Free The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

averse to cashing World Series checks.” If the players asked, Rickey postulated, Robinson’s place would be at once secure. Actually, no white Dodger demanded Robinson and, when Rickey himself initiated the promotion, a half dozen players threatened to quit. The law of the wallet proved itself in the converse. Rickeyinvited the dissenters to quit, on principle, which would also have meant abandoning major league salaries. The most extreme of Dodger racists turned out to be Dixie Walker, but even he asked only to be traded. Rickey sent Walker to Pittsburgh a season later, and he played for two more years without incident or distinction.
    Elements mixed in 1947 to make Robinson’s challenge an Everest. The Dodger infield was established everywhere but at first base. Robinson, who had never played first professionally, entered the major leagues at an unfamiliar position. There a number of base runners, notably Enos Slaughter of the St. Louis Cardinals, tried to plant spikes in his Achilles’ tendon. As a batter, Robinson was thrown at almost daily. Verbally he was assaulted with terminology proceeding from “nigger” up to the most raw, sexually disturbed vulgarity that raw, sexually disturbed men could conceive. In the face of this Robinson was sworn to passivity and silence. He had promised Rickey that he would encase his natural volatility in lead.
    Jimmy Cannon, the columnist, spent a day with the Dodgers in 1947 and concluded that “Robinson is the loneliest man I have ever seen in sports.” Red Barber, born in Mississippi and raised in Florida, was afflicted with doubts. Prejudices from boyhood, like a cypress swamp, still haunted him. But by May, Barber was captivated by Robinson’s ability and courage. One afternoon between innings he made an apparently casual, but touching talk. He, a back-country Southerner, had come to admire Robinson so much, Barber said, “that I hope, I really do, he bats 1.000.”
    The season turned on a remarkable story composed by Stanley Woodward in the
Herald Tribune.
Rud Rennie, who covered the Giants for the
Tribune,
celebrated his four yearly trips to St. Louis by joining a local band of singing tipplers, which included Dr. Robert Hyland, the team physician of the St. Louis Cardinals. The Giants preceded the Dodgers into St. Louis inthe spring of 1947 and, late one night, Hyland told Rennie that it was too bad he wasn’t with the Dodgers because one hell of a story would break when that nigger hit town. The Cardinals, he said, intended to strike. Rennie, high, but not drunk, telephoned Woodward, who checked the story with a number of sources, including Ford C. Frick, president of the National League. At length, convinced, Woodward wrote an article describing the projected strike and adding that Frick had already addressed the Cardinals along these lines:
    If you do this you will be suspended from the league. You will find that the friends you think you have in the press box will not support you, that you will be outcasts. I do not care if half the league strikes. Those who do will encounter quick retribution. All will be suspended, and I don’t care if it wrecks the National League for five years. This is the United States of America and one citizen has as much right to play as another.
    The National League will go down the line with Robinson whatever the consequences. You will find if you go through with your intention that you have been guilty of complete madness.
    Whether the words were Woodward’s or Frick’s—eloquence was native only to Woodward—the strikers were put to rout. After that, Robinson’s road, although still steep, led from thicket to clearing. He batted well, but not as well as he would, stole more than twice as many bases as anyone else in the league, and fielded adequately. Three times he found himself on base when Dixie Walker hit a home run. Invariably he trotted directly from home plate to dugout, skipping the customary handshake, so as not to