The Jackie Robinson Story
His career in the Negro Leagues was short-lived when on August 28, 1945, Branch Rickey signed Robinson to a Brooklyn Dodger contract. Arguably not the best talent in the Negro Leagues, he was chosen for his interpersonal communication skills, formal education and was an established sports star accustomed to fame and playing before large audiences. Many white players doubted his ability to integrate major league baseball. One critic was Cleveland Indian pitcher Bob Feller, "He's tied up in the shoulders and can't hit an inside pitch to save his neck. If he were a white man, I doubt they would even consider him big league material."
But Robinson proved Feller and many others wrong in regards to his athletic ability. On Feb. 10, 1946, with a bit of encouragement from Rickey, Robinson married his college sweetheart, a nurse named Rachel Annetta Isum from Los Angeles. Later that year, Robinson joined the Dodger's farm club, the Montreal Royals. In his debut year, he beat out teammate Al Campanis for the AAA International League batting title with a .349 batting average, leading the Royals to the Little World Series championship. After the season, he formed his own team of all-stars and played a fourteen-game series against all comers. Following the baseball tour, he joined the highly regarded professional Los Angeles Red Devils basketball team for the winter season to stay in shape.
On April 11, 1947, Jackie Robinson signed for $5,000 with a bonus of $3,500, to wear Dodger blue. Robinson played first base in his initial season, batting .297 and led the National League with 29 stolen bases. His aggressive style of play earned him The Sporting News' Rookie of the Year (renamed in his honor in 1987) and thrust the Dodgers to a league pennant. Considered a novelty by some baseball cynics, Robinson's major league baptismal on the field was no gimmick. Fans released black cats onto the field, teammates rubbed his head for good luck, while others attempted to spike him, spit tobacco juice in his face, and sprinkled racial slurs at every opportunity.
Off the field, he faced death threats, dear n------ letters and was subjected daily to segregated public accommodations. However, these racial barriers only served to inspire Robinson to higher standards. In 1949, now playing second base, he captured the batting title with a .342 average, leading the league with 37 stolen bases, and earning the league's highest honor, the Most Valuable Player award. Robinson ranked in the top five of every major offensive category except for home runs and walks. He also had a fielding percentage of .992 and eventually led all National League second basemen in double plays made, from 1949 to 1952. Robinson was named to six all-star teams and stole home plate 19 times in his 10-year career. Robinson compiled a lifetime average of .311 and help the Dodgers win six National League pennants. In 1955, Robinson steal of home plate in the first game was said to have provided the Brooklyn Bums with the spark to capture their only World Series championship over the Bronx Bombers.
Former Dodger manager Leo Durocher once claimed, "He didn't just come to play, he came to beat you." While former home run king Ralph Kiner added, "Robinson was the only player I ever saw who could completely turn a game around by himself."
Jackie's Post-Baseball Life and His Legacy
Robinson's baseball career led him to many challenges outside the sports arena. After being traded to the New York Giants in December of 1956 for pitcher Dick Littlefield and $30,000, Robinson contemplated retirement. The following month, Robinson announced his retirement, moving from the dugout to a desk, trading his bat for a pen. Robinson became Vice-President of Community Affairs for the Chock Full O' Nuts Company, a restaurant chain. In 1964, he resigned from the restaurant company to organize the Freedom National Bank in Harlem. The black-owned bank's mission was "a community enterprise which will in every way belong to the people it is to serve . . ." As chairman of the board, Robinson help raised more than 1.5 million. That same year, 1964, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, asked him to become one of six deputy national directors. Robinson was Rockefeller's first black staff member. Rockefeller later named him to his Executive Committee as Special Assistant of Community Affairs. New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani delivers a moving tribute to Robinson at a January 1997 dinner for the Baseball Assistance Team.Earlier in 1959, Robinson was hired by the New York Post to write a column three times a week. His column first appeared on April 28, with emphasis on social issues in baseball, international affairs, and the upcoming 1960 presidential election. When the well-read, controversial column ended in 1960, Robinson decided to take a more active role in politics. He chose to support Republican Richard M. Nixon instead of Democrat John F. Kennedy. Despite reservations about Nixon's position on race relations, he felt blacks should be represented in both parties. His wife, Rachel, disagreed; she remained a Democrat. Many black voters alienated Robinson for supporting Nixon. Years later, Robinson admitted his poor decision, saying "I do not consider my decision to back Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy for the Presidency in 1960 one of my finest ones. It was a sincere one, however, at the time." When Nixon lost the 1960 election to Kennedy, Robinson was out of work. Governor Nelson Rockefeller gave him positions on the New York State Athletic Commission and the Rockefeller Foundation. When Nixon and Spiro T. Agnew formed the 1968 Presidential ticket, he resigned from Governor Rockefeller's staff to campaign for Hubert H. Humphrey, the Democratic nominee. Robinson had many "firsts" in his life. He became the catalyst of many emerging civil rights movements. His impact on the national pastime proceeded several breakthroughs in the social and political arena. However, his efforts were not without discord. In his book, I Never Had It Made published just before his death, he summed up his demanding life: "As long as I appeared to ignore insult and injury, I was a martyred hero to a lot of people who seemed to have sympathy for the underdog." A bitter Robinson resounded, "But the minute I began to answer, to argue, to protest -- the minute I began to sound off -- I became a swell-head, a wise guy, and an 'uppity' n-----." Robinson wrote four semi-autobiographies: My Own Story (1948) with Wendell Smith; Wait Till Next Year (1960) with Carl Rowan; Baseball Has Done It (1964) with Charles Dexter and I Never Had It Made (1972) with Alfred Duckett. Other complete studies are Jackie Robinson: A Life Remembered (1987) by Maury Allen; Rickey and Robinson by Harvey Frommer (1982) and Jules Tygiel's Baseball's Greatest Experiment: Jackie Robinson and his Legacy (1983). Noteworthy is Jackie Robinson's appearances on the cover of Time magazine in 1947 and Life magazine in 1950. It was a rare occurrence to see a black athlete on a non-sport magazine for the period. Also in 1950, Arthur Mann produced the movie, The Jackie Robinson Story. Robinson starred as himself, while actress Ruby Dee played his lovely wife, Rachel. During the winter of 1990, the docu-drama The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson aired on cable TV. Additional accolades for Robinson include the NAACP's Spingarn Medal in 1956 for his "pioneer role in baseball." He received honorary degrees from the University of Maryland, Franklin Pierce College, Howard University and Pace University. One of highest honors was on a hot summer Sunday in July of 1962, when Robinson was inducted into Cooperstown's National Baseball Hall of Fame - his first year of eligibility. With this award Robinson had placed his stamp on baseball immortality, only to honored with a postage stamp 20 years later, becoming the first baseball player honored by the U.S. postal service. Ten years later, in June of 1972, Robinson arrived at Dodger Stadium to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his first major league season. Suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes, and losing sight in his right eye, he walked with a limp to accept retirement of his jersey -- number 42. A few months later, at the age of 53, at 7:10 AM on October 24, 1972, Robinson died at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. Americans paid their respects at Duncan Brothers Funeral Home in New York City. His funeral was held in Brooklyn, New York, at Riverside Church. Before a celebrity-studded congregation of 2,500 a ringing eulogy was delivered by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Renown jazz singer Roberta Flack closed the services by singing "I Told Jesus," a traditional Negro spiritual. Robinson was survived by his widow Rachel and their two children, David and Sharon Mitchell, a sister Willie Mae Walker and brothers, Mack and Edgar.'56' was the number everyone was talking about that year... "Did he get a hit?" was the common question on every American's mind in the summer of 1941. Joe DiMaggio got at least one base hit for fifty -six games in a row, breaking the previous record of forty-four held by Wee Willie Keeler. As he got closer and closer to breaking the record, the American public watched his every at bat with unprecedented interest and anticipation. According to sportscaster and author, Maury Allen, "It had become the most important event in America." Letters poured into Yankee Stadium. When he got a hit in his forty-fifth game straight, the public response was remarkable. Newspapers of the time recorded the popular reaction. "In San Francisco, the fishermen on the wharf heard the news and celebrated with whine. In Chicago, a big, burly truck driver heard the announcement on his radio, leaned out of his window to tell a pretty girl passing by, and got a kiss blown to him for his news. In Denver, the announcement of DiMaggio's hit was made at a public roller-skating rink and the kids there banged on the boards with their skates. In Cincinnati, in a summer high school history class, a poll was taken to name the greatest American of all time. Abraham Lincoln finished third, George Washington second, and first...Joe DiMaggio. "Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggo?"-Simon and Garfunkel's 'Mrs. Robinson' pays homage to the Yankee Clipper."
In 1964, he resigned from the restaurant company to organize the Freedom National Bank in Harlem. The black-owned bank's mission was "a community enterprise which will in every way belong to the people it is to serve . . ." As chairman of the board, Robinson help raised more than 1.5 million. That same year, 1964, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, asked him to become one of six deputy national directors. Robinson was Rockefeller's first black staff member. Rockefeller later named him to his Executive Committee as Special Assistant of Community Affairs. New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani delivers a moving tribute to Robinson at a January 1997 dinner for the Baseball Assistance Team.
Earlier in 1959, Robinson was hired by the New York Post to write a column three times a week. His column first appeared on April 28, with emphasis on social issues in baseball, international affairs, and the upcoming 1960 presidential election. When the well-read, controversial column ended in 1960, Robinson decided to take a more active role in politics. He chose to support Republican Richard M. Nixon instead of Democrat John F. Kennedy. Despite reservations about Nixon's position on race relations, he felt blacks should be represented in both parties.
His wife, Rachel, disagreed; she remained a Democrat. Many black voters alienated Robinson for supporting Nixon. Years later, Robinson admitted his poor decision, saying "I do not consider my decision to back Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy for the Presidency in 1960 one of my finest ones. It was a sincere one, however, at the time." When Nixon lost the 1960 election to Kennedy, Robinson was out of work. Governor Nelson Rockefeller gave him positions on the New York State Athletic Commission and the Rockefeller Foundation. When Nixon and Spiro T. Agnew formed the 1968 Presidential ticket, he resigned from Governor Rockefeller's staff to campaign for Hubert H. Humphrey, the Democratic nominee.
Robinson had many "firsts" in his life. He became the catalyst of many emerging civil rights movements. His impact on the national pastime proceeded several breakthroughs in the social and political arena. However, his efforts were not without discord. In his book, I Never Had It Made published just before his death, he summed up his demanding life: "As long as I appeared to ignore insult and injury, I was a martyred hero to a lot of people who seemed to have sympathy for the underdog." A bitter Robinson resounded, "But the minute I began to answer, to argue, to protest -- the minute I began to sound off -- I became a swell-head, a wise guy, and an 'uppity' n-----."
Robinson wrote four semi-autobiographies: My Own Story (1948) with Wendell Smith; Wait Till Next Year (1960) with Carl Rowan; Baseball Has Done It (1964) with Charles Dexter and I Never Had It Made (1972) with Alfred Duckett. Other complete studies are Jackie Robinson: A Life Remembered (1987) by Maury Allen; Rickey and Robinson by Harvey Frommer (1982) and Jules Tygiel's Baseball's Greatest Experiment: Jackie Robinson and his Legacy (1983). Noteworthy is Jackie Robinson's appearances on the cover of Time magazine in 1947 and Life magazine in 1950.
It was a rare occurrence to see a black athlete on a non-sport magazine for the period. Also in 1950, Arthur Mann produced the movie, The Jackie Robinson Story. Robinson starred as himself, while actress Ruby Dee played his lovely wife, Rachel. During the winter of 1990, the docu-drama The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson aired on cable TV. Additional accolades for Robinson include the NAACP's Spingarn Medal in 1956 for his "pioneer role in baseball." He received honorary degrees from the University of Maryland, Franklin Pierce College, Howard University and Pace University. One of highest honors was on a hot summer Sunday in July of 1962, when Robinson was inducted into Cooperstown's National Baseball Hall of Fame - his first year of eligibility. With this award Robinson had placed his stamp on baseball immortality, only to honored with a postage stamp 20 years later, becoming the first baseball player honored by the U.S. postal service.
Ten years later, in June of 1972, Robinson arrived at Dodger Stadium to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his first major league season. Suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes, and losing sight in his right eye, he walked with a limp to accept retirement of his jersey -- number 42. A few months later, at the age of 53, at 7:10 AM on October 24, 1972, Robinson died at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. Americans paid their respects at Duncan Brothers Funeral Home in New York City. His funeral was held in Brooklyn, New York, at Riverside Church. Before a celebrity-studded congregation of 2,500 a ringing eulogy was delivered by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Renown jazz singer Roberta Flack closed the services by singing "I Told Jesus," a traditional Negro spiritual. Robinson was survived by his widow Rachel and their two children, David and Sharon Mitchell, a sister Willie Mae Walker and brothers, Mack and Edgar.
Letters poured into Yankee Stadium. When he got a hit in his forty-fifth game straight, the public response was remarkable. Newspapers of the time recorded the popular reaction. "In San Francisco, the fishermen on the wharf heard the news and celebrated with whine. In Chicago, a big, burly truck driver heard the announcement on his radio, leaned out of his window to tell a pretty girl passing by, and got a kiss blown to him for his news. In Denver, the announcement of DiMaggio's hit was made at a public roller-skating rink and the kids there banged on the boards with their skates. In Cincinnati, in a summer high school history class, a poll was taken to name the greatest American of all time. Abraham Lincoln finished third, George Washington second, and first...Joe DiMaggio. "Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggo?"-Simon and Garfunkel's 'Mrs. Robinson' pays homage to the Yankee Clipper."
It was an event that affected everyone, a tangible occurance that unified a very diverse people. Everyone knew about the streak, everyone followed it. Sports fans, Italian-Americans, young kids in awe of the great DiMaggio, and women dazzled by his proud demeanor and haunting appeal followed the events of one man's life with profound intrigue and interest. According to Yankee pitcher Lefty Gomez, "Joe was probably the least excited guy in America over the streak. He didn't talk much about it while it was going on. He just went out and got a hit day after day."
On July 17, 1941, there were 67,468 people in the stands at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium. It was the largest night-baseball crowd ever, who had come to see Joe DiMaggio extend his amazing streak. Joe went 0-for-3 with a walk that night, robbed twice of potential base-hits by Indian third baseman Ken Keltner's superior defensive plays. The Yankees won the game that night, 4-1, but the streak officially came to an end at fifty-six. "I can't say I am glad it's over," said DiMaggio shortly afterwards, "Of course, I wanted it to go on as long as it could." But, according to his teammates, the fans, and the reporters, Joe DiMaggio reacted to the end of his streak in classic Joe DiMaggio manner. He was calm, polite, and stoic as always, crediting Keltner for his brilliant fielding, never displaying much emotion about his own tremendous accomplishment.
So, what was all the hype about anyway? How did one man's fifty-six game hitting streak grip a nation of people so tightly and intrigue them so poignantly? Below the surface of an obvious fasination with extraordinary success, it wasn't the consecutive hits that fascinated the American public, but the man who was getting them. It was his cool and collected demeanor, upheld throughout the entire fifty-six game ordeal, that Americans witnessed and desired to find more about. Because DiMaggio himself never replied and acted in a controversial manner, the American public could employ their own notions about DiMaggio to DiMaggio, and he would accordingly fit them. Joe DiMaggio and his fifty-six game hitting streak brought to life everyman's wildest dreams of success. The number, although a fantastic athletic accomplishment, was merely a marker for those who watched a great man at work.
In the summer of 1941, the American public lived, vicariously through Joe DiMaggio; happy for his triumphs, saddened by his failures, and forever eager to hear more about their hero. There are events that survive the passage of time, that stay alive in memory despite all subsequent experience. For millions of Americans, "the streak" had that special significance. Robert Creamer writes that "DiMaggio's streak "transcended the Yankees and New York; it transcended baseball..." "No athlete before it or since...has held the country's fascinated attention day after day, week after week, the way DiMaggio did in 1941.
"DiMaggio's remarkable achievement-its uniqueness, in the unvarnished literal sense of that word-lies in whatever he did to extend his success well beyond the reasonable expectations of random models that have governed every other streak or slump in the history of baseball...DiMaggio activated that greatest and most unattainable dream of all humanity, the hope and chimera of all sages and shamans: he cheated death, at least for a while."
Like Robinson and DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle became not just a great baseball player, but a hero to the American public. The following anecdote relates a child's experience in exploring his own feelings about Mickey and about heroism.
By Tony Castro
On my drive home from work on a June day in 1995, I found myself breaking down and sobbing like a little boy over the human frailty of a little boy's hero. Mickey Mantle, I had just learned from a radio newscast, was in a Texas hospital, doomed to die of liver failure if he didn't have an organ transplant. When I arrived home, my lack of composure must have been obvious. "Why are you crying, dad?" my 10-year-old son Trey asked. "Is it Gapy? Did Gapy die?"
My son called his grandfather Gapy when he first learned to talk, and the nickname had stuck. "No, it's not Gapy," I said, calming his own fears "It's Mickey Mantle. He's in the hospital, and he's very sick." My son, who in previous conversations has expressed serious doubts that The Mick could ever have been as good as Ken Griffey Jr. is today, couldn't understand my overly emotional state. "You haven't cried over Gapy," he said. "And he's been much, much sicker." He was right, of course. I was all broken up over the possibility that Mickey Mantle might die, but I hadn't once shed a single tear over my father and the series of strokes he had had over the previous two and a half years.
That night, I did what any other post-World War II baby boomer probably did in the final days of Mickey Mantle's life that summer. I retreated to my bedroom and surrounded myself with all the Mickey Mantle baseball cards and memories I could find.
The oldest of those memories was the day my father brought home a newspaper sports page that had a picture of Joe DiMaggio with his arm around a hot-shot rookie that my dad informed me "will be even better than DiMaggio."
I could only imagine. After all, a near life-size poster of Joe DiMaggio even dwarfed a crucifix over my bed, much to my mother's chagrin. But then that was my father's doing. Three things have always been important to him: God, family and baseball, though not necessarily in that order.
My father, of course, was right about Mickey Mantle. In my mind, he would wind up being greater than DiMaggio, although not for the reasons some baseball purists would argue.
DiMaggio had retired by the time I could talk baseball with my father. But in the 1950s and into the 1960s, Mickey Mantle was the centerpiece of many of the discussions my father and I had about baseball in those years. We saw The Mick play hundreds of times but, unfortunately, never at Yankee Stadium. We lived in Texas, not far from Mantle's native Oklahoma but seemingly millions of miles from New York, and we always kept promising ourselves that one day we would see Mickey Mantle play in the stadium known as "the house that Babe Ruth built."
The closest we came was seeing Mickey in an exhibition game in Houston where he hit the first home run ever hit in the Astrodome.
I went off to college that year and, for my father, seeing Mickey Mantle in person was like a celebration of seeing his son safely through passage from adolescence to manhood.
"Mickey Mantle has always been your hero," my father said to me. "But you have always been mine."
I didn't know what to say to him then. And as the years have passed, sometimes I have felt like Mickey Mantle, triumphant at the plate. But sometimes, too, I have felt like a child who has disappointed, like Mickey Mantle having struck out. On the night I learned that Mickey was dying, I relived my childhood by going through my Mickey Mantle baseball cards. I caught myself mumbling an old childhood prayer when I came to a faded sepia photograph of my father that I also keep in one of those plastic covers that protects my Mickey Mantles and my son's Ken Griffey Jr. cards.
The old picture is of my father in 1942, wearing a U.S. Army baseball uniform. He had pitched and played first base on an enlisted men's team that won an armed forces championship before he went overseas.
I was overcome with guilt until the next day when I told a friend how I had cried for Mickey Mantle but never once for my father when he had been near death.
"That's not too surprising," my friend said. "You haven't cried for your father because to do so would be an admission of his vulnerability. My friend was right, of course. I don't want to imagine life without my father.
I didn't want to miss the chance to tell my dad how special he has always been, so I immediately wrote my father a note. "Dear Dad: Like Mickey Mantle, you, too, have always been my hero."
Tony Castro, a former Sports Illustrated staff writer, interviewed Mickey Mantle extensively during his retirement in Dallas.
YANKEES, CONGRATULATIONS, DUDES, YOU ARE TRULY THE TEAM OF THE CENTURY!
