George Will is often as his best when writing about baseball, and today’s column about Jackie Robinson, who played in his first game sixty years ago today, is no exception:
To appreciate how far the nation has come, propelled by what began 60 years ago today, consider not the invectives that Robinson heard from opponents’ dugouts and fans but the way he had been praised. “Dusky Jack Robinson,” as the Los Angeles Times called him, alerting readers to the race of UCLA’s four-sport star, ran with a football “like it was a watermelon and the guy who owned it was after him with a shotgun.”
That cringe-inducing fact is from Eig’s mind-opening book, an account of a 28-year-old man “filled with fear and fury” and terribly alone. It includes unfamiliar details about familiar episodes. There is Lt. Robinson’s 1944 refusal, 11 years before Rosa Parks, to move to the back of a bus at Fort Hood, Tex. And shortstop Pee Wee Reese, a Kentuckian who until 1947 had never shaken hands with a black person, crossing the infield to put a hand on Robinson’s shoulder when Cincinnati fans were being abusive.
But Eig is especially informative about the dynamics among the Dodgers, who, like many teams, had a Southern tinge. The most popular player was nicknamed Dixie (Walker) and one of the best pitchers was the grandson of a Confederate soldier. The Dodgers’ radio broadcaster, Red Barber, a Mississippian, considered resigning, then thought better. Radio presented Robinson as television cameras could not have — as, Eig shrewdly writes, “all action,” undifferentiated by visual differences from his teammates.
After the opening two games against the Boston Braves, the Dodgers played the Giants at the Polo Grounds in Harlem. The president of the National League, fearing excessive enthusiasm, suggested that Robinson should develop a sprained ankle. He did not, and the crowds were large, dressed as if for church — men in suits and hats, women in dresses — and decorous. Soon a commentator wrote, “Like plastics and penicillin, it seems like Jackie is here to stay.”
And baseball was the better for it.
