2007-05-12
After Jackie @ 12:00 p.m.
I was catching up on reading my ESPN magazines this morning, fell behind, hadn't read the NFL draft preview issue yet (which tells you how behind I was) and came across an article with excerpts from a book called After Jackie : Pride, Prejudice and Baseball's Forgotten Heroes (ESPN Books). Author Cal Fussman sat down with "dozens of current and former players to discuss [Jackie] Robinson's significance, 60 years after he broke the color barrier. They recount the trials and triumphs that both preceded and followed his 10-year career."What leapt out at me was Don Newcombe's ('49-'60 Dodgers, Reds, Indians; '56 Cy Young & NL MVP) comments about how pitchers would intentionally try to bean him, Roy Campanella* and Jackie Robinson. About how Robinson was quick enough to duck, about how Campanella wasn't and was one of the first players to begin using the hard plastic insert in his cap because he was "a big guy and a bad ducker". He said
They threw at him because he had black skin, and they couldn't hit the other guy with black skin often enough to satisfy them. They can deny it all they want. They can talk all they want about how much they cared about Jackie and how much the loved Roy and Jackie and what great guys they were. But they didn't care about Jackie and Roy when we first joined that club, and that includes some of our own teammates.
He goes on to talk about how hard it was to travel. How they couldn't get cabs. How they had to stay in airless, low-grade hotels in the St. Louis heat while their white teammates had air-conditioned buses and upscale rooms.
We later heard that one of our teammates, who will remain nameless, was sitting on the bus in St. Louis and said to nobody in particular, "Fuck them black sonsabitches. We didn't ask them to be here. They asked to be here." Our teammate.
In my perfect world, I'd be the journalist going after that story. Name names. Who was this fucker who was supposed to be your teammate? Who were those fuckers going around beaning people always and on purpose, basically trying to wound them so badly as to drive them out of the league? Who were the umps who just let it pass? What has become of them now? Will they stand up and own this mistreatment? Have they paid for it somehow? How have they changed? When did they change? Have they changed at all?
I wonder these things. *FYI (found out AS didn't even know this, devout baseball fan that he is) Campanella was born in Philly to a father of Italian descent and an African- American mother, effectively a double shot against him.
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