Branch Rickey

by Jimmy Breslin

  Rickey figured it would be best to let McLaughlin extol Democrats while he listened avidly. Keep low opinion of Roosevelt out of the conversation, he warned himself. At some point in the business talk, Rickey mentioned to McLaughlin that he wanted to make a large expenditure for scouts. These men would find good players who were too young to be drafted into the war now but would serve someday soon, and then, God willing, come home strong and swift and eager to play. Some of the prospects now were as young as fifteen and sixteen; there was this boy in Compton, California, everybody called him Duke, last name Snider. Rickey’s plan would bring all that young talent to play alongside returning Brooklyn veterans. McLaughlin was in favor.

  “By the way, all these scouts would cost a lot of money,” Rickey said.

  McLaughlin still loved the idea. “We’ll get a march on all of them.”

  Rickey now made a careful choice of his words and tone. Be passionate. No, entirely inappropriate. Be nonchalant. Not that, either. Why not just try the truth? This is no coward we have here. This is a secure man. So he told McLaughlin that by looking for all this new talent, the scouts might come across “a Negro player or two.”

  McLaughlin showed nothing. Of course he knew exactly what this meant. Rickey was not just throwing out a casual idea. The man would bring a stranger under the roof, a black who should be mowing lawns and instead would be running bases in this white national sport.

  Then George V. started to count.

  His friend Bill Shea remembered: “He figured that at the least there were a million blacks who played baseball. He knew right there in that room that it was only sensible to look for players who could make the Dodgers. And fill seats at Ebbets Field and all over the league. The players who could do it were out there.”

  McLaughlin had an old style of reasoning that came from years in police stations and bank negotiations. “If you want to do this to get a beat on the other teams and make some money, then let’s do it,” he told Rickey. “But if you want to do this for some social change, forget it. We want to win and make money. Don’t try to bring principle into this. If this doesn’t work for money, you’re sunk.”

  Rickey tingled inside. He had found a man whose seemingly flat indifference to the enormity of the subject, reducing it from a religious calling to a way of making more money, gave hope. What these two men had just done was agree to put their hands into the troubled history of America and fix it, starting in a baseball dugout.

  As they were now partners in this undertaking, Rickey asked McLaughlin to get the other directors together and clear this sudden and large scouting expenditure. McLaughlin said sure, why not? He put together a luncheon with George Barnewall, a close friend of McLaughlin’s at the Brooklyn Trust, Joe Gilleaudeau, who represented the Ebbets family, and James Mulvey of the McKeever interest.

  The luncheon was at the New York Athletic Club, on the corner of Central Park South and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. McLaughlin said that if they had tried to meet in Brooklyn, the first fifty people seeing them would spy or hound the subject out of them. The AC, as it was known whenever decent Catholics gathered, was an unlikely site to introduce a black into anything; the club didn’t even have one caring for the garbage. Sportswriters who might be hanging around the club would be easy to shoo away. McLaughlin knew what to do if any Catholics might wander by: Give a look that said, “I’ll have you in detention pens.” And there would be no Jewish sportswriters disturbing the secrecy because there were no Jews allowed inside the club, either. Once, Norton Peppis, the great Queens gambler, was pursued by Ruby Stein, a racket guy who wanted his money, right up to the doorway of the AC, which Peppis, with a smattering of Irish blood, jumped through while Stein stood on the sidewalk and caterwauled about anti-Semitism.

  At the meeting, George V. McLaughlin opened the conversation by saying he thought that Rickey had a great idea about scouting that could mean blacks would be signed to play for the team. Because it was George V. saying this, nobody choked, as they might have if anybody else was talking. McLaughlin lectured the table that this was about the greatest virtue, making money. Barnewell said, “We probably haven’t tapped the Negro market enough.” The others agreed.

  I am playing with children, Rickey thought. George V. then turned it over to Rickey, whose bushy eyebrows were bunched. His voice was low and rolled on without pause. The cigar in his right hand provided the smoke and his waving left hand was the mirror.

  “Prejudice,” Rickey told the table. “It reflects an attitude of a great many people in this country who don’t introspect themselves very closely about their own prejudices. . . . You can’t meet it with words. You can’t take prejudice straight on. It must be done by proximity. Proximity! The player alongside you. No matter what the skin color or language. Win the game. Win all. Get the championship and the check that goes with it.”

  Rickey and McLaughlin were probably the only men in the room who actually worked for a living. How do we handle these owners if they oppose us, McLaughlin remembered thinking.

  On the way back to his Montague Street office, Rickey had the driver stop at Ebbets Field, the home of the Dodgers. A watchman let him in and he went past the closed hot dog and beer stand and out to the seats behind home plate. He still was new and had never before noticed the sign running along the bottom of the scoreboard on the right field fence. It was a delight to Brooklyn fans. The sign was knee high and it called out the hallowed name of the clothing store owned by Abe Stark. In the bottom left and bottom right corners of the long sign, inside circles, was a message: “Hit Sign Win Suit.” Only a freak low line drive would put Abe’s threads on you.

  Rickey was delighted by the sign. There was also a big, bold ad for whiskey: “Schenley’s. That’s All.” Rickey imagined this sign being ripped down and scrubbed away and the space sold to some decent business that believed in fighting sin. He also wanted a ban on beer at the ballpark. He would let the fans face summer heat with only vile Coca-Cola as a defense.

  Staring at the infield in empty Ebbets Field, Rickey suddenly saw in the gray winter afternoon a player tearing past second on the way to third. The player’s short sleeves were whipping in the wind. Little clumps of dirt shot up from his spikes.

  Now Rickey saw the unfamiliar figure dancing down the line from third. His head threatened a race for the plate, the most exciting play of all, stealing home. He was rocking joyously off the base and ready to explode with the pitch.

  When it comes, the catcher leaps as if electricity has hit him. He is ready to fire to third. The runner goes back to the base.

  Now the pitcher is ready again. He has his leg coming up and his arm in a windup, and down the third base line comes the runner. Running furiously. Good Lord, is he going all the way?

  No. He stops dead, halfway down the line.

  Rickey is so excited that he is talking to himself.

  “Why is the pitcher winding up?” he asks. “Why doesn’t he just stretch and hold the runner on? Good Lord, he is making it easy. Oh, see. Here it is this time.”

  It is. The pitcher has a long, complicated windup and here comes the runner, powerful legs flying, head down. Who is he? thinks Rickey. I can’t see his face with his cap pulled down. He slides. His feet flash under the tag.

  He steals home!

  The player rises up with his back to Rickey. He lopes into the grayness. As he disappears, Rickey gets a fleeting glance at a dark-skinned face.

  Soon, Rickey is excitedly sending his scouts out searching for this base runner, this black man, whom they had never sought before except while hailing parking lot attendants. He was out there somewhere in the mists and he would be found. At that moment he was a dream figure who only Rickey could see, somebody with no name or face or features other than dark skin, a man not yet visible but already a destiny.

  CHAPTER TWO

  That mysterious player who stole home in front of Rickey at Ebbets Field was nearly lost forever to the thing he was supposed to change, American rac
ism. His name was Jack Roosevelt Robinson, and to look at what happened to him, as a soldier in the United States Army with the rank of lieutenant, is to see how much had to be overcome.

  Robinson was arrested on July 17, 1944, at the McCloskey hospital in Temple, Texas, on the outskirts of Fort Hood. Rickey’s dream for changing the nation sat in a bare courtroom at Fort Hood that August with multiple charges against him in a general court-martial. It all came about due to a dispute over a seat on a bus that was outside army jurisdiction, and so most of the charges were thrown out. But two remained. One was conduct unbecoming an officer, which could mean anything. The other had to do with refusal to obey an order during time of war, and the circumstances may seem innocuous—Jackie didn’t stay in a room when he was ordered to—but it was ominous at the time. In a court of nine officers, several of whom had been in combat and understood the gravity of the charge, he faced a possible long sentence. Any hope for a career would be gone.

  STATEMENT of Mr. Milton N. Renegar, Bus Driver, Southwestern Bus Company, 7 July 1944:

  I drive a bus for the Southwestern Bus Company. At approximately 10:15, 6 July 1944, I was driving my bus and stopped at Bus Stop #23, on 172nd Street, Camp Hood, Texas. Some white ladies, maybe a soldier or so, and a colored girl and a colored Second Lieutenant got on the bus. The colored girl and the colored Lt., whom I later learned to be 2nd Lt. Jack R. Robinson of the 761st Tank Battalion, sat down together about middle ways of the bus. On that particular run I have quite a few of the white ladies who work in the PX’s and ride the bus at that hour almost every night. I did not say anything to the colored Lt. when he first sat down, until I got around to Bus Stop #18, and then I asked him, I said, “Lt., if you don’t mind, I have got several ladies to pick up at this Stop and will have a load of them before I get back to the Central Bus Station, and would like for you to move back to the rear of the bus if you don’t mind.” When I asked him to move back to the rear he just sat there, and I asked him to move back there a second time. When I asked him the second time he started cursing and the first thing he said was, “I’m not going to move a God dammed bit.” I told him that I had a load of ladies to pick up and that I was sure they wouldn’t want to ride mixed up like that, and told him I’d rather he would either move back to the rear or get off the bus, one of the two. He kept on cursing and saying he wasn’t going to get back, and I told him that he could either get back or he’d be sorry of it when I got to the Bus Station, or words to that effect. He kept saying something about it after I started up the bus, but I could not understand what he was saying. He continued to sit there with the colored girl and the girl did not say anything. When we arrived at the Bus Station I had “Pinky” Younger, the Dispatcher, call the MP’s. Everybody on the bus was mad about it. I had asked the Lt. in a nice way to move and he had refused. One of the ladies who was riding said, “I don’t mind waiting on them all day, but when I get on the bus at night to go home, I’m not about to ride all mixed up with them.”

  This lady works at PX #10 and I believe her daughter works with her and was with her last night. The colored Lt. kept on doing a lot of cursing and the feeling on the bus was pretty bad. All the people were very much upset about the situation and wanted something done about the Lieutenant’s attitude. When I told the Dispatcher to call the MP’s I told him I was having some trouble with a negro Lieutenant. This white lady asked me if I was going to report the Lieutenant and I told her, “Yes,” and she said, “Well, if you don’t I am.” At that time the colored Lieutenant said to the lady, “You better quit fuckin’ with me,” and he meant everybody that was trying to do something about the trouble he was causing. There were white women and children and soldiers present, it looked to me like forty or fifty people within hearing distance, and when the Lt. said that, it was outside the Bus Station but could have been heard plainly inside the Station. After the MP’s arrived and the Lt. went to get in the patrol wagon he called me a “son-of-a-bitch,” and walked around to get in the wagon, he said, “I don’t know why the son-of-a-bitch wanted to give me all this trouble,” and the women were all still there at that time. The MP’s just asked the Lt. a few questions and he kept cursing and so the MP told him he was using a lot of bad language in the presence of ladies and told him he was going to take him over to the Provost Marshal Office and let him talk to the Provost Marshal about it. I told the Lieutenant to hush once and he just kept on raving and cursing. What the Lieutenant said to the lady in the presence of other ladies as I have stated it above, he said three or four other times, and said it to everyone there. He also said something about this white lady as he went around to get in the patrol wagon and I know he was cursing the lady, but I could not tell what he said. I heard him say something to the MP about wanting his name and organization, but I don’t know what that was. The only time I heard the colored girl who was with him say anything was when he started to leave with the MP’s and she just asked him what the trouble was.

  STATEMENT of Mrs. Virginia Jones, 702 Pearl Street, Belton, Texas, 19 July 1944:

  I am the wife of 1st Lt. Gordon H. Jones, Jr., 761st Tank Battalion, Camp Hood, Texas. I was with Lt. Jack R. Robinson on the night of 6 July 1944. We left the colored officers club and caught a bus in front of the officers club. I got on the bus first and sat down, and Lt. Robinson got on and came and sat beside me. I sat in the fourth seat from the rear of the bus, which I always considered the rear of the bus. The bus driver told Lt. Robinson to move and Lt. Robinson said, “I’m not moving.” The bus driver stopped the bus, came back and balled his fist and said, “Will you move back?” Lt. Robinson said, “I’m not moving,” so the bus driver stood there and glared a minute and said, “Well, just sit there until we get down to the bus station.”

  We got to the bus station and Lt. Robinson and I were the last two to leave the bus. The bus driver detained Lt. Robinson and demanded to see his pass. Lt. Robinson said, “My pass?” and the bus driver said, “Yes, I want to see your pass.” Lt. Robinson asked why did he want to see his pass, and then we got off the bus. A woman walked up to Robinson and shook a finger in his face and said, “I’m going to report you because you had a right to move when he asked you to.” She stood there and argued with Lt. Robinson awhile, and I don’t remember what all was said. Lt. Robinson did not say anything at first and then he said, “Go on and leave me alone.” So she walked into the bus station, and about that time the crowd around the bus driver and Lt. Robinson thinned out, and the bus driver said something to the Lt. which I could not hear. No one was close enough to hear, but whatever it was riled Lt. Robinson and he walked up to the bus driver and said something to the bus driver. I did not hear what he said because I wasn’t close enough to hear.

  STATEMENT of Mrs. Elizabeth Poitevint, Civilian Employee, PX #10, Camp Hood:

  When we got to the Central Bus Station we all got off, and the driver asked the Lieutenant for his identification card, and the Lt. said, “I haven’t done anything and I’m not going to show you my identification card, I’m going to get on another bus and go on.” The driver said, “I want your identification card to turn you in,” then I said to the driver, “If you want any witnesses for what he has done to you, you can call on me, because I’ve heard everything he has said.” Then the Lt. turned to me and said, “Listen here you damned old woman, you have nothing to say about what’s going on. I didn’t want to get into this, they drafted me into this, and my money is just as good as a white man’s.” And I told him, I said, “Well, listen buddy, you ought to know where you should sit on a bus.” I started on to the bus station and I asked the bus driver if he was going to report him, and I told him that if he didn’t report the colored Lt. then I was going to report him to the MP’s. I had to wait on them during the day, but I didn’t have to sit with them on the bus. . . .”

  STATEMENT of General Gerald M. Bear, Captain, Assistant Provost Marshal, Camp Hood, Texas:

  Arriving at the MP Guard Room, 2305 on 6 July 1944, I found 2nd Lt. Jack
R. Robinson in the MP guard room. I asked the Lt. to step outside the MP Guard Room to wait in the receiving room. Captain Wiggington, Camp OD, was relating and explaining to me what had just occurred as to the incident at the Central Bus Station, Camp Hood, Texas. Lt. Robinson kept continually interrupting Captain Wiggington and myself and kept coming to the guard room door-gate. I cautioned and requested Lt. Robinson on several different occasions to remain at ease and remain in the receiving room, that I would talk to him later. In an effort to try to be facetious, Lt. Robinson bowed with several sloppy salutes, repeating several times, “OK, sir. OK, sir.” on each occasion. I then gave Lt. Robinson a direct order to remain in the receiving room and be seated on a chair, on the far side of the receiving room. Later on I found Lt. Robinson on the outside, talking to the driver of the 761st Tank Battalion OD’s jeep. I then directed Lt. Robinson to go inside the building and remain in the receiving room.

  Lt. Robinson’s attitude in general was disrespectful and impertinent to his superior officers, and very unbecoming to an officer in the presence of enlisted men.

  STATEMENT of 2nd Lt. Jack R. Robinson, 0-103158, Company B, 761st Tank Battalion, Camp Hood, Texas, taken in the Military Police Orderly room, Camp Hood, Texas, 0030, 7 July, 1944:

  I left McCloskey General Hospital, Temple, Texas, about 1730, 6 July 1944, and went to Temple, Texas on the City Bus. I got on another bus and came out to the Officers Club, Camp Hood, Texas, the colored officers club located on 172nd Street. I arrived there at approximately 1930. I was in the club for some time. While in the club I saw Captain McHenry, Lt. Long, Captain Woodruff and Captain Wales.