Opening Day

by Jonathan Eig

  It should have been shocking news that two black men—and possibly a third—were set to play in the nation’s southernmost big-league city. Instead, the announcement went largely unnoticed. In New York the Daily News devoted three paragraphs to the story, the Post gave it two, and the Times wrapped it into a six-paragraph story about the latest Browns loss, a 16–2 shellacking by the Philadelphia Athletics. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch awarded the news six paragraphs, describing the two players as “capable,” and injecting a note of skepticism. The story noted that Browns owner Richard Muckerman was not on hand for the announcement but left a note saying the players had been signed only because he thought they would help the team, not as a cheap trick to boost attendance. No one was buying it, but, then again, no one cared much, either. While it’s tempting to chalk up the blasé response to growing racial harmony and the widespread acceptance of Jackie Robinson, it probably had more to do with the fact that no one cared about anything where the St. Louis Browns were concerned.

  The Browns were baseball’s garbage heap, an assemblage of trash and spare parts tossed aside or untouched by other teams. They were so far and so consistently out of the running in the American League that it was possible at times to forget they were playing at all. St. Louis fans often wished they weren’t. In 1935, while compiling a 65–87 record and finishing in seventh place, the team drew only 80,922 fans the entire season. The Yankees, by way of comparison, packed 74,747 fans into their home stadium for one game in May of 1947. But who wanted to buy a ticket to misery? In 1939, the Brownies finished 43–111, leaving the team an astonishing 641/2 games out of first place. Only when the war began and every team found its talent supply depleted did the team finally manage to compete. In 1944, to nearly everyone’s surprise, the team captured the American League pennant. The next year, though, they reverted to form, and by 1947 they were back in last place with a record of 28–50.

  “A bunch of bums,” said Bob Dillinger, the Browns’ third baseman, recalling his teammates in 1947. For one game in July, shortly before the announcement that Thompson and Brown would join the team, only 478 fans showed up at Sportsman’s Park for a Browns game against the Washington Senators. Shirley Povich, stuck with the job of covering the action for the Washington Post, noted that the Senators’ take from the game’s receipts wouldn’t be enough to pay the team’s laundry bill.

  Thompson and Brown had been playing with the Kansas City Monarchs before getting the call to join the Browns. Tom Baird, a white man who co-owned the Monarchs, was still angry that he’d lost Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers without compensation from Branch Rickey and that Rickey had more or less ignored his complaint. When the Browns agreed to pay five thousand dollars for Thompson and Brown, with more to come if they lasted a month with the team, Baird made sure to tell the press that this was the way he expected business to be done in the future if white teams expected to continue using his Monarchs as an orchard for the growth and development of black talent.

  • • •

  Brown and Thompson expressed excitement about their promotions, setting aside whatever doubts they might have felt at joining major-league baseball’s worst team. Had the opportunity come along a year or two later, they might have been more selective. They might have turned their backs on the Browns and waited for better offers, but that wasn’t an option yet. On July 17, less than two weeks after Doby’s debut, Thompson was penciled in as the starting second baseman and the seventh batter in the lineup against the Philadelphia Athletics. He popped out on a foul ball in the second inning, lined out to right in the fourth, popped out on another foul in the seventh, and grounded out to second in the ninth. The Browns committed four errors, including one by Thompson, in a 16–2 loss. And the worst news of all was that a mere thirty-six hundred people paid to see the game. Brown remained on the bench.

  The next day, with six thousand fans on hand, Thompson played while Brown rode the pine once again. Muddy Ruel, the team’s manager, had Ray Coleman (a .259 hitter), Jeff Heath (.251), and Paul “Peanuts” Lehner (.248) in the outfield. They were not exactly terrorizing opponents, and yet Ruel decided he had no room in the lineup for Brown, and he made it known that he had no intention of discussing his decision.

  Not until July 20, against the Red Sox, did Brown get a chance to start in right field. With Thompson at second and Brown in right, the Browns became the first team to put two black men on the field at the same time. In the first half of a doubleheader, Thompson went hitless. Brown managed only a single. Still, the Browns topped the Red Sox, 4–3. In the second game that afternoon, Thompson had two hits, Brown had none, and the Brownies won again, 7–6, giving the team its first sweep of a doubleheader in fourteen tries. The team now had a winning record, three wins against two losses, since integrating its lineup.

  In St. Louis, fans were unmoved. Attendance remained woeful, and Ruel continued to play Thompson and Brown only sparingly. On July 23, Brown banged four hits against the Yankees, leading the Browns to an 8–2 win in front of a big crowd in the Bronx. On August 13, the Browns were trailing the Tigers 5–3 and had one man on base when Brown was sent in to pinch hit. Using a bat borrowed from teammate Jeff Heath, Brown blasted the ball to deep center, and then sped around the bases for a game-tying, inside-the-park homer. It was the first home run ever hit by a black man in the American League, yet the bat was not destined for the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. When Brown returned to the dugout, Heath grabbed the piece of lumber he had loaned the black slugger and smashed it to pieces, making sure no one would ever use it again.

  Ten days later, Brown and Thompson both were gone, sent back to the Monarchs in time for the Browns to avoid paying for a full season of their services. A spokesman for the team said the players had failed to reach major-league standards. Brown, hitting .179, had not done much to win a spot on the roster. But Thompson had been batting .256, better than the team average of .241, with a .341 on-base percentage, better than the team’s .318. His five errors as a second baseman were cause for concern, although not so unusual for a rookie. Replacing Thompson was Johnny Berardino, who would go on to finish the season with a .261 average and a measly 20 RBIs. (He had better luck as an actor, landing the part of Dr. Steve Hardy on TV’s General Hospital in 1963, and keeping it more than thirty years.)

  Had the Browns been the least bit interested in Thompson, or in integration for that matter, they might have sent their young, black infielder to the minor leagues for some grooming. Perhaps if St. Louis fans had shown more support for the team’s black players, Muckerman would have considered making a greater investment in Thompson. As it turned out, Thompson got another chance in 1949 with the New York Giants, and he proved that he belonged in the majors. He went on to hit .267 with 129 home runs in nine big-league seasons, and played in two World Series.

  Brown, however, never again appeared in the major leagues. He finished the season in Kansas City with a .336 average, and went on to hit .374 the following year, and .371 the year after that. In 2006, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He never had anything good to say about his big-league tour. “The Browns couldn’t beat the Monarchs no kind of way, only if we was asleep,” he recalled. “That’s the truth. They didn’t have nothing.”

  • • •

  In Cleveland, meanwhile, Larry Doby was struggling almost as much as Brown had been. Though the Indians were not in the running for the American League pennant, and though manager Lou Boudreau seemed enthusiastic about his newest player, Doby nevertheless got very little playing time.

  On July 6, Doby’s second day with the team, Boudreau sent him out to play first base in the second half of a doubleheader. Doby had never played first and didn’t own a first baseman’s mitt. He tried to borrow one from the team’s regular first baseman, Eddie Robinson, but Robinson refused to hand it over. He said he had no problem playing with a black man; he simply didn’t want to lend a glove to anyone who might cost him his job. He admitted, though, that he and his teamm
ates were unsure how to treat Doby. “We were apprehensive,” he said. “You didn’t know exactly how it was going to go.” Robinson eventually relented, handing his glove to the team’s traveling secretary, Spud Goldstein, who passed it along.

  Doby drove in a run with an infield single in his first game as a first baseman, but after that he watched three games in a row from the bench. His next five appearances were as a pinch hitter. Over the rest of the season, he appeared in only twenty-nine games, usually as a pinch hitter, and managed only five hits in thirty-two at-bats, striking out eleven times. “Doby wasn’t prepared,” said Al Rosen, who was also a rookie with the Indians in 1947. “Pinch hitting is not a very pleasant experience for a young player. You’re just up there swinging. For an older player, it’s another story because you know the pitchers and what they throw.”

  Years later, when analyzing the results of his experiment, Bill Veeck called Doby “a complete bust” in his rookie season. The ballplayer “had never come face-to-face with prejudice until he became a big leaguer,” he wrote. Had he come along a few years later, when the pressures were less, said Veeck, Doby might have become one of the game’s all-time greats. On the other hand, if Veeck had assigned Doby to the minors and prepared his team better for its experiment in integration, the results might have been different. Even so, Doby would return in 1948 and have a much better season. As a full-time outfielder that year he hit .301 and helped the Indians win the World Series. After eleven more seasons, he retired with a .283 batting average and 253 home runs. In 1998 he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

  • • •

  Black Americans had developed many strong businesses in response to segregation, taking what they were given and making the best of it. There were black hospitals, black schools, black charities, black motion picture companies, black churches, black newspapers, black bus lines, black taxicab fleets. Though most of these businesses and institutions were sources of pride, they were also seen as somehow inferior, reminders that black Americans had not yet been accepted as equals in their own country. Integration, many hoped, would bring equality, dignity, and opportunity.

  Later, those feelings would change. Frustration would settle in, subtly at first, and then with force. Many black Americans would come to resent the fact that white people were setting the terms for integration and proceeding at a less-than-urgent pace. They would complain that when white Hollywood producers hired black actors to attract black audiences, they tended to cast them as butlers and maids. But by the time many black Americans recognized what was happening, it was too late. Now, as black baseball fans attached themselves to the Brooklyn Dodgers, they also became familiar with the pleasures of the big-league game, with the voice of Red Barber, with daily box scores in the newspaper, with the sweet swing of Stan Musial. As a result, the Negro leagues suffered an identity crisis. Should the black leagues try to compete with white leagues, or give up and serve as de facto farm teams? Should they try to hang on by embracing segregation, or accept what even some owners considered the greater good of integration?

  “There is considerable apprehension within the ranks of Negro baseball these days,” Wendell Smith wrote. “Owners of teams in the Negro American and Negro National Leagues are concerned because they fear that Organized Baseball is going to take their stars and subsequently kill Negro baseball altogether. . . . They contend they have felt the effects of Robinson’s drawing power already this season.” Smith tried again to be an optimist. If the Negro-league owners did a better job of promotion and presented games in a more “dignified and business-like manner,” fans would remain loyal, he said.

  The black newspaper writers were nearly unanimous in their support for integration, and so were the owners of Negro-league teams, even though Jim Crow was essential to the success of both their industries. The few voices crying out for the protection and preservation of black baseball tended to be whites, including Calvin Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, who wrote that white baseball had “no right to destroy” the Negro leagues. He continued: “Your two [Negro] leagues have established a splendid reputation and now have the support and respect of the colored people all over this country as well as the decent white people. . . . Anything that is worthwhile is worth fighting for so you folks should leave not a stone unturned to protect the existence of your two established Negro leagues. Don’t let anybody tear it down.” But the black press accused Griffith of dishonesty, saying his kind words for the Negro leagues were a clever way of disguising his opposition to integration. They noted that Griffith, known as “The Old Fox,” collected a fair bit of money from Negro-league teams who paid rent to use Griffith Stadium.

  Various proposals were floated to save the Negro leagues, estimated at the time as a $2-million-a-year business. Some suggested the leagues should start recruiting white players. Others said the leagues should become part of white baseball’s farm system. But most people believed Negro baseball was worth sacrificing on behalf of integration.

  As one letter to the editor of the Chicago Defender said:

  The protest of the Negro baseballers is as selfish as any plantation owner of slavery-bound men in the days prior to the Civil War. Their own interest is above that of their nation. This is an appeal to all Negroes to avoid this, for their freedom means freedom to all men, and courage to men of other lands. Segregate yourselves and others will do no better.

  Attendance was slipping wherever Negro-league teams played ball in 1947, and it was slipping at a particularly alarming rate in the Northeast, where fans had the greatest opportunity to see Robinson. At Yankee Stadium, attendance for black baseball games dropped from 158,000 in 1946 to 63,000 in 1947. In Newark, the number of paying customers fell from 120,000 to 57,000.

  The speed of the collapse was stunning, and so was the response of team owners in the Negro leagues. To offset their losses, owners of black teams began cutting some of their veteran players and hiring younger talent. Operating budgets were stretched thinner than ever, and the quality of competition slipped. In July, a mere thirty-eight hundred fans turned out to see the Baltimore Elite Giants play the Newark Eagles on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Baltimore—and that was the largest crowd the Elite Giants had drawn in more than two months. The picture was coming into focus, and it was gloomy.

  • • •

  The Negro leagues enjoyed one last hurrah in 1947, at the East-West All-Star game, played on July 27, 1947, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Fans buzzed over the game for weeks in advance, and tickets sold out quickly.

  The East-West game, which began in 1933, was inspired by the first big-league All-Star game, which had been held earlier the same summer. The Negro-league version was sponsored by the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, and readers chose the starting players by clipping ballots from their newspapers and mailing them in. The East-West game was bigger than the Negro Leagues World Series. For players, there was no greater honor than being elected.

  On the day of the game in 1947, enormous crowds packed the streets around Comiskey Park. Chicago’s new mayor, Martin H. Kennelly, threw out the first pitch. Big-league scouts came out to watch, and the black papers were saying that at least three or four all-stars would likely wind up in the big leagues. Charles Graham, owner of the San Francisco Seals, one of the top teams in the all-white Pacific Coast League, attended the game and told a reporter he was prepared to integrate his team. “We’ll hire any Negro player who really can help us,” he said. There were plenty of talented men to choose from, including Orestes “Minnie” Minoso of the New York Cubans. Minoso recalled feeling extra pressure, knowing the scouts were watching, and knowing that Jackie Robinson had flung open the door. “You doubled your ambition,” he said. “You worked harder.”

  By game time, 48,112 paying customers filled Comiskey Park. The West beat the East, 5–2. Dan Bankhead, the hard-throwing righty, got the win after giving up one run in three innings of work. Less than a month later, Bankhead would be in the majors, sig
ned by Branch Rickey to help boost the Dodgers’ bedraggled pitching corps. Minoso would follow soon after, as would his fellow all-stars Monte Irvin and Sam Jethroe. Never again would such a crowd gather to see all-black teams play ball.

  SIXTEEN

  THE POISON PEN

  As summer rounded second and headed for third, everything was going Robinson’s way. Yet he was not the sort of man to celebrate his success or to attempt to cash in on it, at least not yet. He did not buy new suits or treat his wife to lavish nights on the town. He did not demand a better locker. Nor did he pressure Branch Rickey to renegotiate his salary. He made no effort to charm the men in the press box. In fact, he still wasn’t even sure whether to call the newspapermen by their first names, as the rest of his teammates did without hesitation. “Hello, how are you?” Robinson would say, and leave it at that.

  On July 18, when the Cardinals came to town, Ebbets Field was filled to capacity. The return of the Cards might have prompted some members of the press to revisit the story of the alleged player strike or to assess how much progress Robinson had made since the early part of the season. But no one did. The Dodgers were leading the race for the National League pennant, but the Cards, Giants, and Braves all were close behind. That was the big story at game time.

  In the first inning, Robinson reached on a fielder’s choice and scored. In the third inning, he drove in a run with a single. In the seventh, he lined his sixth home run of the season into the seats beyond left field. It was the first time all season he’d driven in three runs in a game. For seven innings, Ralph Branca threw a perfect game, twenty-one batters up, twenty-one down. In the eighth, Enos Slaughter bounced a single between Robinson and Stanky for the Cardinals’ only hit. After the game, the long-armed, big-nosed Branca was all smiles, and the mood in the clubhouse was effervescent. “You’d have thought the Dodgers had just clinched the pennant . . . ,” Dick Young wrote.