Except his temper.
Rickey knew that Robinson’s temper was particularly explosive
when he was confronted with racial bigotry—whether as a teenager on
the streets of Pasadena, during athletic competitions, or while serving as a soldier. Lieutenant Robinson had been court-martialed for insubordination after refusing to move to the back of a military bus in Fort Hood, Texas.
Robinson was cleared of the charges and discharged from the army
in late November 1944. He began playing the next spring with the
Monarchs. He did not like the Negro leagues and the ways black base-
ball perpetuated Jim Crowism. He hated the long bus rides, the Jim
Crow hotels and restaurants, the poor umpiring, and the carousing of his teammates. His feelings on drinking and sexual abstinence put him at odds with his teammates.
Robert Abernathy played with Robinson for the Monarchs during
the summer of 1945.
“Jackie Robinson, he was a good player, but he had some temper—
temper like a rattlesnake,” Abernathy said. “The umpire would call a strike or a bad call on him and he wanted to argue. And then he’d get in there and he’d knock the cover off the ball.
“Jackie said, ‘Ab, you’re a good ballplayer’ and I’d say, ‘So are you—just control your temper.’ And he said, ‘Well, I ain’t gonna take no mess.’ ”10
IntroductIon
5
Reports about Robinson’s temper got back to Rickey, who was
clearly worried about Robinson’s ability to control his anger.
For Robinson to succeed, Rickey knew, he could not respond to the
indignities that would be piled onto him, or he would give credence to the segregationists who said blacks were too temperamental to play in the major leagues. Segregationists had long said that mixing blacks and whites on baseball diamonds inevitably would lead to fistfights on the field and race riots in the bleachers.11
Rickey needed to know what was inside Robinson.
“I know you’re a good ballplayer,” Rickey told him. “What I don’t
know is whether you have the guts.”
Rickey’s words stung Robinson, whose fists clenched while anger
stirred in his stomach. Nobody had ever questioned Robinson’s guts.
He started to respond. But Rickey cut him off.
“I’m looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back,”
Rickey said.
Rickey did not immediately say anything more.
He took off his coat and transformed himself from baseball execu-
tive to method actor. First, he was a white hotel clerk refusing the black Robinson a room, then a white waiter denying Robinson service, and
then a white train conductor sticking a finger in Robinson’s face and calling him “boy.”
Rickey then became a foulmouthed opposing player who, as Robin-
son later recalled, derided “my race, my parents, in language that was almost unendurable.”
And finally, Rickey became a vindictive base stealer who slid into
Robinson with his spikes high in the air, hoping to bloody the infielder trying to tag him out.
“How do you like that, nigger boy?” the base stealer said.
Rickey, the base stealer, swung his fist at Robinson’s head.
Robinson did not flinch. He did not respond.12
Rickey opened a book published in 1921, Giovanni Papini’s Life of Christ, and read Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain” (Matt. 5:38–41 KJV).
6
JACKIE ROBINSON
Robinson recognized the text and the point Rickey was making, and
what was required of him.
“I have two cheeks, Mr. Rickey,” Robinson replied. “Is that it?”13
Rickey nodded and then smiled. Robinson’s words were just what
Rickey hoped to hear.
“Well, I thought the old man was going to kiss him,” remembered
Clyde Sukeforth, who witnessed the exchange.14
But Rickey had to make sure that Robinson understood what he was
getting himself into.
“We can’t fight our way through this,” Rickey said. “We’ve got no
army. There’s virtually nobody on our side. No owners, no umpires, very few newspapermen. And I’m afraid that many fans will be hostile.”15
Rickey asked Robinson for his assurance that he would restrain
himself from responding to any verbal or physical confrontation, on
or off the field. He told Robinson that if he lost his temper, it would vindicate those who believed blacks did not belong in white baseball.
Rickey told Robinson he would have to be “a man big enough to bear
the cross of martyrdom.”16
Robinson agreed.
Rickey signed Robinson to a contract with the Montreal Royals. It
included a bonus of $3,500 and a salary of $600 a month.
He insisted that Robinson keep the news to himself. Robinson
told neither Rachel nor his mother, Mallie. As Robinson got to know
Rickey, he found that the white baseball executive reminded him of
his mother because both possessed a deep and uncompromising faith
in God.
“I am not the most religious person in the world. I believe in God, in the Bible and in trying to do the right thing as I understand it,” Robinson once said. “I am sure there are many, many better Christians than I. Yet, it has always impressed me that two of the people who had the greatest influence on my life—my mother and Branch Rickey—had
such deep faith in the existence of a Supreme Being. It is one thing to express faith. It is another thing to do as these two people did—to practice faith every day of one’s life.”17
The next two months were anxious ones for Robinson. He did not
know Rickey well enough yet to fully believe him. He tried to go on
with his life as it was, but he could not stop thinking about the opportunity ahead for him. Nor could he help but wonder whether this
would become another deferred dream for another black person.
IntroductIon
7
Two months later, on October 23, Brooklyn announced it had
signed Robinson for its Montreal team. By doing so, Rickey fulfilled a promise he had made to himself decades earlier, when he was the
baseball coach at Ohio Wesleyan University, a private Methodist-
affiliated school in Delaware, Ohio.
In 1903, the Ohio Wesleyan team traveled to South Bend, Indi-
ana, for a game against the University of Notre Dame. The hotel clerk denied a room to Charles “Tommy” Thomas, the team’s only black
player. Rickey asked if Thomas could sleep on a cot in his room. The clerk agreed.
Later that evening, Rickey said, he saw Thomas sobbing and rub-
bing his hands, saying, “Black skin. Black skin. If only I could make them white.”
Rickey said the scene haunted him.
“I vowed,” Rickey told the Associated Press after he signed Robinson,
“that I would always do whatever I could to see that other Americans did not have to face the bitter humiliation that was heaped upon
Charles Thomas.”18
Rickey could not make good on the promise he made to Thomas by
himself. He needed the right man—and in Robinson he found him.
Rickey, it appears, did not tell Robinson the story of Charles
Thomas. But, as Robinson later
explained in an article he wrote for
Guideposts magazine, Rickey told another story as the men discussed what might happen if Robinson integrated baseball.
“There will be trouble ahead—for you, for me, for my people, for
baseball,” Robinson told Rickey.
“Trouble ahead,” Rickey said, repeating Robinson’s words. “You
know, Jackie, I was a small boy when I took my first train ride. On the same train was an old couple, also riding for the first time. We were going through the Rocky Mountains. The old man sitting by the window looked forward and said to his wife, ‘Trouble ahead, Ma! We’re
high up over a precipice and we’re going to run right off!’
“To my boyish ears the noise of the wheels repeated, ‘Trouble
a-head, trouble-ahead. . . .’ I never hear train wheels to this day but that I think of this. But our train course bent into a tunnel right after the old man spoke, and we came out on the other side of the mountain.
That’s the way it is with most trouble ahead in this world, Jackie—if we use the common sense and courage God gave us. But you’ve got to
study the hazards and build wisely.”19
8
JACKIE ROBINSON
Robinson said he never forgot that story. He also did not forget that Rickey told him he would not be alone.
“God is with us in this, Jackie,” Rickey told Robinson. “You know
your Bible. It’s good, simple Christianity for us to face realities and to recognize what we’re up against. We can’t go out and preach and
crusade and bust our heads against the wall. We’ve got to fight out our problems together with tact and common sense.”20
Robinson had never met anyone like Rickey. Robinson learned to
be suspicious of whites. And yet he implicitly trusted Rickey. When he later remembered their first meeting, Robinson recalled how Rickey’s
“piercing eyes looked at me with such meticulous care. I felt almost naked.” But once he got to know Rickey, Robinson learned he had
no greater protector. “He was like a piece of mobile armor, and he
would throw himself and his advice in the way of anything likely to
hurt me.”21
Nobody in sports had more at stake, and no one ever suffered
more than Robinson. Opposing pitchers threw at him. Opposing base
runners spiked him. Fans screamed the vilest of racial epithets. He
routinely received death threats.
If he failed, he affirmed the belief of many whites that blacks were inferior. If he lost his temper, he affirmed the belief of those who thought blacks did not have the temperament to play white baseball.
It was not enough for him to be good enough for the major leagues;
he had to be better than most of the other players, he had to beat them at their own game, and do so with grace and dignity and equanimity.
If Robinson succeeded, he succeeded for all blacks and the millions
of whites who believed in racial equality. His success would inspire millions of blacks that they, too, deserved to be treated with equality and fairness. It would cure many white Americans of their belief that blacks were inferior, and convince many others that blacks should have the same opportunities as whites—not just in baseball but also in jobs, housing, and education.
Through it all, Robinson remained steadfast, firmly convinced that
God was guiding him, that God was on his side, and that God would
sustain him. Trusting God as his constant companion, Robinson
exemplified redemptive suffering on the baseball diamond: he turned
the other cheek in the face of viciousness.
Robinson succeeded, he felt, because God sides with right, not
might. Robinson had no doubt that God favored the cause of racial
justice over the forces of bigotry and discrimination. God was on his
IntroductIon
9
side, fighting for equality, and not with the bigots who tormented him or with those who indifferently turned their backs on injustice.
While Robinson occasionally made public statements about his
faith, he expressed his faith in these early baseball years mostly in the quiet of the night. His prayer time was intensely private, according to Rachel Robinson, who left her husband alone as he prayed for strength and courage to face the next day’s trials and tribulations. Rachel knew that turning the cheek did not come naturally to her husband. He was not nonviolent by nature, and felt he needed all the help he could get through his nightly ritual of prayer.
Robinson’s strength in the face of those threats and unspeakable
obscenities demonstrated his Christian faith. He succeeded in no small part because of his strong faith in God, which was instilled in him
through his mother, Branch Rickey, and his own prayers. “I can testify to the fact that it was a lot harder to turn the other cheek and refuse to fight back than it would have been to exercise a normal reaction,”
Robinson once wrote. “But it works, because sooner or later it brings a sense of shame to those who attack you. And that sense of shame is often the beginning of progress.”22
From their first meeting, Rickey put his faith in Robinson, and Rob-
inson remained steadfast in that faith. Robinson repeatedly observed how Rickey anticipated difficulties before they happened and then
informed the ballplayer and instructed him how he should act. This
would repeat itself during Robinson’s season with the Montreal Royals in 1946 and during his career with the Dodgers.
Robinson was convinced that Rickey was being directed by a higher
power.
“It was impossible for me to believe otherwise,” Robinson said.
“The first few times he did it, I waved it away as coincidences. But the evidence kept piling up until I realized that I was dealing with a man who had found a way to project himself into the future. I began to
accept the fact that Branch Rickey was receiving the kind of help which is above and beyond the understanding of man. It was most valuable to me to know that he had that kind of help. For, when I came to believe that God was working with and guiding Mr. Rickey, I began to also
believe that he was guiding me.”23
The famous meeting of the Methodists is depicted in 42, the 2013 bio-graphical movie starring Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson and
Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey. Then the movie turns to the familiar,
10
JACKIE ROBINSON
inspiring saga of Robinson’s courageous fight against racism in baseball and society.
What is overlooked in 42 is that Robinson was a deeply religious man and that the story of his life was spiritual at its core.
Robinson’s faith in God, as he attested, carried him not only through the torment of integrating the major leagues but also through the difficult years of advancing civil rights after he left the baseball diamond.
The purpose of this book is to take Robinson at his word and help
readers recognize and understand the indispensable role that Christian faith played throughout his life.
The importance of faith for Robinson may come as a surprise to
readers. Brian Helgeland, the screenwriter of 42, is far from alone in largely ignoring Robinson’s Christianity.24 It’s all too easy to read one of the numerous books about Robinson without coming across one
word about his religious convictions.
Arnold Rampersad, who has written the best biography of Robin-
son, nicely captured Robinson’s reliance on faith in his fight for freedom in Major League Baseball and in the wider society.
This book will use and build upon Rampersad’s important work by
looking at Robinson’s life through the lens of faith.
Doing so, the book will show that to ignore Robinson’s faith is to
&n
bsp; take away the very foundation on which he stood as he shattered the
color barrier in baseball and became a leading figure in the civil rights movement after baseball.
It is simply impossible to understand Robinson in depth without
tending to his Christian belief in God. Only when we see faith in every part of Robinson’s life—from his birth to his death—will we understand that Robinson was a man for whom Christian faith acted as a
source of inspiration and motivation, comfort and strength, wisdom
and direction.
Jackie Robinson was a Hall of Famer and a civil rights leader, to be sure. But first and foremost, he was a Christian believer.
part one
The Exodus
1
“I Put My Trust in God and Moved”
The Active Faith of Mallie Robinson
Mallie Robinson refused ether when Jackie was born at the Robinson
home in Cairo, Georgia, on the evening of January 31, 1919. The visiting doctor wanted to administer the drug, but she had heard of a white woman who had fallen asleep after receiving ether and never regained consciousness. Fearing the same would happen to her, Mallie firmly
resisted the doctor’s entreaties, experiencing every ounce of pain that came with delivering Jack Roosevelt Robinson.
While she cradled her newborn son—named for President Theo-
dore Roosevelt—Mallie’s husband, Jerry, her brother, and her brother-in-law busied themselves making “sugar teats,” lard and sugar wrapped in cheesecloth to resemble nipples that would ease Jackie’s entrance into his new world. Lots of lard ended up on the floor, and as Mallie surveyed the hapless men and the sparse surroundings, she looked at
her newborn and whispered a blessing. “Bless you, my boy,” she said.
“For you to survive all this, God will have to keep his eye on you.”1
Little did she know how true this would be.
Mallie McGriff first met Jerry Robinson at a Christmas party in
1903 on the Jim Sasser plantation just outside Cairo, where Jerry’s
parents lived and labored. Mallie’s father, a former slave, was not
impressed when he learned that his fourteen-year-old daughter and
Jerry had walked home together after the party and, worse, had made
Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography Page 2