There Was Another Side to the Color Line: Green

They called it the noble experiment. But a closer look at the circumstances surrounding Jackie Robinson’s breaking of baseball’s color barrier reveals that nobility, at least among baseball’s white establishment, was actually a pretty scarce commodity. Robinson’s support system consisted of a lot of people doing the right thing, but often for the wrong reason.

Take Branch Rickey, who set the wheels of desegregation in motion. The Brooklyn Dodger general manager traced his personal fight against racism back almost 50 years to his days as baseball coach at Ohio Wesleyan University. A black player on that team, Charlie Thomas, was denied living accommodations, and Rickey recalled how Thomas cried while rubbing his hands together: “Black skin, black skin! If I could only make them white.”

While Rickey was undoubtedly affected by this incident, which he referred to again and again, in less guarded moments, he made the rest of his agenda clear. “I don’t mean to be a crusader,” he confided to a reporter in 1945. “My only purpose is to be fair to all people and my selfish objective is to win baseball games.

Crusader or not, Rickey was a baseball man and a businessman first. As the game’s greatest judge of talent, he understood that bringing in Negro League players such as Robinson and Roy Campanella would bolster the club’s prospects immeasurably. And Rickey the executive understood that the Dodgers were the third draw in a three-team town--with barnstorming Negro League clubs also cutting into New York’s attendance pie.

To change that, he had to do something to shake things up. Such as signing Robinson. “Only my opinion, but I think Rickey did it for the money,” recalls former Dodger Ralph Branca. “Rickey knew we were going to draw a lot of people. And we did.”

Even the timing of Robinson’s call-up on April 9, 1947, spoke to Rickey’s larger concerns: The big announcement diverted attention from the news that Manager Leo Durocher had been suspended for the season for associating with suspected gamblers.

As for Robinson’s teammates, most accepted the idea of playing with a black man only grudgingly at best. Several--Dixie Walker, Kirby Higbe and Bobby Bragan among them--circulated an ultimately unsuccessful petition to try to keep him off the team.

Why did it fail? Some like Pete Reiser, a Southerner, genuinely thought it was wrong. Others heard the jingle of the change purse. In 1947, before multimillion-dollar contracts and lucrative endorsement deals, a World Series share represented a significant chunk of money for a ballplayer. And a player of Robinson’s obvious talent brought the Dodgers one step closer to the series. Even Pee Wee Reese, the Hall of Fame shortstop still remembered for silencing Boston’s bench jockeys by coming over to Robinson and putting his hand on his shoulder, admits that his initial acceptance of Robinson wasn’t purely selfless.

“I wasn’t trying to think of myself as the Great White Father,” said Reese. “I just wanted to play the game, especially after being in the Navy for three years and needing the money.”

The loquacious Durocher summed it up best: “I don’t care if he’s black or yellow or has stripes like a----zebra, I’m the manager of this team and I say he plays,” he announced. “What’s more, I say he can make all of us rich, and any of you can’t use the money I’ll see that you’re traded.”

And, in the days of baseball’s ironclad reserve clause, players understood that this was no idle threat. In fact, in the wake of his petition, Walker found himself immediately on the trading block--although the pragmatic Rickey, having made his point, declined to deal him when he couldn’t get fair value.

The single factor that most assured the success of baseball desegregation was the vehement opposition of rival players. In the most public example, a string of vile epithets by Manager Ben Chapman of the Philadelphia Phillies, rankled not only the silently fuming Robinson but his teammates as well.

“You yellow-bellied cowards, why don’t you pick on someone who can answer back?” yelled the pugnacious Eddie Stanky. If Durocher and Rickey had won the minds of the Brooklyn players, the Chapman incident won their hearts.

“When he poured out that string of unconscionable abuse, he solidified and unified 30 men,” recalled Rickey. Chapman made Robinson a real member of the Dodgers. In the face of more organized opposition--teams such as the St. Louis Cardinals threatened to strike if Robinson played--baseball’s powers that be were forced to step in. To National League President Ford Frick, the real issue wasn’t the integration of baseball but the threat to his authority. “I do not care if half the league strikes,” read Frick’s ultimatum. “Those who do it will encounter quick retribution. They will be suspended, and I don’t care if it wrecks the National League for five years.”

The Jackie Robinson story, over half a century, has been sanitized into the kind of neat little morality play that’s easily digested in a grammar-school classroom.

Robinson wrote in his autobiography, “Some of the people who have criticized me have labeled me a black man who was made by white people.”

His shrewd judgment was proved correct.