Jackie Robinson—One Courageous Man!

As a Kid, watching him, I didn’t understand what he accomplished

Destination:  Ebbets Field.  It’s the 6^th Game of the 1956 World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees.  One day after Don Larson pitched his perfect game,  Jackie Robinson strides to the plate with runners on first and second base and two outs in the bottom of the 10^th inning in a scoreless game.  If the Yankees win the Series is over.  Bob Turley winds and throws and Jackie scorches a rope over the head of a leaping Enos Slaughter in left field, and Junior Gilliam scores the winning run. The Dodgers live to play one last World Series game in Brooklyn.

No one imagined it would be the last World Series game the Brooklyn Dodgers ever won (they lost the Series the next day) or it was the last hit of Jackie Robinson’s historic career.

That hit, Slaughter’s leap, the Ebbets Field wall signs; Jackie being mobbed and my beloved Dodgers forcing a 7^th game is forever embedded in my mind.  No one could have foreseen the Dodgers moving to Los Angeles in 1958, or Jackie retiring two months later rather than play for the hated Giants.

Jackie Robinson’s 100^th birthday was celebrated on January 31, 2019.  I am a lifelong baseball fanatic, so I watched the extensive highlights celebrating what Jack had accomplished. I was lucky enough to see him play for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  As a kid, I never understood the hoopla surrounding him.  I do now.

No one was a prouder black man than Jackie, and the courage he displayed standing up for his people ranks up there with John Lewis.  Jackie was the media face of the Civil Rights Movement until television discovered Dr. King.

I grew up in New Jersey when New York City was “The Capital of Baseball.”  Ken Burns named it in a chapter of his “Baseball” documentary. There is no doubt about it.  To put it in perspective for 10 years, 1949 -1958 a New York team was in the World Series.  From 1949 through 1966-18 straight years a New York related team played in the World Series.  From the time I was 4 years old until I was 21, the Dodgers, Yankees or Giants played in every World Series.

Jacky’s Brooklyn baseball era was immortalized in the book “The Boys of Summer.” It was the time of Willie, Mickey, and the Duke, Yogi, Whitey, Campy, Pee Wee, and The Scooter.  Dem Bums against the Corporate Yankees.  And there to bring it all to you, over the evolving dynamics of Sports TV, were the Golden Hall of Fame voices of Mel Allen, Red Barber, Vin Scully, and Russ Hodges.

I used Jackie’s 100^th birthday to reflect on my life’s Sports heroes.  I wanted to evaluate if race played a part in choosing my favorite players.  I came to the conclusion it did.  Let’s look closer at my choices.

My initial memories of Jackie Robinson are vague.  I most likely discovered Jackie on a 52 or 53 baseball card. When you were a kid in High Bridge, New Jersey, collecting baseball cards was a religion. I didn’t understand the reverence surrounding Jackie.  In the ’50s, in the greater New York area, black professional athletes were normal in my world.

In 1952-53 I was starting to follow Sports, especially professional sports, as they were on TV. Professional Sports, in the Northeast, had colored(a 50’s word) people playing baseball, football, and basketball.  The football Giants had Rosey Grier, Roosevelt Brown, and Emlen Tunnell. Basketball had Wilt, Elgin, Oscar, Bill Russell, and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton.  The Harlem Globetrotters and Meadowlark Lemon’s ball-handling antics synched to “Sweet Georgia Brown” were a pure pleasure for kids.

I loved the Dodgers and the “Duke of Flatbush.”  I despised Willie Mays.  I hated the Yankees, but would always watch Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris or Yogi hit(Of course I was forced to watch them when the Dodgers left town and the Mets didn’t exist). If you rooted for the Dodgers, you despised all Yankee and Giant players. After the 54 World Series I met the great Monty Irvin and didn’t think much of it, he was a Giant.  Later in life, I realized my feelings towards Willie and other black players of the time were tinted with racism.  In my defense, I did trade my Mickey Mantle cards for Joe Black Dodger cards back in 53.  No prejudice there, just stupidity.

Looking back all my first heroes were white.  Jimmy Brown, probably the greatest athlete to play any Sport (Bo Jackson is a close 2nd) was numero uno on my dislike list. I was a Football Giant fan, so I despised anyone who played for the Cleveland Browns, especially him. He had an attitude.  I didn’t like that.  I now know race had a lot to do with it.

I didn’t like the Big O, Oscar Robinson, because I was an Ohio State—Jerry Lucas fan.  I didn’t like Bill Russell, because he always beat Bob Petit and the St. Lewis Hawks.  Notice all of them are white.

The first black baseball players I liked were Junior Gilliam and Roy Campanella. I wasn’t a big Jackie fan; he had an attitude, and never appeared on Happy Felton’s Knothole Gang.  I was not a big Don Newcombe fan because Yogi Berra ate him up in World Series games(Today I love him-Good Man).  In football, I liked Emlen Tunnell and Roosevelt Brown.  The first black Basketball player I emulated was Elgin Baylor.  I modeled my jump shot off of his.

My first unadulterated black hero was John Mackey—the Baltimore Colts tight end—the best and a class act. When Willie Mays came to play for the Mets, I loved him.  During the Koufax/Drysdale Dodger era I didn’t like Bob Gibson.  He was black, he was mean, and he was phenomenal.

I finally started to realize this white/black division when the Civil Rights movement started showing up on TV.  But the real hammer came down when I traveled to Knoxville, Tennessee to attend UT.

Here people were bragging about having the first black player to play in the SEC.  This is 1965. What are they talking about, no black players?  I discovered Bailey Howells’s Mississippi State team, the best in the nation(58-59), refused to play in the NCAA or NIT tournaments.  They wouldn’t play against black players.  Bear Bryant, the best of the best, had no black players at Alabama until 1971. I didn’t get it.

I never realized what Jim Brown or Ernie Davis went through at Syracuse.  Or that black players in the Big Leagues couldn’t stay at the same hotels as their white teammates.  I grew up in Hunterdon County, NJ,  a location that could have been used for shooting the 50s Mayberry, RFD TV show(Ron Howard played Opie).  Northern Hunterdon county, about 50 miles west of NYC,  was the sticks and it was lily-white.

But my white world was influenced daily by the evolving visual medium of television.  I saw black men playing Sports every day and didn’t think anything of it.    I was nieve and had no idea what black people were enduring in my white world.  To quote me, “I was dumber than a box of rocks,” when it came to voting, segregation, and racism. I believed wholeheartedly, this was the United States of America, and “All men were created equal.”  It said so in the Declaration of Independence.  Unfortunately, I am a little more cynical now.

I rooted for Kentucky against Texas Western in the NCAA finals.  Never realizing it was the first time five blacks started for a team and that Kentucky had all white players.  They were from the SEC and had Louie Dampier and Pat Riley, so I liked them. I didn’t think it was a race thing, but subconsciously it was?

I have reflected on over 60 years of Sports heroes and my evolvement as to racial awareness.  I still have prejudices, but usually against Donkey Doughnuts(A–holes).  I loved Michael Jordan.  I loved Steph Curry the first time I saw him play for Davidson.  Jordan and Curry are shooters I would turn on the TV to watch.  In football, I hated and loved Randy Moss.  I loved him more when I realized what kind of life he had growing up.

I still find myself prejudiced against black quarterbacks, which I think has to with my initial love of Charlie Connerly,  Y.A. Title, Johnny Unitas, followed in turn by Joe Montana and Tom Brady(Patrick Mahomes is changing that).  I don’t know of any great baseball pitchers, who are black, that I idolized.  I idolized a Jewish Guy—Koufax.  I think if Bob Gibson had played for the Dodgers or Mets, I would have idolized him.  I loved Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry until they snorted and drank their potential hall of fame careers away.

I live outside of Richmond, Virginia, 40 miles from Charlottesville(yeah that Charlottesville), and I have come to look at every issue here through racially sensitive eyes.  That’s why Jackie Robinson’s birthday yearly trips I reflect on my Sports heroes.  I wanted to see if race played a part in it.  Conclusion–it did.  Not as much now as when I was a young kid and before my military service.  My mirror tells me I grew in terms of race acceptance.

Looking back over the past 7 decades(the 50s to present day) made me realize that Jackie Robinson was the most important-visible person in bringing race issues into the forefront of America’s Psyche after WWII.  He arrived at the right time, the beginning of the TV fascination with Sports.  He got exposure in the then Sports Capital of the World—New York City.  He didn’t buckle under the pressure, although it killed him young for sure.

America’s biggest failure during my life has been race relations.  I thought in the ’60s and early 70’s we were making fantastic progress.  It is no coincidence that great black people were roaming the planet then.   To me, no individuals were or are more courageous than Dr. King, Thurgood Marshal, John Lewis, Dianne Nash, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, Barbara Johns, or as a group the Little Rock Nine.  But they all owe a debt to Jack Roosevelt Robinson.  He put his neck and his race on the line every day in front of thousands who hated him.  I am glad I got to see the man play and come to understand what he represents and accomplished.  I hope he has a monument in heaven.