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UKF, SNIDER KNEW of Jackie Robinson long before most of us did:I was a kid at Compton Junior College,and Jackie was the star at Pasadena Junioroliege, and I moan he was the star. He’d wipe us outin basketball, football, baseball. He could have been a pro in all three.”Jackie Robinson picked baseball, black baseball, and then baseball picked Jackie Robinson, white baseball, and the choice was impeccable.“I never dreamed,” said Duke Snider, thinking ofthe starry-eyed kid at Compton ,JC, “that I’d wind upon the same team as Jackie. What a thrill it was. Iremember telling Jackie about some of the things Isaw him do I'd say, remember that day against Compton, when you ran back that kick? You must havereversed your field three times. I think everybody onthe field had two shots at you. and none of them got you.Jackie would laugh. He got a kick out of me. He’d say, how do you remember all those things?A Terror on BasesIt isn t hard to remember things Jackie Robinson did. not five years after his death, not 30 years after he became the first acknowledged black to play major league baseball. He moved with immense determination, a big man, 200 pounds or more, with laser reflexes that maddened the other team. Put Jackie Robinson on the basepaths, put a baseball in some fielder’s hand a few steps away, put another man on the other side of Jackie, and it was no contest. If the rundown triggered between third and home, the other team considered itself fortunate to chase him safely back to third base.“He was fantastic on the bases.” said Billy Martin, who knew the exasperation of a Robinson rundown, or the futility of trying to out-cute him. He could make a good rifle look bad. If you threw behind him, to first, on that big turn of his, he’d be standing on second base, smiling.”There is much talk of Jackie Robinson at this48th All Star game because it is dedicated to him. Rachel Robinson, who stands with growing matriarchal pride, will throw out the first ball. There will be other tributes throughout the week in ballparks at Montreal, Los Angeles, San Diego, Kansas City, Jersey City, and other towns that were part of the Robinson ordeal.There will be much truth spoken and, unfortunate ly. some phoniness, for when people scramble aboard a bandwagon, no matter how noble its purpose, some wild characters get into the act. I was listening toYOUNGBy DICK YOUNGsome shmoes on a TV sports broadcast, and this guy says something like .. “Jackie Robinson, the greatest player in baseball history.”Now wait a minute, guys. Let’s not get carried away. There was Babe Ruth And there was Joe Di-trMaggio. And I doubt that Jackie Robinson was even the greatest black player in baseball history. Willie Mays was, and is to date, and I’m not so sure thatv *Joe Morgan doesn’t have broader all-around talent than Jackie, and Henry Aaron. Jackie Robinson was the greatest in a sociological sense, for what he accomplished in the minors in 1946, and in the majors in 1947. He was The Bible in flannels, repeatedly turning the other cheek, and that was difficult, terribly difficult, because cheek-turning was not Jackie Robinson’s nature.There are some who will try to tell you that Jackie Robinson would not compromise, but he did, for with-ders stronger resistance, and Jackie Robinson knew that.And so that day, in 1948, when the Brooklyn Dodgers got off the train in St. Louis, and Campy and Newk went to the Atlas Hotel, in the black neighborhood. and the others got in the bus to the ultra-lashionable Chase Hotel. Jackie Robinson decided to get on the white players’ bus.And when he got to the Chase, and there was a dispute about him, the hotel manager offered a compromise. Jackie Robinson could have a room, but he would have to take his meals in his room, and he could not loiter around the hotel lobby during the day, with the other ballplayers.And Jackie Robinson agreed, because it was a step forward through the darkness, and he knew that the next trip, or the one after, he would bat the breeze witn the guys in the lobby, and he would eat in the dining room with his teammates. And he did.Some Never Forgot HimCampy and Newk and Joe Black remember Jackie Robinson for what he was, and what he did, and theirs is an undying gratitude. They will work for the Jackie Robinson Foundation that Rachel Robinson is now establishing, and so will Pee Wee Reese, and Duke Snider and Joe DiMag and other white players.But it is so hard to get the next wave of players, black players, interested. They live in their own little world, their self-centered world, so many of them.They will give lip-service, nothing more.I can remember running into Joe Black in 1972, lr Cincinnati, and asking him what he was doing.“I’m trying to organize an appreciation dinner foi Jackie,” he said. “We black ballplayers never reallj have let him know how much we appreciate what hlt; made possible for us. You’d be surprised how tough ie res ted. They say to me by now without him.”:uvs inout compromise thee is10 i)roimAdamancv engen10 get the young aw, we’d have got to the bi Joe Black w to stop. Jdinstill trving whei1, sudIdenly, he hadobiinson dilt;n £ I
Newspaper Details
Morgantown Morning Reporter
Morgantown, West Virginia, US
Fri, Jul 22, 1977
Page 18
Full Page
Clipped by
Canton S.
OK, USA 01 Nov 2019
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