Free Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game by Lew Paper

did not allow blacks to play on the same field as whites, and epithets thrown at Robinson from the stands.
    Rickey realized that the best way to overcome opposition was to show the Dodgers how valuable Robinson could be to the team, and he urged the former Monarch star to be as daring as he could be on the field. “Give it all you’ve got when you run,” said Rickey. “Gamble. Take a bigger lead.” Robinson was conscious of the need to succeed and did what he could—but the pressures were taking their toll. “I couldn’t sleep,” Robinson later recalled, “and often I couldn’t eat.” He and Rachel consulted a doctor, who thought that the young player might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
    Rickey understood the unrelenting pressures that his protégé was enduring, but also knew that there was no easy escape. “Always, for as long as you are in baseball,” he told Robinson, “you must conduct yourself as you are doing now. Always you will be on trial. That is the cross that you must bear.” Bearing that cross was made possible in no small part because of Rachel’s steadfast support. She knew that she could not change the racism they encountered, but she could, as she later said, “be a constant presence to witness and validate the realities, love him without reservation, share his thoughts and miseries, discover with him the humor in the ridiculous behavior against us, and, most of all, help maintain our fighting spirit.”
    Vindication came on April 18, 1946, in Robinson’s first game with Montreal in Jersey City before a capacity crowd of more than 25,000 against the New York Giants’ farm team. He got four hits—including a home run—in five trips to the plate and was instrumental in the Royals’ 14-1 victory (and was, as one sportswriter recounted, “mobbed trying to leave the field by fans of assorted ages and colors”). It was a harbinger of things to come. He led the International League in hitting with .349, scored a league-leading 113 runs, and stole forty bases.
    Jackie’s elevation to the Dodger club for the 1947 season was widely anticipated, but Rickey was taking no chances. Toward the end of the 1946 season, he told Buzzie Bavasi, the general manager of the team’s farm club in Nashua, New Hampshire, to determine whether there were any skeletons in Robinson’s closet. The general manager was instructed to go to California, but Bavasi went instead to Montreal to watch Robinson in action and to gauge the reactions of others. Upon his arrival, Bavasi was given a seat near home plate, right behind the seats occupied by the players’ wives. There he watched as the other players’ wives (all white) turned to Rachel with a variety of questions as the game progressed. Bavasi was impressed with her demeanor and her commentary. When he returned to Brooklyn, Rickey asked what he had learned. Bavasi had no hesitation: “If Jackie Roosevelt Robinson is good enough for Rachel, he’s good enough for us.”
    Still, Robinson could not relax when he joined the Dodgers for spring training in Havana (where he was once again forced to live in different quarters from his teammates). Rickey told him that he had to prove himself on the field one more time in a series of seven games that pitted the Montreal Royals against the Dodgers’ parent club. “I want you to concentrate,” Rickey instructed, “to hit that ball, to get on base by any means necessary . I want you to run wild, to steal the pants off them, to be the most conspicuous player on the field—but conspicuous only because of the kind of baseball you’re playing.” Robinson obliged, hitting .625 and stealing seven bases in the series.
    His success on the field did not assure his acceptance in the clubhouse. When the team traveled to Panama for some exhibition games, Robinson learned that a petition was being circulated by some of the Dodger players to persuade Rickey not to bring Robinson up to the parent club. The petition was