Jackie Robinson

by Arnold Rampersad

  After David was hired away by a New York film company, Jack resumed his own driving. Then, after he almost caused a terrible accident, because his peripheral vision was just about gone, Rachel hired a driver for him. The man, thoroughly resented by Robinson, took him every day to 560 Sylvan Avenue in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, the headquarters of the Jackie Robinson Construction Corporation. By this point Jack had given up golf; his last public pleasure was the race track, where he loved to bet on the horses. But he was not about to sit at home in silence. In October, when A. Philip Randolph and Governor Rockefeller were honored at a gala benefit for a New York hospital, Jack was in attendance. Later that month, he addressed a major gathering of the restaurant industry on the matter of civil rights. He continued to plan an event of great personal importance to him: a salute to Dr. Ralph Bunche, whose health was now failing rapidly, and from the same ailments that dogged Robinson: a deadly combination of heart trouble, diabetes, and hypertension. On December 6, Jack himself was honored at Mama Leone’s Restaurant at the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of Sport magazine. Also honored were some of the greatest figures in sports, including Arnold Palmer, Bill Russell, Rocky Marciano, Gale Sayers, Rod Laver, Johnny Unitas, and Gordie Howe; but among them all Robinson was selected as “The Man of 25 Years in Sports,” the single most important athlete of the previous quarter-century. The evening brought him close to tears several times, especially when towering Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics, recently appointed the first black coach in the NBA, showed his respect and affection for Jack with a warm embrace. When Jack rose to speak, his voice quavered, and he went unerringly once again to the memory of his mother, Mallie, and of Branch Rickey as he praised those people who had stood by him and helped to give his life its rich meaning. As for Rachel, “she has been a warm and understanding mother, and without a doubt, a wonderful wife. Her strength gave me strength, and I question how far I would have come without her. Everything I have done, has been because of her.”

  Shortly after the event, to Jack’s sorrow, Ralph Bunche died, before Robinson’s tribute could take place.

  Christmas found Jack and Rachel, as well as Sharon and David, on a beach in Jamaica. That year, because of Jackie’s death, they had not celebrated Thanksgiving. Rachel decided to gather the family for a vacation at Dragon’s Bay on the north coast of the island. The warm weather lifted everyone’s spirits, although Christmas itself was painful and sad. Impulsively, they decided to telephone Marian Logan and Zellee and invite them to come down and join the party. For Jack, this vacation marked two curious rites of passage. At the suggestion of Dr. Cassell, he had the first alcoholic drinks of his life; Jack chose a mixture of vodka and orange juice, which he swallowed in one gulp, like medicine. Also, he ventured into the sea for apparently the first time in his life. Jack, who had never learned to swim and had kept a nervous distance from the water on previous vacations, now started in, as if on a mission. “I grabbed Dad’s hand,” Sharon remembered. “Marian and Mom started jumping up and down cheering my father on. They acted like high school cheerleaders.” David, navigating, led them out farther from shore. “We slowly descended deeper and deeper into the sea. When the water reached Dad’s waist, he tugged at my hand. We had gone far enough.”

  A few days later, in New York, he underwent experimental laser surgery on his eyes, in an attempt to stop retinal bleeding by cauterizing broken blood vessels that had taken a severe toll on his sight. Vision in Robinson’s right eye was just about gone; the left eye was also failing, although doctors hoped it would revive. His insulin dosage was increased. His legs were now in worse shape; walking was sometimes utterly painful. He could not hurry. But Jack refused to give in to self-pity, as Dr. Cassell had noted in his files after one visit: “The patient, as always, says he feels great.”

  Refusing to dwell on his own miseries, Jack fastened on those of the nation, which seemed to him early in 1972 to be in a critical state. Late in January, when he traveled to California to address the National Restaurant Association, he spoke pessimistically about race relations. “We’re definitely on a collision course between the races,” he insisted. More and more whites know what must be done, “but if we don’t have it we could collide in a very short time, which would be the greatest tragedy this country ever had.” The year would see another presidential election but with an apparently foregone conclusion. Curiously, Robinson seemed less hostile to Nixon than in the past. “I’m not opposed to Mr. Nixon,” he declared. The President was only the prisoner of the odious deals and moral compromises worked out at the 1968 Republican Convention, which had brought him to power. The men about him, however—especially Strom Thurmond, Attorney General John Mitchell, and Vice-President Agnew—were more to be despised. “I just don’t think they are friends of the black community.”

  However, Robinson was present early in the year for a remarkable event in Washington, D.C.—a sold-out tribute to Robert Brown, a black special assistant to Nixon, that turned into a spectacular public relations success for President Nixon when he showed up unexpectedly and received a tumultuous standing ovation from the many powerful blacks present, including Robinson, the entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., Senator Edward Brooke, Vernon Jordan, Floyd McKissick, and James Farmer. And in the spring, Jack was present at a highly organized “Kick-Off Campaign” dinner put on by the Black Committee to Re-Elect the President that raised more than $150,000 for Nixon’s campaign, according to one report. Probably it was this event, to which David Robinson escorted his father, that so upset David—as it disturbed the many blacks who detested Nixon—that he became almost physically sick in his outrage.

  Apart from a sally of this sort, Jack was no longer even a small force in national politics. He would attempt no intervention in either the Republican or the Democratic primaries. Hubert Humphrey had been reelected to the Senate in 1970 and was now challenging for the Democratic nomination; but Robinson was in no position, physically or politically, to help him. However, Jack’s support of young Jesse Jackson continued. Through the winter he did what he could to assist Jackson’s PUSH. On March 26, he and Rachel were prominent in a “Tribute to Black Heroes” organized as a fund-raiser at the 369th Armory in Harlem. Later, they were honored at PUSH headquarters in Chicago.

  April 2 brought twin disasters. One was the death in California of Jack’s cousin Ralph Wade, who had come out with him as a child from Georgia in 1920 in the intrepid band of migrants led by Mallie Robinson and Ralph’s parents, Sam and Cora Wade, Mallie’s sister. But that same day, in addition, the baseball world was stunned at the news that Gil Hodges, one of the Dodger immortals, had died of a heart attack in West Palm Beach, Florida. Hodges was only two days shy of his forty-eighth birthday. “It’s shocking and saddening,” Robinson told the press. “I feel a great deal for the family.” At Hodges’s funeral in New York, mouths dropped open at the sight of a frail Jackie Robinson moving slowly to find a place among the mourners. Seated next to Pee Wee Reese, Jack could not recognize him. “Gil always was a calming presence,” Jack told Roger Kahn softly. Then, “suddenly, tersely: ‘I always thought I’d be the first to go.’ ”

  On May 15, Robinson was in Daytona Beach, Florida, to deliver a commencement address at the graduation exercises at Bethune-Cookman College, when he also received an honorary doctorate. In 1946, the campus and its people had been perhaps his main solace as he and Rachel, newly married, struggled with his ordeal of breaking into white baseball. Five days later, he received another honorary degree, Doctor of Laws, at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. And on May 24, at Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, in a touching ceremony that brought back searing memories of Jackie, Jack was honored as “Parent of the Year” by RARE, or Relatives Alerted to Rehabilitation through Education, a support group for drug addicts and their families connected to the New York Boulevard Youth Center in Jamaica, Queens. One year before, Robinson had spoken at the annual dinner-dance of RARE about Jackie’s heroic conquering of his addiction; a few days la
ter, Jackie was dead. Now Robinson accepted an award named after his son.

  These awards all testified to the fact that many people understood that Robinson’s life was coming to an end. He himself was still ready to do battle, if the cause was right; but he also appreciated the healing of wounds. Perhaps few were as important as his strife with the men who controlled baseball. In 1970, Jack had joined Hank Greenberg in testifying in federal court against baseball’s reserve-clause system, which had been challenged by the black player Curt Flood. “Anything that is one-sided is wrong in America,” Robinson offered. “The reserve clause is one-sided in favor of the owners and should be modified to give the player some control over his destiny.” (Flood lost his case, but change eventually came.) Late in 1971, Jack had angered many observers when, resentful at the continuing bias against hiring a black manager, he had ridiculed the notion that Casey Stengel of the Mets, formerly of the Yankees, was a great manager. He closed one breach, with Buzzie Bavasi, after Bavasi came out strongly against admitting former Negro-league stars to the Baseball Hall of Fame in a separate, segregated area. “Your action justifies the way I thought about you before the 1957 misunderstanding,” Jack wrote to Bavasi, who was now running the San Diego Padres.

  But the one unhealed wound was with the Dodgers, where the presidency had passed from Walter O’Malley to his son, Peter, who was far more sympathetic to Robinson. The younger O’Malley reached out with an invitation to Jack to come to Dodger Stadium on June 4 for Old Timers Day. At first Robinson resisted, but an old teammate, at O’Malley’s urging, convinced him to break his rule about not attending Old Timers Days. “If it hadn’t been for the good feeling I had for Don Newcombe,” Jack declared, “I doubt very much I’d have come to this one.” On June 4, three numbers were retired: those of Sandy Koufax, who had been elected to the Hall of Fame in January, the youngest person ever to be voted in; Roy Campanella, inducted in 1969; and Jackie Robinson—number 42. (Ironically, Casey Stengel was also honored at the game.)

  In the end, Robinson was happy that he had come. “This is truly one of the greatest moments of my life,” he told the large crowd, with genuine feeling. In a long talk with Peter O’Malley, Jack unburdened himself about various matters. Later, tired and stretched out on his bed in his downtown hotel, he spoke to a reporter about their conversation. “I told Peter I was distressed at the way baseball treats its black players after their playing days are through. I was very much impressed by Peter’s attitude. I don’t know what he can do about it, but first of all there has to be a sensitivity to it.” Robinson saw the younger O’Malley and Mike Burke, the president of the New York Yankees, as representing a new, more enlightened breed of baseball leaders. As for his feud with the Dodgers: “The problem was never between Jackie Robinson and Walter O’Malley,” Jack insisted. “It was between Walter O’Malley and Branch Rickey.”

  To Peter O’Malley, the circumstances of Jack’s departure from the Dodgers and baseball (when Peter himself was only twenty-two) were hard to fathom. “It’s not something I understand, and it wouldn’t happen now,” he said later, “to a star like that at the end of his career, for all that Jackie stood for and accomplished, and with his popularity. Why not go to him and say, ‘Jackie, we really think your playing days are over. How about retiring as an active player, and maybe consider another job in the organization, or not?’ But to trade him at the end of his career, it’s unheard of today. I was very glad that he came to see his number retired, to be a part of a great day.” As for Robinson as a manager: “He was so bright, quick, and natural to baseball, so good on strategy, I think he would have made a great manager.”

  Robinson’s physical condition shocked many people, including the black writer A. S. “Doc” Young. “When he walked out on the field to be introduced to the wildly cheering crowd,” Young wrote of Robinson, “he walked like a man of 80.” Young related a story of someone tossing a baseball underhand to Robinson; the ball hit Jack in the head and knocked off his Dodger cap. “Oh, it was sad! So sad!” Also shocked at Jack’s state was Ray Bartlett, his former teammate throughout virtually his entire youth in organized sports. At Jack’s request, Bartlett had brought together between twenty-five and thirty minority contractors to hear Robinson speak about the possibilities of building low-rent housing. “He walked in,” Bartlett recalled, “moving with difficulty and very slowly. I remembered the days when he was such a tremendous athlete.… I felt inside that he was forcing himself to keep going, he had too much determination to stop. I just felt bad, real bad. I can’t even describe it.”

  The following month, on July 18, Jack was honored with a gala luncheon sponsored by the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands, ostensibly to recognize the ways in which Jack’s breakthrough in baseball had paved the way for various Virgin Islands players to make their way in his footsteps. Roger Kahn was the master of ceremonies, and among the guests were familiar names from Jack’s baseball past, including Clyde Sukeforth, Joe Black, Ralph Branca, and Sandy Amoros.

  One of Jack’s pleasures now was listening to Rachel read from the galleys of his autobiography with Alfred Duckett, I Never Had It Made. He himself could not read the pages. His right eye was blind; the left eye was dim and strained. Still he was upbeat: “I’ve gotten tremendous thrills,” he wrote, out of the pages he had heard.

  To all inquirers, Jack gave a most cheerful answer about the state of his health. “Health is a progressive thing,” he told a writer for the Los Angeles Times, “but I’ve felt a lot better in the last four or five years.” What Robinson meant by this statement is not clear. His physician, Dr. Cassell, saw Jack’s continuing optimism and also a mature graciousness that perhaps implied Jack’s new understanding of his mortality. “One day,” Cassell related, “he had come to the office and was walking down the hallway. And this man, who was my contemporary, saw him and just blurted out: ‘Jackie Robinson! You’ve been my hero for my whole life!’ Now, most people, when others say that to them, are very diffident. They say, ‘Oh, well …’ But Robinson said, ‘What a wonderful thing to say to somebody!’ He meant, ‘What a great gift to give me!’ I thought, Wow, if I could only do that. I wanted to learn; I tried never to behave the other way again. Somebody gave him a gift and he took the gift and said Thank you! instead of giving the gift back, which is what most people do.”

  But Cassell also knew the truth about Jack’s physical condition: “His legs had to go. They had to be amputated. I was getting him ready for that step. He was having increasing pain in his legs, when there’s not enough blood supply even when you’re not doing anything. What follows usually is gangrene and things like that. Amputation seemed on the horizon. I was relatively straight with him. He didn’t like bad news; most people don’t.”

  Robinson forged ahead with his plans. On September 5, he proudly announced that his construction company would erect a $17 million apartment complex in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Making the project possible was a forty-year mortgage secured from the New York State Urban Development Corporation. Later that month, he was also prominent in a group of investors who announced plans to build a thoroughbred and harness race track on 430 acres of land in Newtown, Connecticut.

  On September 6, he took part in a memorial service at the headquarters of the Anti-Defamation League in New York City to honor the Israeli athletes slain by terrorists in Munich at the Olympic Games that summer.

  Meanwhile, pressured by his former Dodger teammate Joe Black to do something, anything, to honor Jackie Robinson on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his historic step into the major leagues, the office of the commissioner of baseball, Bowie Kuhn, invited him to make the ceremonial throwing out of the first ball at a game at Riverfront Stadium, Cincinnati, during the upcoming World Series. Again, Robinson first resisted the invitation. Reached by Joe Reichler, the chief publicist in Kuhn’s office, Jack made it clear that he would use the occasion to criticize baseball—especially for its tired excuses as to why no black manager had yet be
en hired in the majors. Pointing to the potential of former players such as Frank Robinson, Jim Gilliam, and Elston Howard, Jack had assailed the owners and top executives on this score. “As long as they keep digging down and hiring guys who have already failed in one city,” Jack said in Miami, “I’m not encouraged.” (In October 1974, with the Cleveland Indians, Frank Robinson would become the first black manager in the major leagues.)

  The World Series, Jack knew, with the Oakland Athletics playing the Cincinnati Reds, would be a bully pulpit for this message. “If you people expect me to change my thinking, or my speech, you’re mistaken,” he said to Reichler, “because I’m simply not going to do it.” Then baseball offered an inducement Jack could not resist: the event would also pay tribute to the memory of Jackie and to the Daytop organization. “How can a man say no to a dead son?” Dick Young asked in the Daily News.

  The entire family gathered for the occasion. In a loving, protective spirit, Rachel and Zellee; Sharon and her husband, Joe Mitchell; and David and his girlfriend all accompanied Jack to Cincinnati for his moment of glory. After a happy dinner at their hotel the night before the game, they crowded together for a group picture snapped by a magazine photographer. As they waited for the shutter to click, Rachel heard Jack murmur: “The last hurrah.” On October 15, the day after Oakland won the first game against Cincinnati, Robinson threw out the first ball of the second game before a record local crowd and an estimated television audience of some sixty million viewers. Accepting a plaque marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of his entry into the majors, Robinson was brief. “I am extremely proud and pleased,” he declared. But “I’m going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball.”

  (Daytop received a luxury station wagon, a gift from the Chrysler Corporation, and a double-decker bus, a gift from Greyhound. Major-league baseball, someone noted sardonically, donated the plaque.)