Rickey understood the unrelenting pressures that his protégé was enduring, but also knew that there was no easy escape. “Always, for as long as you are in baseball,” he told Robinson, “you must conduct yourself as you are doing now. Always you will be on trial. That is the cross that you must bear.” Bearing that cross was made possible in no small part because of Rachel’s steadfast support. She knew that she could not change the racism they encountered, but she could, as she later said, “be a constant presence to witness and validate the realities, love him without reservation, share his thoughts and miseries, discover with him the humor in the ridiculous behavior against us, and, most of all, help maintain our fighting spirit.”
Vindication came on April 18, 1946, in Robinson’s first game with Montreal in Jersey City before a capacity crowd of more than 25,000 against the New York Giants’ farm team. He got four hits—including a home run—in five trips to the plate and was instrumental in the Royals’ 14-1 victory (and was, as one sportswriter recounted, “mobbed trying to leave the field by fans of assorted ages and colors”). It was a harbinger of things to come. He led the International League in hitting with .349, scored a league-leading 113 runs, and stole forty bases.
Jackie’s elevation to the Dodger club for the 1947 season was widely anticipated, but Rickey was taking no chances. Toward the end of the 1946 season, he told Buzzie Bavasi, the general manager of the team’s farm club in Nashua, New Hampshire, to determine whether there were any skeletons in Robinson’s closet. The general manager was instructed to go to California, but Bavasi went instead to Montreal to watch Robinson in action and to gauge the reactions of others. Upon his arrival, Bavasi was given a seat near home plate, right behind the seats occupied by the players’ wives. There he watched as the other players’ wives (all white) turned to Rachel with a variety of questions as the game progressed. Bavasi was impressed with her demeanor and her commentary. When he returned to Brooklyn, Rickey asked what he had learned. Bavasi had no hesitation: “If Jackie Roosevelt Robinson is good enough for Rachel, he’s good enough for us.”
Still, Robinson could not relax when he joined the Dodgers for spring training in Havana (where he was once again forced to live in different quarters from his teammates). Rickey told him that he had to prove himself on the field one more time in a series of seven games that pitted the Montreal Royals against the Dodgers’ parent club. “I want you to concentrate,” Rickey instructed, “to hit that ball, to get on base
by any means necessary
. I want you to run wild, to steal the pants off them, to be the most conspicuous player on the field—but conspicuous only because of the kind of baseball you’re playing.” Robinson obliged, hitting .625 and stealing seven bases in the series.
His success on the field did not assure his acceptance in the clubhouse. When the team traveled to Panama for some exhibition games, Robinson learned that a petition was being circulated by some of the Dodger players to persuade Rickey not to bring Robinson up to the parent club. The petition was initiated by Dodger outfielder Dixie Walker, an Alabama native, and it basically said that those who had signed did not want to play with a black. The petition was apparently signed by several other Southern players on the team, but most of the other players refused to sign. Outfielder Pete Reiser, for one, told Walker that he “was a goddamned fool” for circulating the petition.
One of those who agreed with Reiser was manager Leo Durocher. He was enraged when he learned about the petition. He had been urging Rickey to bring Robinson up in 1946, and he did not want his plans to use Robinson in 1947 to be compromised by dissension among the players. Durocher wasted no time in conveying his view to the team. He called a meeting at midnight in the barracks where they were staying and marched out of his room in a yellow bathrobe, looking, as one player remembered, “like a fighter about to enter the ring.” “I don’t care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin’ zebra,” he told the assembled players. “I’m the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What’s more, I say he can make us all rich.” He then paused and said, “An’ if any of you can’t use the money, I’ll see that you’re traded.” He looked around the room. “I don’t want to see your petition. I don’t want to hear anything about it,” he screamed. “Fuck your petition. The meeting is over. Go back to bed.” And that was the end of the petition.
Despite his vigorous defense of Robinson’s right to play in the major leagues, Durocher was not there when Robinson made his debut at Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947, with the number 42 on the back of his Dodger uniform. Chandler had suspended the Dodger manager from baseball on April 9 because of his reputed association with gamblers and other underworld figures. Burt Shotton, the new Dodger manager (who wore a shirt and tie instead of a uniform in the dugout), was the antithesis of Durocher—a quiet, soft-spoken man who tried to promote harmony on the team. And that was no longer an issue for Robinson, because even the Southern players on the team were now prepared to accept his presence—a perspective that was perhaps captured best by the comment of second baseman Eddie Stanky, who had grown up in the South. “I don’t like you,” he told Jackie, “but we’ll play together and get along because you’re my teammate.”
Stanky’s presence on the Dodgers did, however, create one challenge for Robinson: he could not play second base, and—because Reese still had a hold on the shortstop position—the Pasadena native was asked to play first base, a position with which he had little familiarity. The tension of mastering a new position was compounded by the hostile reaction of the other teams’ players. The Philadelphia Phillies, and especially their manager, Ben Chapman (a former teammate of Babe Ruth’s), were particularly abusive. (“Hey, nigger, why don’t you go back to the cotton field, where you belong?”) And shortly before the Dodgers traveled to Philadelphia for a series in early May, Phillies general manager Herb Pennock (another former teammate of Babe Ruth’s) telephoned Rickey to tell his Brooklyn counterpart, “You just can’t bring that nigger here with the rest of your team. We’re not ready for that sort of thing yet in Philadelphia.” Rickey disagreed and bluntly told Pennock that the Dodgers would take a forfeit if Philadelphia failed to field a team.
Pennock eventually backed down. But the hostility followed Robinson and the Dodgers as they moved around the National League circuit. In each case, the Dodgers rallied behind their teammate—Rickey saying at one point that, through his abuse, Ben Chapman “did more than anybody to unite the Dodgers.”
Opinion nonetheless remained divided among baseball players whether integration was serving the best interests of baseball. But there was unanimity on one point: Jackie Robinson drew enormous crowds wherever he played. Some of it no doubt was curiosity; some of it certainly reflected support from the black community; but much of it was a tribute to the excitement that Robinson generated on the field. It was not merely his ability to steal bases (which he did with regularity, leading the league with twenty-nine). It was primarily the fire he ignited both before and after he got on base.
The opposing team’s players knew that they could not relax if Jackie Robinson was at the plate. Would he try a surprise bunt down the third-base line? Or would he swing for the seats, as he could easily do (hitting forty-eight extra-base hits in 1947, including twelve home runs—tying him for the team lead in that department)? And what would happen when he got on base? If he reached first base, he would dart back and forth, yelling at the pitcher and daring him to throw the ball to first base. (“You can’t pick me off,” Jackie would shout. “I’ll steal second on you!”) He would use the same tactics even when he was on third base, and there were many times during his career (nineteen, to be exact) when he actually did steal home. And even if Robinson did not attempt a steal, his daring tactics could still succeed as the pitcher, flustered by the constant distraction, would balk or throw a wild pitch or otherwise fail to concentrate on the batter at the plate.
It was, all in all, high entertainment—at least for everyone other than the opposing team. “Jackie Robinson,” said Hall of Fame radio announcer Bob Wolff, “was the most exciting ballplayer that I’ve ever covered. From the moment he got on base, the whole ballpark came alive. There was a drama going on no matter what else was happening. The pitcher started to fidget. The shortstop started to move in a little bit. The second baseman got closer to second. Everything—the whole panorama of the game changed.” Opposing players agreed that Robinson could indeed change the dynamics of the game. “Robinson was,” said Pittsburgh Pirates slugger Ralph Kiner, “the only player I ever saw who could completely turn a game around by himself.” And so the Dodgers were glad to have the former UCLA star in the lineup. “As long as he was in the game,” said Dodger pitcher Rex Barney, “you had a chance to win. He played baseball with such abandon.”
By the time the season ended, Robinson had amply justified Rickey’s faith in him. He played in all but three of the Dodgers’ games, batted .297, and won the first major-league Rookie of the Year award (which would later be divided between rookies in the American and National Leagues). And, as Leo Durocher had predicted in spring training, Robinson had led his team into the World Series for the first time since 1941. But more important—from Robinson’s perspective, at least—he had won the respect of his teammates, including those who had opposed his inclusion on the team in spring training. As the Dodgers moved toward the pennant in late September, Dixie Walker—author of the failed petition against Robinson—told
The Sporting News
that, with the possible exception of catcher Bruce Edwards, no other player had “done more to put the Dodgers up in the race as Robinson has.”
When he reported for spring training in 1948, Robinson was twenty-five pounds over his initial playing weight of 195. For those who knew him, the excess weight was no surprise. Robinson loved food. (“His attack on a wedge of apple pie, topped with two scoops of vanilla ice cream,” said one sportswriter, “was an exercise in passion.”) Durocher, having returned as manager, made Robinson endure stringent workouts and eating restrictions.
While he struggled to control his weight, Robinson also had to wrestle with the racism that he still encountered as the Dodgers moved through their exhibition schedule in the South. At one point, Shotton held a meeting in the clubhouse to explain that someone had threatened to shoot Robinson if he showed up on the field in Atlanta for an exhibition game. The room was quiet for a few minutes as everyone pondered the threat, and then outfielder Gene Hermanski broke the silence. “I’ve got an idea,” he said excitedly. “Why don’t we all wear uniforms with the number 42, and that way the guy won’t know who to shoot!” Everyone broke out in laughter and then scurried onto the field, knowing that the team would hang together in the face of such threats—although shortstop Pee Wee Reese did ask Robinson, now playing second base because of Stanky’s trade to the Boston Braves, to move a little farther away from him. (“The guy may be a bad shot,” said Reese.)
Although he started the regular season off slowly, Robinson soon regained his earlier batting form and wound up leading the Dodgers in virtually every offensive category, including batting average (.296), runs batted in (eighty-five), and extra-base hits (fifty-eight, which included twelve home runs). But the Dodgers faltered as a team, and by July, Durocher (who had returned as manager in April) had been fired as skipper in an arrangement that allowed him to become the manager of the hated Giants (where he and Robinson developed a bitter antagonism that reflected their equally competitive spirits). Burt Shotton resumed the reins of the Brooklyn club, but the Cardinals ran away with the National League pennant.
Throughout his first two years, Robinson had been careful to abide by Rickey’s admonition that he turn the other cheek and not create any waves. But by the spring of 1949 Robinson had begun to sense that the time for passivity had passed and that he should now be free to speak his mind if confronted with racial bigotry on or off the field. His teammates had accepted him as one of their own, he had received recognition as one of the game’s better players, and the firestorm of protest that had accompanied his first days as a Dodger had subsided. He discussed the matter with Rickey, and they agreed that Jackie would now be free to speak his mind. And so, at a clubhouse meeting in spring training, Robinson told his teammates that he was no longer going to suffer in silence. “From this point on,” he said, “I take nothing from no one, on this team or on any other team, not from umpires or anyone else.”
The new attitude—and batting instruction from George Sisler, the Hall of Fame player of an earlier era—provided spectacular results. Robinson led the league in hitting with a .342 average, stole thirty-seven bases (leading the league in that department as well), and drove in 124 runs. His achievements were acknowledged by the sportswriters, who selected him as the league’s Most Valuable Player. His performance on the field boosted his team’s morale, and the Dodgers won the pennant again (only to fall to the Yankees once more in the World Series).
One of the year’s most notable events for Robinson, however, took place outside the ball field. On July 18, 1949, Robinson flew to Washington, DC, to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The committee wanted Robinson “to give the lie to statements by Paul Robeson.” A well-known actor and black activist, Robeson had been quoted as saying that it was “unthinkable” that blacks would fight to save America—where they had suffered intolerable racial discrimination—in any conflict with the Soviet Union. Robinson, HUAC hoped, would show the country that Robeson’s comments did not reflect the view of all blacks in America.
Robinson’s testimony provided that desired assurance—but with a cautionary note. “White people must realize,” he told the congressional committee, “that the more a Negro hates Communism because it opposes democracy, the more he is going to hate the other influences that kill off democracy in this country—and that goes for racial discrimination in the army, and segregation on trains and buses, and job discrimination because of religious beliefs or color or place of birth.” As for Robeson’s reported comments, Robinson dismissed them, saying that they sounded “very silly.”