Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball

Chapter 1: White Sportswriters and Minstrel Shows

CHAPTER 1 WHITE SPORTSWRITERS AND MINSTREL SHOWS On February 5, 1933, the inside of the grand ballroom of New York City’s Commodore Hotel crackled with laughter during an evening of songs, skits, and speeches at the tenth annual New York Baseball Writers’ Association dinner. Sportswriters took turns spoofing everyone from the guest of honor, retired New York Giants manager John McGraw, to the New York Yankees, who had defeated the Chicago Cubs in the World Series the previous October. In addition, sportswriters performed their annual minstrel show to the delight of the all-white crowd of several hundred. New York Times sportswriter John Drebinger called the minstrel show the main entertainment for the evening. “I’m still laughing,” Dan Daniel, the president of the association, gushed in his column in the Sporting News. Writers, ballplayers, and owners sat together with politicians, judges, businessmen, and ministers to laugh but also to glorify baseball and to honor those who made the game great. New York Yankees pitcher Herb Pennock received the 3 white sportswriters and minstrel shows 4 writers’ award as the outstanding player of the previous year. John McGraw reflected nostalgically about his long career after receiving the “Outstanding Service to Baseball” award. Other speakers included St. Louis Cardinals vice president Branch Rickey, toastmaster Bugsy Baer, Philadelphia comic Joe Cunningham, and former sportswriter Heywood Broun of the New York World-Telegram, who wrote the nationally syndicated column “It Seems to Me.”1 In his speech Broun responded to a recent editorial in the New York Daily News that called for abolishing the color line in baseball. Broun said he saw “no reason” blacks should be prohibited from the Major Leagues.2 Broun wrote in his February 7 column that his suggestion was “met with no overwhelming roar of approval.” Broun, however, added, “It was still a good suggestion.” Broun said blacks had proven themselves good athletes. He said Yale University football coach Walter Camp twice had included Paul Robeson of Rutgers University on his All-America team. Broun said that a number of blacks, including sprinter Eddie Tolan, had competed with great success for the United States at the 1932 Olympic Games. If blacks were good enough to represent the United States in the Olympics, Broun said, “it seems a little silly that they cannot participate in a game between the Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Browns.” Broun said that nothing, in particular, prevented an owner from signing a black player. “As things stand, I believe there is no set rule barring Negroes from the game. It is merely a tacit agreement,” he said, “or possibly custom.” If there was no rule, he continued, “Why, in the name of fair play and gate receipts, should professional baseball be so exclusive?” Broun said he had been told players would object to having black teammates. But, as things stood, players already objected to a lot of things in baseball —like being traded, fined, or having their salaries cut—but that did not stop team owners from doing these things. He said blacks would make the game more interesting and also would swell the size of crowds. “And,” he added, “it would be a fair and square thing. If baseball is really the national game let the club owners go out and prove it.”3 5 white sportswriters and minstrel shows New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Powers responded to Broun’s speech by asking several baseball executives and ballplayers if they objected to blacks in baseball. National League president John Heydler , New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, and ballplayers such as Pennock, Lou Gehrig, and Frankie Frisch all told him they did not. Only McGraw objected on the record.4 McGraw’s response appeared uncharacteristic, given that he had shown an interest in signing blacks during his long career in baseball. In 1901 McGraw, then managing the Baltimore Orioles of the National League, tried to circumvent the color line by passing a black infielder, Charlie Grant, as a Cherokee Indian. When Grant’s real ethnicity was revealed, McGraw released him. When McGraw was managing the New York Giants, he was so impressed with black pitcher “Rube” Foster that he hired him to work with his pitching staff. McGraw later said he would pay fifty thousand dollars for the black Cuban pitcher José Méndez if there had not been a color line. Black teams used the nickname “Giants” as...