Some Thoughts On Jackie

This Sunday players all across the country will wear the number 42 on their backs to honor the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first game in the major leagues. It's a fitting tribute to a man who exemplified grace under pressure while in the crosshairs of millions of people who hated him for the color of his skin. I don't think any fan of baseball, progress or America could be against the idea of 42s being everywhere you look on April 15th, especially since the man himself was taken from the planet far too soon.

I do have a problem with one thing, however, and that's the role the Los Angeles Dodgers are playing in the whole thing.

Take a look at the Dodgers website and the first thing you see is a self-congratulatory article about how each and every Dodger will be wearing #42 during Sunday's game. Bud Selig will be at Chavez Ravine for a special ceremony before the game against San Diego that will recognize Robinson's contributions and his esteemed place in the baseball firmament. The Dodgers, as you might expect, are also falling all over themselves to make sure that they are right next to Robinson among the honorees.

"Jackie Robinson was a Dodger," said Jamie McCourt, the club's president and vice chairman. "And the most fitting tribute the Dodgers can pay to him is for the entire team to wear his number on the 60th anniversary of his breaking the color barrier."

McCourt is wrong. The most fitting tribute the Dodgers could have ever paid Robinson was to let him retire as a Dodger. Rachel Robinson is going to be at Dodger Stadium on Sunday and I hope she shares at least a little piece of what went down on December 13, 1956.

Branch Rickey had sold out to Walter O'Malley by then and the team was less than 12 months from abandoning Brooklyn for their current digs.  Robinson, 37 at the time, had slipped over the 1955 and 1956 seasons. He was succumbing to the one enemy he couldn't thwart in age and the Dodgers had younger infielders like Jim Gilliam, Don Zimmer and Randy Jackson trying to break into the starting nine so they were left with a quandary. What do you do with a living legend when it is in the best interests of the team to move in a different direction? Do you tell him that there's no chance to make the team next year so he can choose to retire? Or ask to be traded to try and continue playing somewhere else? Do you offer him a coaching gig in the organization so you can keep the Dodger blue legacy alive? Or do you trade him to your hated crosstown rivals for $30,000 and a garbage relief pitcher who had 70 innings left in his rag arm?

If you're Walter O'Malley, you do the last option. Robinson, as proud in 1957 as he was in 1947, refused to report to the Giants and Dick Littlefield and the money had to be returned to the Polo Grounds. People in New York were up in arms about the Yankees not offering Bernie Williams a guaranteed contract before this season started. After paying him more than $100 million over his career and giving him a chance to come to Tampa and make the team many fans and writers still felt that Bernie was being treated with disrespect. Imagine if they had traded him to the Red Sox for Julian Tavarez and a vat of clam chowder? That's what the Dodgers did to Jackie.

In Boys of Summer, the essential book of Brooklyn Dodger history, Roger Kahn writes that O'Malley said of the trade,

"We hate to lose Jackie but it is necessary for the good of the team."

That, fearless readers, is the only time you'll ever hear Dick Littlefield and his 4.71 career ERA described as being better for a team than Jackie Robinson. In his book about Jackie Robinson, former Dodger pitcher Carl Erskine recalls the fateful trade and writes,

It was as if the fans had been robbed and then kicked while they were down.

Baseball's a business, something my father, a Brooklyn boy just past his Bar Mitzvah date, learned that December and had driven home the next year and something he imparted to me more than once when I complained about this player or that player being shipped out of town. I'm not that upset that the Robinson celebration is being held in Los Angeles, no matter how much his history and his image is tied into Brooklyn and New York City. He did go to UCLA, after all. I just hope someone in that modern baseball mecca makes a mention of how this blessed hero of the diamond became just another expendable piece of cattle the second his batting average dropped and how the Dodgers found a way to insult the greatest thing their franchise has ever been linked to at the end of his career while they are patting themselves on the back for bringing him to the big leagues.

Comments

[Rob]

Mr. Feed --

Good post, and yes, the Dodgers did Jackie wrong by trading him to the Giants.

But because of his refusal to report and his subsequent retirement, Jackie did retire as a Dodger.

Just because Walter O'Malley was a major league jackass doesn't take away from the fact Jackie never played for another team.
He was, and always will be, a Dodger.

(And believe me, I'm not a Dodgers fan: Brooklyn, yes, LA, no.)

[The Feed]

Rob -

Thanks for the comments. I know Jackie was and will always be a Brooklyn Dodger and I know that by rejecting the deal he did hang up his cleats as a Dodger. I should have written, let him retire on his own terms as a member of the Dodgers family.

[Rob]

Mr. Feed --

No problem. And I agree. I wish the Dodgers had just told him that it's over. Instead, O'Malley just had to make a deal, that jerk.

Jackie is one of my two sports heroes (Hank Aaron being the other).

Jonathon Eig's "Opening Day" is quite good, if you're interested. I finished it in a couple of days.