Guestwords: Nostalgia And A Big Hug
Two score and ten years ago, on the afternoon of April 15 in Brooklyn, N.Y., the Dodgers (resident National League baseball club of that borough) sent a black man out onto the field to play first base for them.
His name was Jack Roosevelt Robinson and he was, in this century, the first black man to take part in a Major League baseball game. It was a momentous occasion, not only for the sport - then still the "national pastime" - but for the nation as a whole. The word was out: Segregation must be outlawed.
This summer, with the game in its doldrums and the fans apathetic, the people who run the business of baseball have decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the game's integration with all the bombast and fireworks at their disposal. They seem unaware of the irony that surrounds such a celebration, but then, irony is not part of the huckster's arsenal. The descendants of the men who kept "Negroes" out of "white" baseball since the days of Jim Crow are now embarked on an orgy of sentimentality and self-congratulation.
I thought about this as I tramped around the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University a couple of weeks ago, following the motley sessions of a three-day conference titled "Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports, and the American Dream." For the old Dodgers fan and civil rights activist alive and still kicking inside me, it was an event not to be missed.
A Brooklyn Rap
Three days filled with baseball talk, baseball memories, and baseball players are almost more than a fan can bear, especially in the company of other fans, turning every thought not only into a baseball utterance but into a Brooklyn rap.
In the (approximate) words of Ron Gabriel, Dodger Fan Club president, "The only Dodger is a Brooklyn Dodger, the only Dodger blue is Brooklyn Blue, the only Dodger fan is a Brooklyn Fan, and the only Dodger stadium is Ebbets Field. . . ."
An entangled web of nostalgic loyalty and pugnacious possessiveness binds these fans together. I'd like to say "us fans" but I realize this would be a distortion. I cannot belong to their fraternity for it is exactly that: a fraternity.
The Old Redhead
Women have no place in it. Befitting American mythology, they have been confined to the role of stern mothers calling their sons in from the baseball fields of summer or prying them loose from the radio and the seductive voice of Red Barber. Even though I myself spent endless afternoons keeping score on homemade scorecards as I listened to the Old Redhead on my red, white, and blue Emerson radio, I will always be excluded from the club.
You can read all about it in Roger Kahn's recent "Memories of Summer," yet another spinoff from his unforgettable "The Boys of Summer." Kahn is the paradigmatic Brooklyn Dodger fan - an urban white male getting on in years, a New York Jewish liberal who providentially turned journalist to give voice to Brooklyn Dodger fans everywhere - even those now dwelling in the Diaspora, be it Manhattan, Miami Beach, or Malibu.
Stories To Tell
It was Roger Kahn who gave the keynote address at the conference. He owns the Brooklyn Dodgers of the Golden Age, he is their friend and foremost chronicler. His stories come from the heart and we never tire of them.
"Storytelling" is a prism through which baseball enters our souls and makes itself at home there. It combines the exploits of our heroes on the field of battle with the intricate patterns of cold statistics and the "once-in-a-lifetime" events that define this game as no other. Mickey Owen's dropped third strike, Bobby Thompson's home run, the ball that went through Bill Buckner's legs - such moments are played back by our memories until we die or our memory fades to darkness.
Before Kahn spoke, needless to say, the politicians had their say. They are as ubiquitous at these occasions as the advertising banners that flutter above their heads: Chase Bank, McDonald's, and TWA, polluting the view to remind everyone of the bucks they spent to sponsor this event - which cost us $90 a head!
To Be America
We heard Brooklyn Borough President Howard Goldin, Congressman Charles Schumer (a hero among his fellows in Washington for advocating gun control - a subject about as welcome in America as affirmative action) and Mary Pickett, a member of the City Council.
Articulate as a preacher and old enough to wear a hat, she remembered just how it felt when Jackie R. made his debut - "to make America be America" - she said, quoting Langston Hughes.
And then Rachel Robinson, widow and keeper of the flame, appeared briefly - a heroine most deserving of the cliche'd accolade that "behind every great man stands a woman." She spoke her piece, which she has surely spoken a hundred thousand times and always in good humor. She is calm and confident, and nurtures the legend with infinite grace.
Self-Congratulations
As she spoke to the hushed crowd, I began to suspect that we were in for a celebration of white tolerance, white virtue, and white nobility.
This became clearer as the conference wore on and questions from the audience repeatedly reinforced the subtext. "Why don't those millionaire black players today honor Jackie?" "Why aren't there more African Americans here to celebrate with us?"
Dozens of papers were presented during the course of the conference, but I couldn't possibly hear them all since many readings - by writers, journalists, historians, even psychologists - took place concurrently. I did my best to catch a sample of the voices that might invoke a picture of Jackie Robinson that went beyond the usual ones.
I wanted to see not the icon but the man. Not the solitary black face in a sea of white ones, nor the posed shots of the happy family, meant to assure us they were "just like us."
Paul Robeson's Son
The first person to inject some bite into the proceedings rather than skating by on sentimentality was Paul Robeson Jr., whose topic, "Robinson and Robeson: Same Goals, Different Styles, 1943-1949," drew me like a magnet.
Paul Robeson - who appeared on the American scene earlier than Jackie Robinson - had been one of my childhood heroes. In him, the artist, athlete, and political activist met in rare conjunction.
I had met him when my stepfather conducted and he sang "Ballad for Americans" at the Robin Hood Dell in Philadelphia and when he played Othello on the New York stage. This was long before he became a reviled outcast in this country, exiled by witch-hunting "patriots" to seek refuge in Europe and the Soviet Union. He has never been vindicated or rehabilitated, even though signs and symbols of his football glory have grudgingly been restored to him.
Not Opposites
The most unforgettable aspect of his persona had been his voice, and it was with a small shock that I heard it issue once again from his son's throat. Paul Robeson Jr. has none of his father's charisma but he was the most intellectual of the speakers I heard, not excluding all the professors.
He came to teach, not to indulge in nostalgic memories. Giving us a historical overview of the fateful years of change between the Depression and the McCarthy era, he did his best to try to prove that Robinson and Robeson did not represent opposite poles in black life. He pointed out that Jackie's testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee was carefully phrased not to attack or denigrate the great singer.
Robinson, so Robeson said, was between a rock and a hard place, but did his best not to fall into the trap the committee had prepared for him. He would not play the good Negro to the bad nigger.
Is It Capitalism?
Listening to him, I wondered, not for the first time, whether the one insurmountable barrier between "race" and the "American dream" is politics?
Could it be that America allows its black heroes a place in the pantheon of the dead as long as they didn't threaten the system by trying to overthrow its economic assumptions? Do we forgive all "transgressions" (even those by a rebellious Malcolm X?) as long as they don't undermine the bulwark of capitalism? Did this question too hover over the conference - in Keats's words, "noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness?"
The relative scarcity of black faces among participants and audience at the conference was critically remarked upon, time after time, as though the black community bore the fault of it. Any number of New York's version of "good ol' boys" noted the shallowness of the current crop of millionaire ballplayers - as though every single one was an African American.
Who Knows Better?
Vince Coleman's disrespectful remark (to the effect that he didn't know Robinson and didn't care that he didn't) was hauled out again and again. Only once did someone place it into a different context.
At a panel of journalists, moderated by Newsday's Stan Isaacs, a young black female reporter for The New York Times stood up and declared that it was not up to white people to tell black people in what shape, manner, or form to honor Jackie Robinson.
Do we really believe that they know less about Jackie Robinson than we do? she asked. How dare we claim to know their minds and hearts better than they themselves? (And why, one might add, should inner-city youth love baseball, which shuts them out of lily-white suburban neighborhoods, and builds stadiums far from its precincts?)
For Our Sins
Both panel and audience were stunned into silence and then, after a few defensive retorts, the topic was quickly dropped. Pete Coutros, a baseball writer of the old school, trying to bridge the moment of discomfort, told his story of Gil Hodges's funeral, where he saw Jackie (who had himself but a year to live) press his fingers to his lips and then gently touch his teammate's coffin with them.
Once again, you see, the black man comes to redeem us. That's our deepest need and it's why we're here today.
He has died for our sins.
Peerless Preacher
A more conciliatory spirit was evoked by Buck O'Neil, a relic of the Negro Leagues, catapulted into stardom by his appearance on Ken Burns's "Baseball" documentary. O'Neil is a peerless preacher of peace, an old-fashioned storyteller, fully aware of the charm and power of his performance. No doubt he issued talking from his mother's womb.
White people (myself included) adore him. He got a standing O when he finished speaking, way past his allotted time. But he is far too self-assured and honest to "tom" it up. He turns the answer to every question into a moral lesson.
Gently refusing to "tell the funniest story you know about Satchel Paige," he repeated the one he told in "Baseball" concerning the pilgrimage they made together to the slave auction blocks on an island off Georgia, where Satchel mused on the tragic fate of their ancestors.
Shared The Field
(As I stood outside the lecture hall where he had just spoken, Buck O'Neil strode past - an old athlete still trim and fit and dapper at 84 - and said, "Hello, little lady, and how are you today?" I must have looked at him with the beaming eyes of a small girl, for he said, "Let me give you a great big hug," which he did, leaving me giddy with pride and pleasure.)
The big event of the convocation was the ingathering of old ballplayers that took place Friday afternoon. The auditorium was packed. Nobody captivates Americans like athletes and movie stars. Indeed, the cast was stunning.
Among the old-timers who showed up were Stan Musial, Bob Feller, Bobby Thompson, Tommy Henrich, Joe Black, Ralph Branca, Bobby Bragan, Clem Labine, Johnny Podes, Gene Hermanski, and Joe Pignatano - fabled names to those of us who came of age in the '40s, they are also the men who shared the field with Jackie Robinson, and several of them had not been pleased to do that at the time.
Behind Closed Doors
You wouldn't know it now, of course. They have mostly rewritten history to comform to present public standards. In private, the likes of Slaughter and Feller (inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year as Robinson, he reputedly did not wish to share the stage with him) may well go on expressing hard-edge bigotry.
But Slaughter does it at the local bar and Feller at the country club. One's a cracker, the other's a "gentleman" and longtime spokesman for corporate America. Which is where the trouble lies. The Bud Seligs and Fred Wilpons of the game have a power ol' Enos never had, but Enos takes the heat.
Baseball's boardrooms remain sanctuaries of whiteness and nobody knows the skulduggery and the racism perpetuated behind those closed doors.
How Flawed It Was
The generation of ballplayers who followed the old-timers to the dais knows the situation only too well. Here were men like Frank Robinson, Lou Brock, Donn Clendenon, Ed Charles, Ozzie Smith, and Larry Doby, all of them black. In their suits and ties they might be taken for doctors or lawyers.
They choose their words carefully. They know they must. Maybe another door will open. Someone asks if there's still racism in the clubhouse. "You must be kidding!" says Ozzie, the Wizard, some gray in his hair.
And so the day draws to a close. I do not want to say good-bye. What has occurred here today touches me deeply. It reflects and confirms my immigrant youth - assimilating America's collective memory. I didn't know how flawed it was until Paul Robeson came along, and I didn't know if it could ever change until that day in April when the Brooklyn Dodgers sent Jackie Robinson to bat.
Silvia Tennenbaum is a writer who lives in Springs and a frequent contributor to The Star's letters pages.