“Well,” Robinson said. “We’ll see.”
Rickey had been sitting quietly. Now he spoke.
“You can’t ever let down,” he said. He was looking at Robinson, but Burke knew he was included. “You’re under a microscope. You can’t drink. You can’t be sexually indiscreet. You can’t have opinions about things. You play hard and clean and stay quiet. Can you do it?”
“With a little luck,” Robinson said.
“Luck is the residue of intention,” Rickey said.
He talked pretty good, Burke thought, for a guy who hit .239 lifetime.
Bobby
In April 1947 I was still fourteen. I would be fifteen in the fall. That month Columbia Records brought out Claude Thornhill’s “Snowfall.” RKO released The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, with Cary Grant and Shirley Temple. In South Africa, Zulus danced for the British royal family. In China, Communist insurgents withdrew from Yenan in the face of Nationalist advances. Deborah Kerr bought a house in Los Angeles. The Jewish underground burned a Shell oil dump in Haifa. And when the Dodgers played the Braves on Opening Day, Jackie Robinson played first base for Brooklyn.
April 15 was a Tuesday, and my mother let me stay home from school to listen. It was as if I saw the event. Burnished black face. Bright white uniform. Green grass. I remember Red Barber’s familiar southern voice saying, I believe, “Robinson is very definitely brunette.” I remember thinking how marvelously delicate that was. The event couldn’t be ignored. But it needed to be reported neutrally. Barber had his own signature way of speaking. A big rally meant that a team was “tearing up the pea patch.” An outfielder running down a long fly ball was “on his mule.”
An argument was a “rhubarb.” If the Dodgers had three men on, the bases were “F.O.B.”—full of Brooklyns. If a particularly good hitter was coming up in a particularly crucial spot, Barber would give it a proper introduction as in—“Two on, two out, and here comes Musial.” When he was excited, Barber would say, “Oh, doctor!” Such language seemed, at the time, the way one was supposed to describe a baseball game. Any other way would be inadequate.
In the newspapers, I read every box score. Not just the Dodgers, but every team. I felt that I ought to keep track of what was going on all over baseball. In Cincinnati, in Washington. I subscribed to The Sporting News and often read the box scores from the high minors. I could name the starting lineup for Montreal, in the International League, and St. Paul in the American Association. You can learn a lot from a box score.
Box Score 1
18.
IT DIDN’T TAKE Burke long to pick up the way it was going to be. Pee Wee Reese was supportive. Dixie Walker was not. Everyone else was on the spectrum somewhere between.
In St. Louis the base runner spiked Robinson at first base.
In Chicago he was tagged in the face sliding into second.
In Philly somebody tossed a black cat onto the field.
In Cincinnati he was knocked down three times in one at bat.
In every city he heard the word nigger out of the opposition’s dugout.
There was nothing Burke could do about it. He sat near the corner of the dugout and did nothing. His work was off the field.
There was hate mail. Death threats were forwarded to the police, but there were too many of them. All Robinson and Burke could do was be ready. After a doubleheader against the Giants, Burke drove Robinson uptown. A gray two-door Ford pulled up beside them at a stoplight and Burke stared at the driver. The light changed and the Ford pulled away.
“I’m starting to look at everybody as if they were dangerous,” Burke said.
Robinson glanced over and smiled. The smile said, Pal, you have no idea.
But all he said was, “Un huh.”
They stopped to eat at a restaurant on 125th Street. When Burke and Robinson entered, everyone stared. At first Burke thought it was Robinson. Then he realized that they were staring at him. He was the only white face in the room.
“Sit in the back,” Burke said to Robinson.
“Have to, with you along,” he said.
As they walked through, the diners recognized Robinson and somebody began to clap. Then everybody clapped. Then they stood and clapped and hooted and whistled.
“Probably wasn’t for me,” Burke said.
“Probably not.”
Robinson had a Coke.
“You ever drink booze?” Burke said.
“Not in public,” Robinson said.
“Good.”
Burke looked around. It surprised him that he was uncomfortable being in a room full of colored people. He would have been more uncomfortable without Robinson.
They ordered steak.
“No fried chicken?” Burke said.
“Not in public,” Robinson said.
The room grew suddenly quiet. The silence was so sharp that it made Burke hunch forward so he could reach the gun on his hip. Through the front door came six white men in suits and overcoats and felt hats. There was nothing uneasy about them as they came into the colored place. They swaggered. One of them swaggered like the boss, a little fat guy with his overcoat open over a dark suit. He had on a blue silk tie with a pink flamingo hand painted on it.
“Mr. Paglia,” Robinson said. “He owns the place.”
Without taking off their hats or overcoats, the six men sat at a large round table near the front.
“When Bumpy Johnson was around,” Burke said, “the Italians stayed downtown.”
“Good for colored people to own the businesses they run,” Robinson said.
A big man sitting next to Paglia stood and walked over to the table. He was big. Bigger than either Robinson or Burke. He was thick-bodied and tall, with very little neck and a lot of chin. His face was clean-shaved and had a moist glisten. His shirt was crisp white. His chesterfield overcoat hung open, and he reeked of strong cologne.
“Mr. Paglia wants to buy you a bottle of champagne,” he said to Robinson.
Robinson put a bite of steak in his mouth and chewed it carefully and swallowed and said, “Tell Mr. Paglia, no thank you.”
The big man stared at him for a moment.
“Most people don’t say no to Mr. Paglia, Rastus.”
Robinson said nothing, but his gaze on the big man was heavy.
“Maybe we can buy Mr. Paglia a bottle,” Burke said.
“Mr. Paglia don’t need nobody buying him a bottle.”
“Well, I guess it’s a draw,” Burke said. “Thanks for stopping by.”
The big guy looked at Burke for a long moment, then swaggered back to his boss. He leaned over and spoke to Paglia, his left hand resting on the back of Paglia’s chair. Then he nodded and turned and swaggered back.
“On your feet, boy,” he said to Robinson.
“I’m eating my dinner,” Robinson said.
The big man took hold of Robinson’s arm, and Robinson came out of the chair as if he’d been ejected and hit the big guy with a good right hand. Robinson was nearly two hundred pounds, in good condition, and he knew how to punch. It should have put the big man down. But it didn’t. He took a couple of backward steps and steadied himself and shook his head as if there were flies. At Paglia’s table everyone turned to look. The only sound in the room was the faint clatter of dishes from the kitchen. Burke stood.
“Not up here,” Robinson said. “I’ll take it downtown, but not up here.”
The big man had his head cleared. He looked at the table where Paglia sat.
“Go ahead, Allie,” Paglia said. “Show the nigger something.”
The big man lunged toward Robinson. Burke stepped between them. The big man would have run over him if Burke hadn’t hit him with a pair of brass knuckles. It stopped him but it didn’t put him down. To do that Burke had to get a knee into his groin and hit him again with the brass knuckles. The big man grunted and went down slowly, first to his knees, then slowly toppling face forward onto the floor.
There was no sound in the room. Even the
kitchen noise had stopped. Burke could hear someone’s breath rasping in and out. He’d heard it before. It was his.
The four men at Paglia’s table were on their feet. All of them had guns. Paglia remained seated. He looked mildly amused.
“Don’t shoot them in here,” he said. “Take them out.”
Burke’s .45 was still on his hip. A thin tall man with high shoulders said, “Outside,” and gestured with the .38 belly gun he carried. He held the weapon like it was precious.
“No,” Robinson said.
“How about you, pal?” the gunman said to Burke.
Burke shook his head. The gunman looked at Paglia.
Paglia said, “Okay, shoot them here. Make sure the niggers clean up afterwards.”
The gunman smiled. Burke could see that he liked the work.
“Which one of you wants it first?” he said.
At the next table a small Negro with a thin mustache, wearing a cerulean blue suit, said, “No.”
The gunman glanced at him.
“You too, boy?” he said.
At the table on the other side of them a large woman in a too-tight yellow dress said, “No.” And stood up.
The gunman glanced at her. The small Negro with the mustache stood too. Then everyone at his table stood. The woman in the too-tight dress moved in front of Robinson and Burke. The people from her table joined her. The people from Mustache’s table joined them. Then everyone in the room was on their feet, making an implacable black wall between Robinson and the gunman. Burke took his gun out. Robinson stood motionless, balanced on the balls of his feet. From the bar along the far side of the room came the sound of someone working the action of a pump shotgun. It was a sound, Burke thought, like the sound of a tank, that didn’t sound like anything else. The round-faced bartender leaned his elbows on the bar aiming a shotgun with most of the stock cut off.
The gunman looked at Paglia again. They were an island of pallid faces in a sea of dark faces. Paglia got to his feet for the first time. His face was no longer amused. He looked at Burke through the crowd, and at Robinson, and seemed to study them for a moment.
“His name I know,” Paglia said, jerking his head toward Robinson. Then he stared hard at Burke as if committing him to memory. “What’s your name?”
“Burke.”
Paglia nodded thoughtfully. Looking at Burke through the crowd of black faces, his eyes seemed to refocus, as if recalling something.
“Burke,” he said.
The room was quiet.
“Burke.”
He nodded again and kept nodding. Then he jerked a thumb toward the big man, who had managed to sit up on the floor among the forest of Negro feet. Two of the other men with Paglia eased through the crowd and got the big man on his feet. They looked at Paglia. Paglia looked at Burke again, then turned without speaking and walked out. The gunman put his belly gun away, sadly, and turned and followed Paglia. The other men, two of them helping the big guy, went out after him.
The room remained still and motionless. Then Robinson said again, “Not up here,” and everyone in the room heard him and everyone in the room began to cheer.
“Lucky thing this is a baseball crowd,” Burke said to Robinson.
Robinson looked at Burke for a moment as if he were somewhere else. Then he seemed slowly to come back. He smiled.
“Yeah,” he said. “You scared?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Burke shrugged.
“No,” Robinson said. “I want to know. You could have run off. You didn’t. Aren’t you scared of getting killed?”
“Don’t much care,” Burke said.
“About dying?”
“About anything,” Burke said.
19.
“YOU ARE NOT HERE to take his side,” Mr. Rickey said. “If someone throws a rotten egg at him you let it go. If someone calls him a vile jigaboo you pay no attention. If Robinson comes into the stands after the miscreant who threw the egg, you stop him. If someone tries to shoot Robinson, you stop him. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
Burke was behind the visitors’ dugout at Wrigley Field, looking around the stands. The game was peripheral, but he knew that Robinson was two for two off a struggling Claude Passeau, and the Dodgers had a six-run lead in the fifth inning. Most of the cheap seats were filled with black faces. The box seats, where Burke was, were half empty. A tall thin guy with high shoulders sat down in the seat beside Burke.
“How ya doing,” he said.
He had a bag of peanuts.
“Fine,” Burke said.
“Remember me,” he said. “The shine joint up on Lenox Ave.”
“I do,” Burke said.
“I got a message,” he said.
Burke didn’t say anything. The thin high-shouldered man took a peanut from his bag, and shelled it. Both men were staring at the field. But Burke’s full concentration was on the thin man.
There was movement on the field. Somebody had hit the ball. Somebody had caught it.
“For me,” Burke said.
“For you and young Rastus.” The thin guy nodded toward the field.
Burke didn’t say anything. The inning must have ended. Teams were coming in and going out. The thin man ate another peanut.
“Mr. Paglia says that you and the nigger going to die this season.”
“Why tell me about it,” Burke said. “I’ll know when it happens.”
The thin guy grinned.
“Don’t rattle too easy, do you.”
“I don’t,” Burke said.
“Me either. Mr. Paglia’s insulted. So he wants you to know ahead of time. He wants you to know it was him when it happens. He wants you to sweat about it for a while.”
“Who’s going to do the shooting?”
“Probably be me,” the thin guy said.
Burke nodded. Beer was being passed. Peanuts were tossed. The base paths were reddish. The grass was bright green. Behind the left field fence, across the street, people were watching the game from the roof of a building.
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Burke said.
The thin man ate his peanuts. He was careful about it. Open the shell, take out the nuts inside, throw away the shells, pop the nuts into his mouth, chew slowly, his eyes on the field.
“Still got that big forty-five?” he said after a while.
“Yep.”
He ate three more peanuts. They smelled good.
“Kind of clumsy to pull,” he said.
“Knock you on your ass, though.”
“True.”
He offered his bag of peanuts. Burke took a couple. The game on the field seemed silent and remote.
“Lemme ask you something,” the thin guy said.
Burke didn’t say anything.
“I seen you,” he said. “Up in Harlem. You can handle yourself. Fists. Gun. You know what you’re doing.”
Burke ate his peanuts.
“So how come,” the thin guy said, “you’re hanging around with this buck nigger like he was your cousin?”
“Can’t sing or dance,” Burke said.
“It’s work,” the thin man said.
Burke nodded.
“There’s a lot of work,” the thin man said.
“Like walking behind a fat thug who can’t do his own shooting?”
“He don’t have to no more,” the thin man said.
“You do it.”
The thin man grinned.
“Can’t sing or dance,” he said.
The ex cathedra voice of the PA announcer said that Stan Hack was batting for Claude Passeau. Hack.
“So how come?” the thin man said.
“It’s a good payday,” Burke said.
“You a nigger lover?”
“I don’t love much of anything,” Burke said.
The thin man nodded as if he knew about that.
“You willing to die for this coon?” he said.
“Been willin
g to die for a lot less,” Burke said.
The thin guy was quiet for a while. Then he shrugged.
“Well,” he said. “You signed on for it.”
Hack popped the ball high and foul to the left side. They watched Spider Jorgenson catch it in the third-base coaches’ box and the inning was over. When Burke looked back, the thin man was gone.
Box Score 2
Bobby
I played first base on the junior high school team and hit .303 that year, though the averages were sometimes suspect because the fifth-grade teacher was our scorekeeper and she gave everyone a hit who reached base. No one ever reached on an error. The school supplied the uniforms, grayish woolens with blue numbers. They had to be worn by a new player after you left, so they were of a generic size, and tended to bag. The school also issued the catcher’s mitt and the first baseman’s mitt. It was a claw, a three-fingered glove with the fingers laced together.
While I listened to the Dodgers games, I usually kept a scorecard, and, when my father came home from work, I would share it with him. It never occurred to me that he would be less interested than I, and, in fact, if he was, he never said.
If I missed a game, I could listen, usually with my father on the screened front porch, at seven in the evening, to a fifteen-minute recreation of the game, complete with sound effects and an announcer, it might have been Ward Wilson, simulating play by play. If I hadn’t listened to the real game I tried not to know the score when I listened to the re-creation. If the Dodgers had lost, and I knew it, I didn’t listen. The knowledge was painful enough without having it dramatized.
Other things were taking place in the world. I knew that there was a civil war in China, something with the Communists. I knew there was something going on in Greece. I knew Truman was president and George Marshall was secretary of state. I now knew the facts of life. I knew that it was thought dangerous to swim in the summer because you might get infantile paralysis. I knew a lot. But I didn’t care. What I cared about was sex and the Brooklyn Dodgers.
20.
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