Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training

3. Rickey and Robinson Challenge Segregated Baseball

Rickey and Robinson Challenge Segregated Baseball 12345678910 43 I n the early afternoon of Tuesday, October 23, 1945, Hector Racine, the president of the Montreal Royals, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ aaa team, informed reporters he would be making a big announcement at 5 p.m. at the team’s offices at Delormier Downs in Montreal. He said nothing else, leaving reporters wondering and rumors flying. The Montreal Star speculated that the city would get a Major League team.1 According to another story, the Royals would fire manager Bruno Betzel and replace him with retired Yankees slugger Babe Ruth.2 About two dozen sportswriters, newscasters, and photographers were waiting when Racine entered the room as scheduled accompanied by Romeo Gavreau, the team’s vice president; Branch Rickey Jr., director of Brooklyn’s farm system and the son of the organization’s president; and a broad-shouldered black man, who was introduced as Jackie Robinson, formerly of the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. Branch Rickey Sr. remained in Brooklyn. Racine announced that his International League team had signed Robinson, thus erasing professional baseball’s seemingly impenetrable color line. In just a few words, Racine forever changed baseball and American society.Stunned silence followed.Then chaos erupted as camera bulbs flashed and reporters surged forward with questions while others rushed to phones to alert their newspapers and radio stations . When order was restored, Racine explained that the team had signed Robinson because he was“a good ballplayer.”But,he added,the Royals has also signed Robinson because it was a “point of fairness.” According to Racine, blacks earned their right to play alongside whites by serving their country duringWorld War II.The team would support Robinson, but, Racine noted, there were no guarantees. Like any other player, Robinson would have to earn his uniform the following March at spring training in Daytona Beach, Florida.3 When reporters asked Robinson how he felt, he described himself as “a guinea pig in baseball ’s racial experiment.”4 A popular and still prevailing misperception gives Rickey most, if not all, the credit for signing Robinson. This myth began taking shape Rickey and Robinson Challenge Segregated Baseball 44 in the hours, perhaps even the moments, after Montreal signed Robinson . Rickey co-opted the story and shaped it in his own image, ignoring the contributions of others. The mainstream press, for the most part, made little or no attempt to interpret or dig beneath the information Rickey or his associates fed it. This left readers with no reason to believe other than that it had been Rickey and only Rickey who deserved the credit for integrating baseball. Only in the black and communist press would readers get a sense of the story’s context.And only in that alternative press would readers get a sense of what the story meant to America. In his initial account of the press conference, filed within hours of Montreal’s announcement, Sid Fedor of the Associated Press reported that Robinson was the first black to be admitted into organized baseball . He mentioned Robinson’s athletic success at ucla and stated that Robinson had been signed by Rickey Sr.after a three-year,twenty-fivethousand -dollar search to find the right ballplayer. He also included remarks made at the conference by Racine, Robinson, and Rickey Jr.5 Branch Jr. had remarked that his father knew he had “the alligator by the tail” and was prepared for whatever might come. “The Twig” also predicted that his father would be severely criticized “in some sections of the country where racial prejudice is rampant.” He also said that the Dodger organization was prepared for the possibility that a number of southern players might quit in protest.“Even if some players quit,” he said, “they’ll be back after a year or two in a cotton mill.”6 Rickey Jr.’s comments angered Southerners,including Billy Werber, a onetime Major League third basemen who had grown up in Maryland . Werber wrote Rickey Sr. that his son’s reference to “ballplayers from the South is a definite insult to every Southern boy.” It was wrong, Werber said, to expect southern ballplayers to accept blacks on the ball field or anywhere else. Philadelphia Athletics pitcher Bobo Newsom of Hartsville, South Carolina, made the following jab at the tightfisted Rickeys: “A ball player would make more money in a cotton mill if young...