-
1. How It All Started
- The University of Alabama Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Contents Acknowledgments ix 1. How It All Started 1 2. The Lingering Legend 14 3. The Walkers of Birmingham 30 4. The Walker Family Baseball Dynasty 46 5. Watch Out, Babe, Dixie Is Coming 61 6. Estelle Shea Walker 87 7. Arrival in Brooklyn 100 8. The 1941 Pennant and the 1944 Batting Title 114 9. Jackie’s Early Years 132 10. Jackie and Dixie in 1947 149 11. The Pennant, the World Series, and the Long Farewell 168 12. The Final Playing Years and a New Career 198 13. The Sweet Dodger Days 215 14. Dixie, a Baseball Lifer 235 15. Estelle Carries the Torch 245 16. History’s Verdict 260 Photographs follow pages 74 and 188 [54.166.223.204] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:56 GMT) Acknowledgments The story of a baseball player’s life is never the sole contribution of the author. It is the accumulation of information and insight offered by so many through the years. As Dixie Walker’s one hundredth birthday is marked in 2010, it is writings from the past and revelations from the present that flesh out the full picture of this dedicated athlete and complicated man. It is with much appreciation that I note the offerings throughout the book by the skilled journalists of Alabama who recorded Dixie Walker’s early career and brought him to light as a public figure. The efforts of sportswriters in cities across America, where Dixie first played, helped shape the detailed picture of this baseball wizard. Thanks go to the reporters of the early 1930s who saw Dixie Walker as the next Babe Ruth and chronicled his feats at Yankee Stadium and in Chicago, Detroit, and his glory in Brooklyn as the People’s Choice achieved success, fame, and a little historic fortune. Dozens of books captured his doings, and I drew from the best of them, The Baseball Encyclopedia, the Elias Book of Baseball Records, and the Sporting News Official World Series Records, 1903–2008, for numbers and records of his career; then on to accounts such as Frank Graham, The Brooklyn Dodgers: An Informal History; Leo Durocher, with Ed Linn, Nice Guys Finish Last; Red Barber’s 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball; [54.166.223.204] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:56 GMT) x / Acknowledgments The Dodgers by Tommy Holmes; Harold Parrott, The Lords of Baseball; Robert W. Peterson’s brilliant work Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams; and Jonathan Eig’s Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season. I also relied heavily on one of my own books, Jackie Robinson: A Life Remembered. Most importantly I give thanks to the gracious offerings of many of Dixie Walker’s teammates, men now in their eighties and nineties who spent so much time with me, recalling events from sixty and seventy years ago. These boyhood heroes of mine, Bobby Bragan, Clyde King, Duke Snider, Ralph Branca, Gene Hermanski, Howard Schultz, Ed Stevens, the baseball immortals such as Bob Feller and Ralph Kiner, and baseball’s most significant twentieth-century figure, Players Association leader Marvin Miller, offered so much without asking anything in return. I am also grateful to the fans of Dixie Walker, many of whom watched him break into the big leagues at Yankee Stadium and followed his career as he moved on to Chicago, Detroit, Brooklyn, and later Pittsburgh . Their memories of Dixie against that famed Bedford Avenue wall in Brooklyn were precious. And, of course, to Susan Walker and husband, Ed, for their marvelous memories of a lifetime of connection with Dixie and Estelle Walker. Much thanks also to the staff at the University of Alabama Press for their kindness, consideration, and total professionalism in moving this work from an author’s idea to this cherished book. Dixie Walker of the Dodgers [54.166.223.204] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:56 GMT) 1 How It All Started Leo Durocher was wearing blue silk pajamas and a golden yellow bathrobe as he stood in the kitchen of the army barracks at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone. It was the middle of the night in late March 1947. Durocher, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, a team on the threshold of making history with the promotion of a Negro, Jackie Robinson, from its Montreal farm club to Brooklyn, had called his players together to put down an insurrection. Harold Parrott...