On Aug. 28, 1945, Jackie Robinson walked into the office of Branch Rickey, manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Unaware of the reason he was called to this meeting, Robinson had no idea that he was about to play a part in changing American history.
In “7 Men and Their Secrets of Greatness,” Eric Metaxas recreated this moment. When Rickey informed Robinson that he wanted him to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson was at first too surprised and overcome to utter a word. Blacks played in their own league, but never on major league baseball teams. After Robinson accepted the offer, Rickey explained what Robinson probably already knew: He would be the target of verbal abuse and threats because of the color of his skin. Then Rickey added a kicker to their agreement that Robinson couldn’t have foreseen. “I’m looking for a ballplayer who has the guts not to fight back.”
Rickey then took off his coat and acted out various scenes that would soon confront Robinson: the hotel clerk who would refuse him a room; the maître d’ who would turn him away from the restaurant entrance; the spectators at the games who would hurl obscenities and slurs at him. Rickey hit Robinson with these curses and racial taunts right there in his office.
Robinson withstood all that Rickey threw at him. He considered the offer, recognized it as an enormous opportunity both to play ball as he had dreamed and to improve race relations, and shook hands on the agreement with Rickey. Looking down at the two men from a wall in Rickey’s office was a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
Robinson first played for the Dodgers’ Montreal farm team. There, he successfully completed that season without reacting to the jeers and taunts that often accompanied his appearances on the diamond, and joined the Dodgers in New York in the spring of 1947. A turning point for him and his team came in his first game when manager Ben Chapman of the Philadelphia Phillies, joined by several of his players, spat out racial epithets throughout the contest. Years later, as Metaxas reported, Robinson recollected that horrible afternoon in “I Never Had It Made,” his 1972 autobiography: “Starting to the plate in the first inning, I could scarcely believe my ears.”
At the stadium the next day, when the insults grew even more cruel and obscene, Robinson’s teammates, including those opposed to having him on the team, stepped up to defend him. Eddie Stanky, the second baseman, shouted back at the Phillies’ dugout: “Listen, you yellow-bellied cowards, why don’t you yell at somebody who can answer back?”
Metaxas explained, “Branch Rickey was delighted with the team’s response. Chapman’s evil intentions had, he said, ‘solidified and unified thirty men, not one of whom was willing to sit by and see someone kick around a man who had his hands tied behind his back.’”
Yet the abuse continued, and not only on the field. Some restaurants and hotels refused Robinson service, and death threats came through the mail.
Throughout that entire season, however, Robinson maintained his cool. Never once did he give way to the temptation of retaliation. He ignored the mockery and curses, and usually walked to the plate without a glance at his tormentors. His wife, Rachel, whom he had married in 1946 after Rickey’s offer, stood by him and helped him remember the cause for which he was fighting: racial equality not only in baseball but in the nation.
According to Metaxas, Robinson also relied heavily on his religious faith to maintain his silence in this torrent of abuse. He made a habit of “getting down on his knees every night to pray for strength.” Doubtless, he was supported in this resort to prayer by Rickey himself, also a man of strong faith.
By the end of the season, Robinson’s name had become a household word. Moreover, he won the 1947 Rookie of the Year Award, with a batting average of .297 and an outstanding performance at the plate.
By then, other blacks were entering major league baseball. Over the next decade, this practice of putting ballplayers on the field based on their talent rather than on the pigmentation of their skin became standard.
Robinson himself went on to an outstanding career in baseball. After retiring from the game, he was engaged in several successful businesses, ran programs aimed at providing food and housing for the poor, and was active in the civil rights movement. In 1962, only 15 years after joining the Dodgers, he was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Ten years later, he collapsed from heart failure into his wife’s arms, telling her for the last time, “I love you.”
Lots of great Americans have helped improve America through their deeds and words. Jackie Robinson did the same through dignity and silence.
