Bob Wood of Lake Bluff called to say he’s all in favor of baseball’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking baseball’s racial barrier–except for one thing:
“Not one word about Branch Rickey,” he said. “It was Mr. Rickey who changed the face of the game. The black players should be thanking him too.”
Reader Wood, who described himself as a longtime Cub fan, has a point. Rickey has been mentioned in some of the Robinson stories but mostly as a fringe player.
Rickey, a baseball lifer who was both pious and shrewd, a rare combination–in baseball and elsewhere–was the social engineer and architect in the integration of the grand old game. Still, at the time, he was not regarded entirely as a puritanical revisionist totally concerned with implementing what was “right and fair.”
Some of his fellow owners charged his principal concern was fattening the Dodgers’ attendance. Years later, Rickey was quoted as saying, “I brought him up for one reason: to win the pennant. I’d play an elephant with pink horns if it could help us win.”
I doubt Rickey ever said that. It sounds more like Leo Durocher, who had been among Rickey’s field managers. But if it was accurate, Rickey was caught in a cynical moment. The late Red Barber, the Brooklyn broadcaster who was among Rickey’s friends and admirers, conceded:
“I don’t and can’t know everything that goes on in another man’s mind, but I can tell you this: Knowing Mr. Rickey and his intelligence and quickness of mind, once he saw Robinson’s ability, and once he saw the ability of Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, he said, `Oh, man, I’m moving into tall cotton, and I’m going to get the best of these first.’ “
But this much, although never fully confirmed, seems to have a ring of truth: Rickey’s fellow owners opposed him, possibly by a 15-1 majority.
Larry MacPhail, longtime owner and executive, submitted a report, dated Aug. 27, 1946, under the the heading “Race Question,” which listed the many management objections. Principal among them, “(Integrated teams) could conceivably result in lessening the value of several major-league franchises.”
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The report, we have been told, was signed, in effect, endorsed by the league presidents, Ford Frick and Will Harridge; and owners P.K. Wrigley of the Cubs, Tom Yawkey of the Boston Red Sox, Sam Breadon, St. Louis Cardinals, and MacPhail, then with the New York Yankees. Rickey was the lone dissenter.
Frick, according to some historians, requested that all copies be returned to him for destruction. Supposedly, all were returned except one, which A.B. “Happy” Chandler, then the commissioner, put into his files, later exhumed after his papers were donated to the University of Kentucky Library.
Many owners denied the existence of the MacPhail Report.
“Ridiculous,” insisted Bob Carpenter of the Phillies. Washington’s Clark Griffith said: “The door has always been open to those boys if they were good enough to make the big leagues.” MacPhail shouted: “False and inflammatory.”
Infuriated by the MacPhail Report and the supposed 15-1 vote, Chandler suggested Rickey meet with him. They met at Chandler’s home in Versailles, Ky.
Chandler picks up the story in his 1989 autobiography, “Heroes, Plain Folks, and Skunks”:
“We faced each other in my walnut log cabin. Logs blazed and crackled in my great stone fireplace. We needed that fire. It was a cold, raw January day.
“I told Branch they’ll never agree. You’re all alone. I know you are here asking me for help. I’m the only person on Earth who can approve the transfer of that contract from Montreal to Brooklyn.
“Can Robinson play baseball?”
“No question about that,” Rickey said.
“Branch, I’m going to have to meet my Maker someday, and if He asks me why I didn’t let this boy play and I say it’s because he’s black, that might not be a satisfactory answer.
“If the Lord made some people black and some white, and some red or yellow, He must have had a pretty good reason. It’s my job to see the game is fairly played and that everybody has an equal chance. Bring him up. I’ll sign that transfer.
“And Rickey brought him up, and from then on everybody made Rickey sound like some God almighty.”
It also sounds like Chandler was angry because Rickey got all the credit.