Robinson and Woods: Heroes and Hate, Past and Present

It’s been a week of sudden bursts of tears for me. Unexpected drops rimmed my lips at Tiger Woods’ boyish hug of his father. For a long moment, vulnerability clung to safety. I tried to figure out why this touched me so deeply. Was it the race thing? Was it the geography? The history? Or was I reacting as a parent whose child has offered his great victory as a gift of love? Some of all those things, I decided. I, like many black people, cannot experience great triumph without looking at the other side of the ledger, the greater costs.

I didn’t know a bogey from a bunker, had no interest in golf until Woods came along. I’ve been watching him for the last six months. In addition to his skill, I was intrigued by his insistence, and the media’s acquiescence, that he be identified as both an African American and an Asian American.

As I watched the mostly white faces on the Augusta, Ga., greens observe Woods, I thought of my father, a Baptist minister. Each summer, he drove from Connecticut to Virginia and the Carolinas, to conduct revivals at small country churches. His family went with him. He would not drive to Georgia. “Too dangerous,” he said, “we might not get back home.” The entire state of Georgia became a bogyman for me. But, when Woods won the Masters, he made that particular bogyman a little less fearsome. I hope he’ll play in Mississippi--another state that never saw my father’s car.

When Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, I was 17. I asked my father, “Why do white people hate us so much?” He looked pained at my question, whether because I had to ask it or because he had to answer it, I do not know.

“Sweetie,” he said, “It’s some white people, not all. I wish I could give you the answer to that question. In my heart, I think it’s got to do with education, with exposure. In my heart, I believe the hate will be gone by the time you’re grown.”

So far, my father has missed the mark.

I fell in love for the first time in 1947, when I was 10. I was a tomboy and played a lot of baseball, the only girl in a group of neighborhood boys. Some of the boys were Polish, some Italian, some Irish and some black. We played on a wide sand bank by an old trestle, where the docile river curved beyond our sight. I modeled my playing style on the Dodger player who claimed my heart. The boys remained unimpressed.

One day in 1958, my father called me at college and suggested I come home to meet a special guest, someone who would be spending part of his day with my father and at my old high school in Ansonia, Conn. When I found out who it was, my father did not have to ask twice.

Back in Cambridge, I told the man I was going to marry that I had a family emergency and had to go home. I could not let my husband-to-be into the space I had reserved for my first hero, the prince I had always hoped would come to my little town and sweep me into his life. Never mind that the prince had an adored wife and beloved children.

It is a stunning moment to meet one’s childhood idol. The reality did not diminish the dream. All I can remember about the day I met Jackie Robinson was his great smile and kind look when he shook my hand. I had planned to impress him with my knowledge of Dodger statistics and trivia related to his playing. The facts flew out of my head like a long, clean homer. In Robinson’s presence, I became the 10-year-old tomboy in braids. He was the giant I imagined him to be.

For a few hours, I happily trailed after my father and Robinson as he met town officials and assorted VIPS. That day he became my ideal--the epitome of charm, style and intelligence, second only to my father. Ever after, I measured all black men I would meet against Robinson.

Years later, I walked a deserted Caribbean beach with a new friend, Rachel Robinson. I shyly revealed my girlhood crush to Robinson’s widow. With a sweet graciousness, she gently told me how many hundreds of women my age had confided the same thing to her. Our prince truly had a huge kingdom of ladies in waiting, of whom he took no notice.

As Robinson’s picture flashed across the TV screen on the anniversary of his first major-league game two weeks ago, tears welled in my eyes. But pain tempered joy. I thought about the time I saw Robinson play at Ebbets Field and how the Dodgers won that day. I was only 12. I did not understand I was watching history--all I knew was that my hero triumphed.

It was not the media hype that linked Robinson and Woods and Till in my life story. It was my own experience and the way that life circles around and around. The way that golfer Fuzzy Zoeller bogeyed raw racism outside the Augusta clubhouse in the warm Georgia sun.

Stunned, I watched as this master golfer with a few choice words reduced Woods the champion to a “little boy.” Adding grease to the fire, the not-so-warm Fuzzy dissed fried chicken and collards, “or whatever they serve,” as fodder for Woods and, by implication, his less-than-desirable kind.

Seeing such age-old vitriol offered so brazenly, I felt as if I had been hit in the mouth with a five iron. It hurt.

In talking with one of my daughters after Woods’ victory, I became frustrated that she could not wrap her mind around the idea that black people had been deliberately excluded from golf greens. “But mom, why didn’t they protest? Why didn’t they march around the clubhouses? Why did white people hate us so much?”

My father’s pained face came into view.

I could answer the question no better than he.