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Baseball has been a part of American life almost since the country secured its independence with the first documented mention of baseball in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1791. There is also a record that New Yorkers played “base ball” in 1823 on fields that is now Greenwich Village. Whether derived from the British games of rounders and cricket, as some people believe, or original to this country, as others claim, baseball became official on September 23, 1845, when a social club in New York City formed the Knickerbockers and published the game’s first standardized rules—the Knickerbocker Rules.
The game evolved over the decades in somewhat predictable ways and in surprising twists in others. Idle soldiers during the Civil War, particularly on the Union side, increased the sport’s popularity and helped standardize its regulations. In 1907, baseball officials declared “the first scheme for playing baseball, according to the best evidence obtainable to date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, New York, in 1839.” This was a claim that would have surprised the career army soldier who achieved the rank of general during the Civil War. Neither Doubleday himself nor his many papers made any mention of his “invention” of baseball. Nevertheless, the myth took sufficient root for the Baseball Hall of Fame to be founded in Doubleday’s hometown of Cooperstown, New York.
The increase in railroad transportation during and after the Civil War allowed teams from distant cities to compete. Teams in the Northeastern United States formed the National League in 1876. Professional baseball expanded with teams in the Midwest and the formation of the American League in 1901. Neither league had any written policy concerning the inclusion of black players but there was a “gentleman’s agreement” among Major League owners that players would be white only. Minor league owners voted in 1887 against signing contracts with black players. Baseball, which had become known as America’s Pastime by the early twentieth century, would remain divided between white and black.
A few African Americans played in the white major and minor leagues before the agreements, but by the late nineteenth century only white players took the sanctioned baseball field. Being excluded from the official diamonds did not mean that blacks did not play and enjoy watching the game of baseball. In 1920, black team owners formed a professional baseball league of their own that evolved into the Negro National and American leagues in 1933 and 1937. The Negro League held its own All-Star game and championship playoff, just like the white Major Leagues and played by the same rules. Blacks, however, remained barred from Major League Baseball.
Negro League games often drew larger crowds than white baseball did, and many black players clearly displayed talents equal or superior to white players. Then World War II prompted the question for many Americans, and for some baseball owners, about why blacks could fight and die on the battlefield but could not play baseball on the fields at home. Some owners began to consider adding black players’ talents to their teams. All owners could see that the Negro Leagues also drained admission dollars that, in their minds, could better be spent at Major League games.
While some owners talked, Branch Rickey, General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, took action. The Ohio-born Rickey had played professional football and had been the president of the St. Louis Cardinals when he decided to volunteer for the army during World War I. Although thirty-six years old with a wife and four children, Rickey believed “War overshadows everything.”
Rickey received a commission in the newly formed Chemical Warfare Service and sailed for Europe only to have influenza, known as the Spanish flu, sweep through his transport ship, killing more than one hundred servicemen. Rickey contacted the flu but recovered soon after reaching France. In the war’s final weeks, his unit—which included future baseball Hall of Famers Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson—participated in more than 150 operations supporting infantry and tank units.
After his discharge, Rickey rejoined the St. Louis Cardinals as field manager and then general manager to lead the club for more than twenty, mostly successful, years. In 1942, Rickey joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as part owner and general manager. His innovations included establishing the first full-time spring training facility and implementing the use of batting helmets, pitching machines, and batting cages.
Rickey was a man dedicated not only to baseball but to the God of his strict Methodist upbringing. He regularly attended church services and, for his entire career, did not play in or attend ball games on Sundays. He was bothered by the segregation of his sport. In early 1946, Rickey told Look magazine, “I cannot face my God much longer knowing that His black creatures are held separate and distinct from His white creatures in the game that has given me all that I can call my own.”
With his religious convictions—and, no doubt, financial analysis—Branch Rickey decided to break Major League’s color barrier.
Rickey’s support of racial equality on the baseball diamond was reinforced by an incident that occurred while he was the coach for Ohio Wesleyan College in 1910. As Jackie related the story in his 1972 biography, “The team went to South Bend, Indiana, for a game. The hotel management registered the coach and team but refused to assign a room to a black player named Charley Thomas. In those days, college ball had a few black players. Mr. Rickey took the manager aside and said he would move the entire team to another hotel unless the black athlete was accepted. The threat was a bluff because he knew the other hotels also would have refused accommodations to a black man. While the hotel manager was thinking about the threat, Mr. Rickey came up with a compromise. He suggested a cot be put in his own room, which he would share with the unwanted guest. The hotel manager wasn’t happy with the idea, but he gave in.”
According to Robinson’s version of the story, Thomas sat on the cot and wept and began “tearing at one hand with the other—just as if he were trying to scratch the skin off his hands with his fingernails.”
An alarmed Rickey asked what he was trying to do. Thomas answered, “It’s my hands. They’re black. If only they were white, I’d be as good as everybody then, wouldn’t I Mr. Rickey? If only they were white.”
According to Robinson, Rickey replied, “Charley, the day will come when they won’t have to be white.”
Rickey often repeated the story and it appears in nearly every biography about or related to the baseball innovator. The veracity of the tale is somewhat debatable. Whatever the facts, this version makes a good story, and as they say in the newspaper business, “When the legend gets better than the facts, print the legend.”
There is no doubt that Rickey had deep feelings about the mistreatment of African Americans from religious and moral standpoints. However, first and foremost, Rickey was a businessman, and, in business, profits prevail.
During the thirty-five years after the hotel incident, Rickey made only minimal efforts to assist blacks either in or outside the world of baseball. While with the St. Louis Cardinals, he did attempt to eliminate the Jim Crow segregated black spectator section and have general seating for all races. Confronted with the belief that, if blacks were allowed to sit with whites, attendance would decrease, he backed down.
When World War II finally concluded, Rickey determined that baseball and the country were ready to make baseball the national pastime for all Americans—black and white. Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis had opposed the acceptance of black players since he assumed the position in 1920. After his death in 1944, his replacement, Albert “Happy” Chandler, brought new ideas to the office. Shortly after he became commissioner, Chandler made it clear where he stood on the idea of integrating baseball. Referencing World War II battles, Chandler said, “If a black boy can make it at Okinawa and go to Guadalcanal, he can make it in baseball.”
For several years Rickey had been circulating the idea of breaking the color line with other baseball owners and managers. Some showed interest, but most, some with extreme objections, did not. At one time, all fifteen of the other owners voted against the idea of breaking the color barrier. Undeterred, Rickey began his hunt for black ball players under the guise that he was forming a new Negro league. His primary prerequisite, of course, was that candidates play ball and play very well. He also insisted that they be moral, intelligent, and well spoken. He also hoped that they would be religious and, if at all possible, happily married. Although not spoken or recorded, this latter characteristic meant that he would not have to worry about his black ball players dating white women.
Rickey sent his scouts across the country to observe black players. They also went into Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela to scout local black men as well as American Negroes playing in the foreign leagues who had become expatriates because of racism at home and opportunities abroad. Better known African American players—such as renowned pitcher Satchel Paige; Josh Gibson, known as “the black Babe Ruth”; and James “Cool Papa” Bell, perhaps the fastest base stealer to ever play the game—were considered too old, as they were nearing the end of their careers.
The name Jackie Robinson kept rising to the top of scouting reports. Rickey sent multiple scouts, each unaware of the other, to observe and talk with the ball player. By the end of the selection process Rickey’s son, Branch, Jr., claimed the Dodger organization had spent $25,000 (more than $350,000 in today’s money) in their scouting process.
Rickey thoroughly vetted Jackie. In addition to having his scouts evaluate his skills, Rickey personally investigated Jackie’s early years growing up and attending schools in California. Jackie’s play on the scholastic fields, his classroom attendance, and nearly complete degree from UCLA made a positive impression on the Dodger general manager. He was not deterred by Jackie’s reputation of having a temper or by the incidents with the police in Pasadena and Los Angeles. Rickey saw that Jackie was a competitor who stood up for his rights and opposed racism. While Jackie had on occasion pushed his demands to the legal limits, he had remained within the system and emerged victoriously.
Rickey made no mention—at the time or in his later speeches or writings—about Robinson’s court-martial by the U.S. Army. With the amount of money, time, and other assets dedicated to Jackie’s investigation, Rickey doubtlessly knew about the trial, acquittal, and early-but-honorable discharge. To Rickey, it was likely just another example of Jackie’s non-violence and successfully standing up for his rights. As a veteran, Rickey understood the military and understood the significance of Jackie’s acquittal by a military court-martial.
There is no record of Rickey’s knowledge of Jackie’s ankle injury that granted him an honorable discharge from the army before the end of the war. Neither does Jackie mention the injury being treated nor bothering him once joining the Kansas City Monarchs. It is possible that it healed during his stay at Samuel Huston College where he was away from the rigors of army training.
The first face-to-face meeting between Robinson and Rickey occurred in the Dodger executive’s Brooklyn office on August 28, 1945, just a week before Japan formally surrendered ending World War II. There have been many accounts of the conversation between the two, but Jackie offers a firsthand account in his 1972 autobiography. Jackie wrote, “Branch Rickey was an impressive looking man. He had a classic face, an air of command, a deep, booming voice, and a way of cutting through red tape and getting down to basics. He shook my hand vigorously and, after a brief conversation, sprang his first question. ‘You got a girl?’ he demanded.”
Most likely Rickey already knew the answer, but he was, nevertheless, pleased with Jackie’s response about Rachel and their hopes and plans. According to Jackie, the Dodger boss said, “When we get through today, you may want to call her up because there are times when a man needs a woman by his side.”
Rickey then explained just why Jackie might need a strong woman “by his side” during the upcoming times. He told Jackie that he was not seeking players for a new Negro League but rather the club’s all-white minor league team in Montreal.
“You think you can play for Montreal?” he asked.
Jackie wrote that he was thrilled, scared, excited, and incredulous and near speechless before he managed to reply, “Yes.”
Rickey then briefly discussed with his scout if he thought Jackie could “make the grade” before abruptly pointing a finger and saying, “I know you’re a good ball player. What I want to know is whether you have the guts.”
Robinson replied, “I think I can play the game, Mr. Rickey.”
Rickey then went into a lengthy prediction that Jackie would be called all kind of names, would have beanballs thrown at him, and would possibly be physically attacked.
Jackie recalled that he thought, writing, “The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity. I looked at Mr. Rickey guardedly, and in that second I was looking at him not as a partner in a great experiment, but as the enemy—a white man. I had a question and it was the age-old one about whether or not you sell your birthright. Mr. Rickey, I asked, ‘Are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?’”
Rickey responded, “Robinson, I’m looking for a ball player with enough guts not to fight back.”
He then said, according to Jackie, ‘“They’ll taunt and goad you. They’ll do anything to make you react. They’ll try to provoke a race riot at the park. This is the way to prove to the public that a Negro should not be allowed in the major league. This is the way to frighten the fans and make them afraid to attend the games.”’ He added, “They’ll come in with spike high, cut you on the leg, and say ‘How do you like that nigger boy?’”
Robinson wrote, “Could I turn the other cheek? I didn’t know how I would do it. Yet I knew I must, I had to do it for so many reasons. For black youth, for my mother, for Rae, for myself. I had already begun to feel I had to do if for Branch Rickey.”
Again, in this important conversation between Robinson and Rickey, there is no mention, or at least no record or writing, of the court-martial. If it was not mentioned, both parties were nevertheless aware of its importance in forming Jackie’s abilities to react to and work within racism. It is also noteworthy that Jackie’s recollections in 1972 of his 1945 conversation with Rickey are extremely detailed and marked with direct quotes. Very little of this conversation is in Jackie’s 1948 biography and the passage of time and the desire to publish a best-selling book certainly must have played a role in Jackie’s and his co-writer’s memory. It is interesting that Jackie’s use of the phrase “the great experiment” was not in use until several years after the cited conversation.
Whatever exactly occurred or was said, Rickey made a deep impression on Jackie. Rachel Robinson described the relationship between Ricky and her husband in her 2014 book. She wrote, “I believe they got along so well because temperamentally they were well matched. Rickey had the very traits that he sought in Jack. Both were religious. Both had unshakable integrity, and both possessed a hard-headed determination to compete at their best. There was no doubt about commitment to making integration work, which he tended to underplay in public. He and Jack were unequal in power and influence to be sure, but they were always interdependent in this social experiment. Neither could succeed without the other.”
Rachel continued, “Baseball in the forties allowed players no salary negotiations—period. Jack accepted what was offered. He had no illusions about Rickey’s business interest and never believed his motives to be simply altruistic. In fact, his vested interest in creating a winning team was reassuring to us. We could also see and appreciate Rickey’s vision, meticulous planning, and sensitive anticipation of our needs as signs of an unwavering commitment to the social idea. He was accessible, though Jack didn’t tend to call him, and willing to take charge when trouble surfaced. He gave us, young adults in our twenties, confidence, and we learned to mobilize our own strengths independently.”
She concluded, “For me, Branch Rickey became a familiar source of comfort. I could count on him. I admired him and thought that he was too often caricatured by the press that the substance of the man was lost. When he crouched down by first base in spring training waving his hat shouting at Jack, ‘Be daring, be daring’ my spirit embraced them both with pride.”
The non-negotiated salary mentioned by Rachel was $600 a month, more than $8,000 in today’s dollars and a bonus of $3,500, more than $49,000 in today’s dollars. On October 23, 1945, Branch, Jr., who headed the Brooklyn farm clubs, and Montreal Royals president Hector Racine held a press conference announcing Robinson’s signing. Branch, Jr., said, “My father and Mr. Racine are not inviting trouble, but they won’t avoid it if it comes. Jack Robinson is a fine type of young man, intelligent and college-bred, and I think he can make it too.”
Branch, Jr., admitted that some of their International League opponents might resist playing against a black ball player and that some might even steer away from the Dodger organization with a Negro player on its roster. He added, “Some of them who are with us now may even quit, but they’ll be back in baseball after they work a year or two in a cotton mill.”
The news of Robinson’s signing was met with mixed reactions. His breaking the color barrier in Minor League Baseball—with the possibility of his later doing so in the Major Leagues by joining the Dodgers—created a stir in the press; among club owners, managers, and players; and throughout the public. Active and retired players expressed doubts as to Jackie’s being able to make it in Montreal, much less the Major Leagues. Controversy also swept through the Negro Leagues and the black community where many thought that other African American ball players were more deserving than Jackie to be the one to break the color barrier.
Whites—including club owners, officials and fans—expressed concerns over how the recruitment of the best black ball players would influence the future of the Negro Leagues. Some apprehension was sincere; other such speculation was just an excuse to keep Major League Baseball segregated. Negro League owners also opposed the move because they feared the loss of fans and revenue. The Kansas City Monarchs, with whom Jackie was still playing, threatened to sue the Dodgers on the basis that Jackie was their property. When the Monarch owners realized that African Americans overall were in enormous favor of the breaking of the color barrier, they withdrew their objections.