Civil rights, nice. A New York you can find them packaged at JRM, at 75 Varick Street, border of Tribeca, above the subway station. The Jackie Robinson Museum it opened in the fall. Dedicated to the first black baseball player in major league history. Robinson made his debut on April 15, 1947. And he changed the panorama of US sport: now there was also an African American in the photo. Said in English that allows more synthesis: barrier breaker, freedom rider, globe changer. In 1950 Arthur Mann, secretary of the Brooklyn Dodgerswrote the script “Jackie Robinson Story” and sent it to the president of the company, Branch Rickeyto get your approval. The answer: “Change page 51”. The lyrics read: “It’s about time a black player played in big baseball, also to see if it was possible to break racial prejudices.” They were words from him, from Rickey, who had hired Robinson, canceling an unspoken tradition that had lasted since 1868: “We do not let in nigras”. We don’t hire blacks. Rickey corrected: “In ’45 we took Robinson because we wanted to win, certainly not to solve the racial issue.” Pragmatism is better, he didn’t want any more trouble, he already had all the other teams against him, he had only chosen the right star player, capable of self-control even in the face of insults. “The first black cannot fail, otherwise there will be no second.” The coach of the Dodgers, Leo Durocher, took care of the rest, with his quick methods and morality on profit. In the middle of the night he summoned the team, which was resisting Robinson, to the hotel kitchen. He was in his dressing gown, but his screams woke many: “I don’t care if the boy is yellow or black, or if he’s got stripes like a fucking zebra. I’m the manager and I say he plays. There’s more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you don’t need the money, I’ll see to it.”
You can’t always walk alone, it’s not enough, even if you’re the best. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” Robinson wrote in a 1947 letter to a reporter named Smith. When Robinson becomes the first black man to play in the Majors, Wendell Smith he is his best ally: he acts as his chauffeur, as his handyman, he always writes correctly about Jackie. He had been a great pitcher, but segregation in baseball had skewed into journalism. Also because he was told: “If only we could paint you white”. The job wasn’t easy for him either: he didn’t have access to the changing rooms and the press box. He befriended Jackie and ghostwrote her column in the Pittsburgh Courier. Ralph Branca was an established Dodgers pitcher, when Robinson joined the team in ’47 other players signed a petition against him joining. The only one who didn’t do it was Branca, the only one who ate with Jackie and wasn’t ashamed to be next to him. He was the son of a Jewess, he knew something about racism, they insulted him too with that Italian name: “Fucking spaghetti eater”. His brother asked him if he was crazy to be so close to Robinson: “If they shoot him and they miss, they’ll hit you”, Ralph replied that he would be honoured. Rachel, Robinson’s wife, thanked him: “Branca was good to my husband when it wasn’t fashionable to be.”
Haters are not a modern invention. Robinson received many threatening letters (at the time it was written), in ’51 he played away against the Cincinnati Reds: “Don’t try to enter the field, we will kill you, we have killed others like you”. He played anyway and won. Another who was supposed to be his adversary, Hank Greenbergfamous first baseman of the Detroit Tigers, after a fortuitous gambling encounter, told him: “Don’t give too much importance to whoever is trying to make your life hard, you’re doing well, I’ve been there too and I’ll help you with some advice”. Greenberg had been the first Jew to make his Majors debut, and in 1947 he had refused to play on Yom Kippur.
Robinson was not ashamed to change his mind often. In the ’60 election he endorsed the Democratic candidate Humphrey, when John Kennedy won the nominations, he chose Nixon. And when Martin Luther King was sentenced to two months in prison near the end of the campaign, Robinson asked a Nixon to do something. When he refused, he declared: “Nixon doesn’t deserve to win.” In 1963, with an open letter, he gave reasons for his political beliefs. “I’m neither a Republican nor a Democrat, I vote for people I believe in, regardless of their party.” On August 28 of that year he led Rosa Parks in the March on Washington, but in 1967 he criticized Martin Luther King for his opposition to the war in Vietnam and supported President Johnson. In ’68 his son Jack jr. he returned wounded and traumatized (with addiction to drugs) from Vietnam where he had saved the lives of some comrades and his father declared that he could not accept the idea that they were fighting for freedom there when they had so little at home. “I believed in America, now I’m disillusioned.”
He too had been in the army and in 1944 was arrested by the military police for “disobeying orders”. Second Lieutenant Robinson had refused to sit “in the back” of the soldiers’ bus. The court martial later acquitted him of the charge. And in ’57 when “The little Rock Nine”, a group of nine black students were prevented from entering school, Robinson supported their right to education with a long telephone call in solidarity with the group. After his retirement he also opened a bank, Freedom National Bank in Harlem, where he financed African American projects. He backed the Republican Nelson Rockefeller who in ’66, re-elected governor of New York, appointed him special assistant for community affairs. At 52, Jackie and his wife engaged in an anti-drug campaign. His son, Jack Jr., was arrested in 1969 for possession of heroin. Sentenced, he agrees to be treated in a rehabilitation centre, but in 1971, at the age of 24, he dies in a car accident. Robinson could blame fate, but instead he blamed himself: “You don’t know what it’s like to lose a child, find him and lose him again. I regret not having been home much, I think I had a greater impact on the other people’s children than mine.”
There was no story when they voted to let him into the Baseball Hall of Fame: elected on the first ballot with 77.5% of the vote. First black player. His last public appearance was in Game 2 of the 1972 World Series. His speech: “Baseball needs integration at the management level as well.” Nine days later, at 53, a heart attack took him away. His wife Rachel Robinson is still alive, she is one hundred years old, and last fall she inaugurated the JRM. Also there were tennis champion Billie Jean King and director Spike Lee. A ball can sometimes go out of the stadium, travel the world, end up very far. And help you play (and understand) other games.
