman of the moment, to
publicly enact history in such a dramatic way, but we all have opportunities to
be one of the unnamed others, who, though unrecognized, are necessary to
building the momentum and critical mass that allows the historical moment to
happen.
