The Victory Season Page 9

  Smith and Rickey were coconspirators in this “great experiment” almost from the start. Small and trim, with a dapper mustache, Smith was one of several Negro sportswriters who had pushed integration for years, going so far as to poll National Leaguers in 1938 about the idea. To his surprise, 75 percent of those he queried had no problem with playing alongside blacks, as opposed to 20 percent that did. Smith knew from integration, as he was the only black student at Detroit’s Southeastern High School when he attended. His father was Henry Ford’s chef, and Smith sometimes played ball right there on the auto magnate’s lawn. He was told by a scout that he had major league talent, but alas, couldn’t be signed for “white folks’ ball.”

  Rickey was paying Smith $50 a week, nominally to scout but really to be Robinson’s body man, in particular making sure he had places to eat and sleep in the South. “This whole program was more or less your suggestion, as you will recall,” Rickey wrote Smith on January 13. “Most certainly I don’t want to find ourselves embarrassed on March 1st because of Robinson’s not having a place to stay.” “The Courier is willing to pay all my expenses in connection with this service,” Smith wrote back. “We are trying to render the cause of Democracy in this country, so ably championed by you.”

  “He was there at every juncture,” Rachel remembers of Smith. “He gave us a feeling of stability. He was helpful but never dictating. He was both counselor and big brother.”

  Smith, Wright, and the Robinsons went to the home of black pharmacist Joe Harris and his wife, Duff, for the night. Jackie vented about his journey from L.A. that evening. “I never want another trip like that one,” he said. He threatened to return to California and quit the whole venture but was talked out of it. It was dawning on Robinson that, in the South at least, his college athletic exploits and army service meant nothing. He was just another Negro.

  The flood of returning servicemen and Rickey’s superb scouting meant that a crush of nearly two hundred players were in Daytona. As such, Rickey decided to move the minor leaguers with no chance of making the parent club, including Robby, to Sanford, the celery capital of Florida, forty miles southwest. There, Smith arranged for the Robinsons to stay at the home of David Brock, a local black businessman. The prominent Mayfair Hotel had refused them, naturally. Smith, meanwhile, stayed with an old girlfriend from school, whose father was the local numbers kingpin.

  On Monday, March 4, Robinson donned his Montreal Royals uniform for the first time. He reported for duty at 9:30 a.m. and was immediately besieged by reporters. “What would you do if one of these pitchers threw at your head?” was a typical question. “I’d duck,” was the answer. Robinson had played only shortstop and a little outfield previously, but the club thought he’d be best suited at second base, provided he could learn how to make the pivot.

  But Robinson was not long for Sanford. That night, a white man showed up at the Brock home. Smith met him outside. “You’re chaperoning Robinson?” the stranger asked. When Smith nodded, he was warned, “You better get him out of town today.” The man had just come from a meeting between the mayor of Sanford and a large group of angry white residents, who demanded Robinson leave forthwith. Not wanting to test the situation, Smith bundled the Robinsons into a car, and they drove back to Daytona. Jack threatened to quit again; again, he was dissuaded by Smith. “I knew Jackie would make it and if he did things had to open up,” Smith wrote later.

  Daytona Beach was more welcoming. The “liberal city on the banks of the Halifax River,” in Smith’s words, was a haven filled with prominent and welcoming blacks. Joe Harris and his wife, Duff, introduced Robinson to an assortment of interesting people, including the educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune. The lively, charming Bethune, a spry seventy years old, had founded a school for black girls in Daytona in 1904, a school that had flowered into the coed Bethune-Cookman College. She had also taken on the Ku Klux Klan by registering black voters throughout the 1930s. Thanks to her political efforts and savvy, Daytona had attracted several Depression-era work projects that had rescued the town from financial collapse. It was her spirit that infused the beach city. Mayor William Perry declared, “No one objects to Jackie Robinson and Johnny Wright training here. We welcome them and wish them the best of luck.”

  Robinson felt the difference as well. One afternoon, a dyed-in-the-wool southern gentleman approached him. “I’ve seen every game you’ve played in,” he said as Smith took notes, “and want you to know that I’m pulling for you to make good. In fact, everyone here feels the same as I do. We believe a man deserves a fair chance if he has the goods, regardless of race or color.”

  Life at the Harris home provided no respite from pushing up against barriers. “The Harrises were activists, and held political meetings at the house,” Rachel says. “Daytona had no black bus drivers, and right there in the house they organized a challenge and forced the city to hire a few.” Jackie and Rachel didn’t necessarily partake—they were cooped up in their love nest, lost in each other. “Duff would call us down to breakfast by calling ‘c’mon lovebirds, time to eat!’”

  Still, Robinson was prevented from staying in the Riviera Hotel with the rest of the Dodgers, nor could he eat at the same restaurants. If he wanted to swim in the ocean, he could not use Daytona’s main beach, but had to travel down to Bethune Beach, named for Mary. Unfortunately, it was close to an hour’s drive away. Smith, too, felt Jim Crow’s sting. He was treated as an equal by the horde of white sportswriters in town, but he could not socialize with them away from the park.

  Meanwhile, Robby faced the not insignificant challenge of proving he belonged with the whites on the field. The other Dodgers weren’t hostile, but neither were they especially welcoming. They had their own jobs to worry about. “It had nothing to do with color,” explains Eddie Robinson (no relation), who played for the Baltimore Orioles of the International League in ’46. “If some guys came in from Germany to compete for jobs, it would have been the same thing.”

  The lone exception was a top candidate to play second base for the Montreal Royals in 1946, a player named Lou Rochelli. Rochelli selflessly taught Jackie how to pivot on the double play, how best to hurdle oncoming runners, and how to angle throws so that the shortstop could turn two. The following season, Pee Wee Reese would get credit for being the first white Dodger to embrace Robinson and facilitate his transition to the majors. If it weren’t for similar actions by the unknown Rochelli, Jackie might never have made it to Brooklyn.

  Robinson started slowly. The big leaguers were on the white side of town, while Jackie, Wright, and the other Royals (all reimported from Sanford so Robby didn’t seem special) practiced at Kelly Field, in the Negro section, to avoid any possible issues. Robinson strained his arm and worried about being sent to a lower-level minor league club. Rachel would soothe his arm at night with icepacks, and his nerves with games of gin and laughter.

  On the practice field, Rickey would stand on the first base line, urging Robinson to bring some of the flair and dash of the Negro Leagues to his play. “Be more daring!” he’d yell. “Gamble. Take a bigger lead.” Meanwhile, Robinson was trying to win over his new manager, a Mississippian named Clay Hopper. Hopper so exemplified the southern gent that he actually owned a plantation in the Rebel State. His initial reaction to Robinson’s signing was to beg Rickey to change his mind. “I’m white and I’ve lived in Mississippi all my life. If you do this, you’re going to force me to move my family and my home.”

  During one workout that spring, Robinson made a tough play in the field. Rickey was standing alongside Hopper and called the play “superhuman.” Hopper turned and infamously asked his boss, “Do you really think a nigger is a human being?” Rickey was incensed, but restrained himself. In relating the encounter to Robinson, he told him, “I saw that this Mississippi-born man was sincere, that he meant what he said; that his attitude of regarding the Negro as subhuman was part of his heritage; that here was a man who had practically nursed race prejudice at his
mother’s breast. So I decided to ignore the question.” Privately, Hopper told friends, “I’m glad my father isn’t alive to see me managing a black player.”

  On Sunday, March 17, Robby played in his first actual intersquad game, one that pitted the Royals against the Dodgers. A huge crowd of four thousand showed up at City Island Ballpark, buoyed by the one thousand or so black fans who sat apart from the grandstand, as required by law. One man who wasn’t there was Branch Rickey—not even Robinson’s first game was enough to get him to break the Sabbath.

  Jack took the field against Pee Wee Reese, Dixie Walker, and Leo Durocher, who already had stated that he welcomed Robinson, although some of his former players, like first baseman Ed Stevens, felt that was for public benefit only and that Leo didn’t want Robinson. He went 0–3 but got aboard on a fielder’s choice, stole second base, and scored. He also fielded his position well, a more notable effort given his struggles to learn the intricacies of second base play. He got a loud ovation as the game concluded.

  In 1948, Robinson would reflect on this first game: “When I got home, I felt as though I had won some kind of victory. I had a new opinion of the people in the town. I knew, of course, that everyone wasn’t pulling for me to make good, but I was sure that the whole world wasn’t lined up against me. When I went to sleep, the applause was still ringing in my ears.”

  The only thing ringing in his ears a few days later was the clanging of a padlock around a chain, barring him from play. The Royals had come to Jacksonville to play against Jersey City, but Durkee Field was shut tight, barring Robinson from competing against whites, per city ordinance. “Jacksonville got more bad press banning Robinson and Wright than any city in Florida has experienced since the Jesse Payne lynching at Madison last October,” Smith wrote from the perspective of the black media.

  Bad press or no, the canceled games mounted. Jacksonville struck down two more dates, and Savannah and Richmond sent word that Robinson and Wright were unwelcome in their parks. On April 7, Montreal’s game with St. Paul began in Sanford, but before the third inning started, the police chief stormed on to the field and threatened to prosecute Hopper if the blacks weren’t taken off the field. Hopper did as he was ordered, and the game ended. Then, three days later, in DeLand, Florida, park officials canceled a game because the lights weren’t working—although the game was scheduled for one p.m.

  Even when Robinson got to play, there were challenges. During a game against Indianapolis, a former major league pitcher named Paul Derringer faced Jackie. Derringer was tight with Hopper, and he told Clay before the game that he was going to knock Robinson down, “to see what makes him tick.” Sure enough, Derringer put Jackie on his behind in the first inning. Robinson got up and lined a base hit, which incurred a pitch right at his head his next time at bat. This time, Robinson retaliated by tripling to deep left.

  After the game, Derringer approached Hopper.

  “He’ll do,” was all he said.

  Despite such successes, the stress (and repeated bruises from being hit by pitches) was getting to Jackie. His sleep suffered, and he slumped at the plate. When he finally got a couple of singles, including a perfectly dropped bunt, the agricultural college at Bethune-Cookman sent Rachel a chicken and fresh vegetables for a victory celebration. “It was a communal victory for sure,” Rachel recalled.

  Still, Rickey was forced to cancel the remainder of the exhibition schedule. “I didn’t realize it would be this bad,” Rickey confessed as spring training ended. “Next year we’ll have to train out of the country.” He thus decided to move 1947 training camp to Havana, away from the burden of Jim Crow. But from a larger perspective, the camp was a success. Robinson earned a spot playing second base with the Royals. Wright, too, would be on the opening-day roster. On April 15, Jackie, Rachel, Wright, and Smith boarded a special train with the rest of the Royals, bound for New York City and the beginning of their historic season.

  Chapter 9

  The Most Interesting Man in the World

  Even before Robinson’s debut on Floridian fields, the benign tyranny of baseball’s moguls was under threat. This menace came from, of all places, Mexico.

  It all started with a workout.

  Jorge Pasquel was ahead of his time when it came to physical fitness. Broad and strong, he jogged and lifted weights long before that sort of thing was fashionable. His Mexico City mansion was equipped with all manner of exercise gear, but when he was in New York, as he was in early January 1946, he frequented a health club, Al Roon’s place at 46th and Lex, above a Horn & Hardart automat cafeteria. His regular trainer wasn’t working that day, so a new one was assigned.

  Pasquel was stunned to find Danny Gardella waiting for him by the weights. The New York Giants outfielder was working his off-season job helping others get fit. Few around baseball thought anything of the fact that most players needed to moonlight to make ends meet. But Pasquel was shocked.

  After the workout, he invited Gardella and a bodybuilding pal of his from the gym, Bob Janis, up to his room at the Sherry Netherland Hotel. With no information to work with, Gardella and Janis assumed Pasquel was queer. “If he makes a move on us, I’ll coldcock him,” Gardella assured his pal.

  The Mexican magnate had nothing on his mind but business. He told Gardella that he would pay him far better to come and play in Mexico, where Pasquel owned the national league, the Liga Mexicana de Béisbol. With the war over, he was looking to boost the level of play. Pasquel and his four brothers directly owned two teams, in Mexico City and Vera Cruz, and had heavy sway over the other six clubs. Gardella said he would think about it, and accepted a gift of a pair of shoes (he was allowed to choose one of Pasquel’s fifty pairs). Janis walked out of the room with a new job, as bodyguard and man Friday for the unusual millionaire.

  Jorge Pasquel had been the man to see in Mexico City since long before 1946. “Sure, you could say I’m a dictator,” he told Time. “Whatever I order is done.”

  The thirty-nine-year-old was from a wealthy family, the scion of a shipping magnate, and, along with his quartet of brothers (Alfonso, Bernardo, Girardo, and Mario), dabbled in businesses across the country. He started with a tiny cigar factory in Vera Cruz, but soon was wheeling and dealing in banking, ranching, real estate, shipping, automobiles, and customs. He flaunted his wealth, keeping a fleet of Lincolns and building a fully staffed haberdashery in his mansion to ensure he was always at his dandified best. “What is money?” he would say with a shrug. “I have forty, fifty, sixty million…”

  He was an expert on Napoleon, keeping a bust of the French dictator in his mansion. He worshipped other powerful figures from history, like Attila and Alexander. A large man, he was nearly two hundred pounds and powerfully built but was light on his feet. He had a pencil mustache and favored thin-framed sunglasses that gave him an underworld look. Jorge was going bald a little too quickly, and often it seemed he was perpetually angry about it. His handsome features would suddenly cloud over with temper, and his rage would fill whatever room he was in. Moments later, all would be forgotten. His generosity was legendary. It seemed that everyone in Mexico had a story of his giving away dinero and gifts to complete strangers who approached him with tales of woe. One writer likened him to Santa Claus.

  As one might expect, he had fought a duel once, with a general in the Mexican army, over a woman, naturally. Both men turned up, weapons in hand, but at the last moment decided that gunfire was less appropriate than letting the woman decide for herself. She chose Pasquel.

  Even more fitting to his image was a story (unconfirmed but with enough shades of truth) about a trip to Havana in February of ’46. He spent an evening drinking rum with Ernest Hemingway, whose self-styled macho persona might have been based in part on Pasquel. Well into their cups, the men stripped to the waist and began to box on the lawn of Hemingway’s estate, El Vigía (“The Lookout”). The referee was Gene Tunney, who knew a little something about the sport.

  Alfonso Pasquel was there, d
runkenly taunting Hemingway, letting him know that Jorge had “killed a man in a duel.” Jorge’s lover, the beautiful actress María Félix, was there too, and supposedly wagered $100 on Papa to best her papi. Both men landed a few heavy blows, then thought better of the brawl and jumped into the swimming pool to refresh.

  In sum, Pasquel was the original “most interesting man in the world.”

  Gardella was an odd choice for a pioneer. Squat and muscular, he was purely a power bat. His glove was atrocious. When a fly was hit his way, “the more casual fans hoped that Danny wouldn’t drop the ball, while connoisseurs prayed that he wouldn’t get killed.” Mainly, he was a character. He loved practical jokes, acrobatics, odd stories from the paper. He would backflip across the outfield, then break into a quality Italian aria. He once fell asleep on the bench, shoes untied. Suddenly called upon to pinch hit, Gardella pounded a home run, rounding the bases with his shoes flapping. Not all of his merriment was so spontaneous. Gardella once premeditated a cruel prank; he spent several days convincing his roommate that he was feeling suicidal, then slipped out to the balcony and let loose a terrifying scream, causing his roomie to become hysterical before Gardella revealed himself.

  A few weeks after meeting with Pasquel, Gardella asked the Giants for a raise from the $5,000 he had earned in 1945. After all, he had hit eighteen homers. But Danny undercut any chances he had at more cash by missing the train for Miami and spring training. When he finally arrived, he showed up for a team meal disheveled and casually dressed. Team rules insisted on a suit and tie, but Gardella couldn’t afford either. He was released and immediately headed south for Mexico. Pasquel picked up the wayward Giant in a limo jammed with willing women, took him to dinner at a hip nightspot where the fabled bullfighter Manolete was eating tamales, and offered Gardella $8,000 for the year, plus a $5,000 signing bonus that equaled his salary offer from the Giants. At that, Gardella was a Vera Cruz Azul.