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Standards & Assessment

 

                                                                                                          December 19, 1945

“Mr. Branch Rickey,

 c/o Brooklyn Dodgers Baseball Club,

 Brooklyn, New York.

 

 Dear Sir:

I am writing relative to the spring training situation which we discussed in  your office and over the telephone.  I am making definite plans to go to Daytona Beach  to cover the training camp of the Montreal Royals. 

 

I would like to know when they start training at Daytona Beach and what, if

 any, provisions have been made with respect to where Jackie Robinson will stay.

Incidentally, if you are still considering another Negro team-mate for Robinson, I am suggesting that you consider very seriously the possibility of Kenny Washington, who was Jackie’s team-mate at U.C.L.A. . . He is a very intelligent person and, I understand, has a wonderful personality.  He has been playing baseball and football on the West Coast and is free to be signed without encountering contract difficulties with the Negro Leagues.

                                                          Sincerely yours,

 

                                                          Wendell Smith, Sports Editor

                                                          The Pittsburgh Courier

 

 

    “ One of the biggest problems confronting Robinson, for instance, is becoming part of the inner faction of the Brooklyn Dodgers. . .

     If . . . we were compelled to take a poll to determine just how the present players feel about Robinson . .  we would put it this way:

     Eddie Stevens:  Definitely against Jackie because he exists as a threat.

     Eddie Stankey:  He appears to be prejudiced, but will play with him.

     Pee Wee Reese:  He will play.  His attitude is not known nor has been revealed in any way.

     Arky Vaughn:  He will go along with the mob.  If they want Robinson, he will be for him.  If they are against him, Vaughn will be also.

     Bruce Edwards:  He is alright.  Whatever Rickey says, he will do.

     Pete Reiser:  A great ballplayer.  He will play with anyone.

     Gene Hermanskie:  He will definitely play with a Negro.

     Dixie Walker:  He is against Robinson.  Would rather have him elsewhere.  But will tolerate him because he (Walker) is one of the highest-paid players in the majors.

     Leo Durocher:  He seems to be all for Robinson.  He does not care what color he is . . .” 

 

            -Wendell Smith, The Pittsburgh Courier, April 12, 1947.

 

    “I had never been to the South before.  So it was a bewildered and disturbed bride of two weeks who arrived with Jack at (Montreal Royals) spring training camp in Daytona Beach, Florida.

     We had planned to fly . . . (but) when we got to New Orleans, where we had to change, we heard the next plane was going to be late.  There was no place at the airfield where Negroes could lie and rest. . .

     After seven hours . . . we were ‘bumped off.’  There were various explanations . . . but the only passengers ‘bumped’ were Jack and me and a Mexican.  And as we stood there at the airport, our bags at our feet, we saw white passengers get on and take our seats. . .

     We decided to go to the bus station.  There we had another wait. . .

     The bus was empty when we got on, and the driver motioned us to the Jim Crow section at the back.  As daylight came, working men crowded on.  The Jim Crow section got so jammed we had to take turns standing up and sitting down, although there were only a few people in the white section of the bus. . .

     When the 100 mile trip to Jacksonville was over, we were crammed into a tiny Jim Crow waiting room until the bus for Daytona Beach arrived. . .

     I was the only wife at that 1946 spring training camp.  The rule of ‘no wives’ was broken for me that year because Jack could not live with the white fellows on the team, and we were both housed with a Negro family. . .

     I would sit in the stands (during baseball games) and my blood would boil at some of the things people yelled at him – often just for laughs. . .

     The next year, 1947. Jack was brought up to Brooklyn and was a Dodgers rookie.  We couldn’t help realizing that all the spikings he received (the spikes in baseball shoes are sharp and can be painful) and all the pitched balls which hit him weren’t quite accidental.  One sports writer wrote playfully: ‘Some pitchers can’t resist that Coney Island urge to throw at Robinson.’  That made me furious.  So did the day in St. Louis when somebody let a black cat out on the field and the crowd roared as though it was terribly funny.” 

 

                           - Mrs. (Rachel) Jackie Robinson.

 

     “The two teams that gave me the worst trouble my first year were Philadelphia and St. Louis.  Bob Carpenter, the president of the Phillies, told Mr. Rickey that his team would refuse to play against the Dodgers in Shibe Park if I appeared there. . .

     The Phillies didn’t go on strike, but I was showered with the worst kind of cruel racial abuse by their manager, Ben Chapman, every time we played against them.  It took a lot of strength for me to restrain myself.  I couldn’t talk back to them because I had promised Mr. Rickey that I would avoid trouble until I had established myself. . .

     . . . Chapman’s language became so bad that Ford Frick, who was then president of the National League, warned him to stop it.  Chapman tried to act innocent about it and actually said that he was only trying to make a major-leaguer out of me. . .

     A group of Cardinal players also planned a strike if I came to St. Louis.  But Mr. Frick stopped that one fast by telling them that every striker would be barred from baseball for life. . .

     Oddly enough, in my first year with the Dodgers the two cities where I had trouble with the baseball players – Philadelphia and St. Louis – were also the . . . places in the league circuit where I had difficulties with the hotels.  I was barred from the Ben Franklin in Philadelphia and from the Chase in St. Louis.”                                                                                                                                                       - Jackie Robinson,

 

  “(Lew) Burdette (Boston Braves Pitcher) is the type of player who hates to lose,’  Robinson pointed out.  ‘I’m that kind myself and I love to have players like that on my

ball club. .

     But when you go beyond that point and bring in racial animosity, that’s going too far.’

     Jackie (Robinson) reiterated that Burdette had called Roy Campanella, the (African- American) Brooklyn (Dodgers) catcher, the same unprintable name (‘nigger’) he had called him (Robinson) last Sunday in Brooklyn.

     Robinson referred to the start of the rhubarb in the eighth inning of Monday night’s game when Campanella charged at Burdette with a bat after, he claimed Lew called him a ‘dirty name.’

     ‘Burdette became angry at me when I bunted in the first inning of that second game in Brooklyn and a teammate came home from third last Sunday,’ Jackie emphasized.  ‘When I got back to first after beating out the bunt, he came back with that racial slur.  Even Umpire Babe Pinelli heard him say it. . .

     ‘My mother has been trying to teach me through the years that names like that will never hurt me,’ Jackie pointed out.  ‘But I told her that we don’t have to take those things anymore.

     ‘Times have changed and this isn’t 1947 or 1948 when we were just breaking into the majors and had to take it . . .

     ‘If Burdette says it’s his bread and butter to pitch tight that way to batters and to make them flinch, that’s all right with me.  It’s part of the game.  But when he goes beyond that, he’s stretching it a bit too far.’”

 

                                  - The Milwaukee Sentinel, August 5, 1953

 

    “I am going to say something tonight . . . that I have never revealed before.  I’ve had this story locked up for at least two years.  I’ve refrained from telling it.  In fact, I kept it locked up inside of me. . .

     After I signed Robinson, a joint major league meeting adopted unanimously a report which stated that ‘however well intentioned, the use of Negro players would hazard all the physical properties of baseball.

     That report was aimed at me.  I was the only one who had signed a Negro.  You won’t find a copy of that report anywhere, but I was at the meeting when it was proposed.  All the clubs except mine approved the report.  I’ve tried to find a copy of that report, but league officials tell me all have been destroyed. . .

     President Ford Frick passed out copies of the report at the National League meeting. . . After we read them, they were collected and Frick checked off the names on the list to make sure that all copies had been returned.  Apparently he was afraid that they might get out and become public information.  Frick got all the reports back and they were never seen after that . . .

     I called Robinson in for a conference soon after.  I had to test him and don’t kid yourselves, Robinson is no gentle breeze.  He is a competitor, a gentleman, and has great personal respect.  He is a credit to his race, and to baseball, and he knows that much of his race’s future is on his shoulders.  For two years, in observing that trust, he has had an almost Christ-like taste of turning the other cheek. 

     He has great homage coming to him, and his race owes him homage.  But we must be careful, for some of the things you’d like to do for him just cannot be.  He must be treated the same, no better nor worse, than a white boy of equal ability in our game. ” 

 

-Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey, Wilberforce State College Address, 1948.