A lesson in dignity

Sporting News, The, Oct 21, 1996 by Sam McManis

These days, all it takes to prompt some baseball players to lose it totally and spit in someone's face is a called third strike (see Alomar, Roberto). All it takes for some players to react violently is a photographer's lens pointed at them (see Belle, Albert). All it takes for players to charge the mound is a high, inside pitch (see To List, Too Many).

Whatever happened to self-restraint in baseball? Gone, faster than you can say Jackie Robinson.

I was thinking about the despicable Alomar incident while speaking to Rachel Robinson, Jackie's widow, who is on tour promoting her new book,Jackie Robinson, An Intimate Portrait. I was struck anew by the courage and discipline it took for Robinson not to strike back at the world in the face of unfathomable pressure during his first two years with the Brooklyn Dodgers after breaking baseball's color barrier in 1947.

Many current players probably cannot begin to understand what Robinson lived through, how he had to submerge his roiling rage at a racist society m order to try to desegregate baseball and advance the cause of civil rights, how he turned the other cheek at verbal and physical attacks and how he, in the long run, pried open societal doors previously nailed shut.

But Rachel Robinson knows. She was there beside her husband throughout the ordeal of his first two seasons, when he promised Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey he would avoid confrontations, turn the other cheek to a variety of abuses ranging from the uttering of racial epithets to death threats.

Were there times when Robinson felt like spitting in the faces of his legion of detractors?

Every day, says his widow.

Did he come close to losing composure?

Every day, says his widow.

He never did, though. That's because Jackie Robinson, Rachel says, was a stronger person than most of us could think of being.

"Jack was a very disciplined person," Rachel says. "He was very committed to this social experiment. He was able to keep his eye on the goal of integration and not succumb. And doing that was absolutely alien to his personality. He would just bristle at injustice of any kind."

Only if you knew Robinson could you fully appreciate how strong he was to keep his dignity when pitchers routinely threw at his head, baserunners slid into second with spikes up and white players and fans pelted him with racial taunts and garbage.

Docility, apparently, was not in Robinson's nature. As a child in Pasadena, Calif., he once got into a rock-throwing fight with his white neighbor. As a four-sport star at UCLA, he fought with teammates and opponents alike. He was court-martialed by the Army for refusing to sit in the back of the bus.

"You've got to understand," Rachel says, "those first two years were difficult. We were under a lot of stress."

Try this for "stress": Rachel writes about her trip with Jackie from Los Angeles to Florida for his first spring training, how they were kicked off the flight at each stopover, eventually having to complete the journey by bus, in the back of the bus, of course.

". . . In the darkness, I silently wept," she writes. "My man had become the white South's `boy,' in order to keep us safe. However, even then, I could see that we had the survivor's most crucial traits--resilience and indestructible hope."

You wonder what would have happened had Robinson not kept his composure. Would the door that Robinson and Rickey opened been shut permanently? Would the Roberto Alomars and Albert Belles ever have had a chance to act boorish on the field?

"Who knows?" Rachel says. "I can't say absolutely that African Americans would've been seriously held back. But that was the danger we felt if Jackie had retaliated. The concern was that he could spark some type of incident, either in the stands with black and white fans or on the field between the players. Then, the naysayers would've said to Rickey, `See, the experiment didn't work.' that's I the one thing that helped Jackie contain his fury of being abused."

Since her husband's death in 1972, Rachel Robinson has run the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which provides educational opportunities to students in 20 states. Foundation scholarship winners have achieved a college graduation rate of 92 percent. But affirmative action cuts in California have her fearing a return to a less-enlightened time.

"I can predict whet Jackie would've thought of that," Rachel says. "We both have long felt that in our society, we have to be vigilant against retrenchment. There are always forces out there trying to pull us back."

Which is why Rachel Robinson still is fighting to maintain the societal gains blacks have achieved in the 50 years since her husband, in effect, spearheaded the modern civil rights movement. Jackie would have expected nothing less from her.

Sam McManis is a columnist for the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, Calif.