MLB: White-Washing And Diminishing Jackie Robinson's Career For 75 Years(Because Honestly Reporting On Robinson's Circumstances Would Mean Admitting To & Exposing Its Decades & Decades & Decades Of Grotesque Racism)

My April 15, 2019 post ("Everything You Know About Jackie Robinson Is Wrong") was prompted by my partner Laura's review of Arnold Rampersad's Jackie Robinson: A Biography.

When she began reading Rampersad's book, she feared "learning some awful truth about Branch Rickey, perhaps that he was not the hero that I thought him to be". But the Brooklyn Dodgers president and general manager "turned out to be even better than I knew". There was a kicker, though: "I was surprised to learn that almost everything I knew about Jackie Robinson's baseball career was wrong."

Robinson learned his aggressive style of play from the Negro Leagues. . . . Wrong.

Robinson's promise to turn the other cheek against the racism he endured on the field lasted many seasons. . . . Wrong.

Robinson, a morally-upstanding Christian who did not drink, smoke, swear, or sleep around, was portrayed as a model citizen. . . . Wrong.

Robinson's health later in his life suffered because of the abuse he quietly absorbed. . . . Wrong.

For most of his 10 years with the Dodgers, Robinson was portrayed in the newspapers as aggressive and out of control. Once he began speaking out (after his rookie season) about the flood of racism he faced, he was permanently branded an angry complainer. New York Post columnist Jimmy Cannon wrote that Robinson's anger seemed endless ("the range of [his] hostility appears to have no frontiers") and claimed his "undisciplined protests" were driving Dodgers fans away from the team.

I ended the 2019 post:

MLB continues to whitewash its abhorrent treatment of Robinson in its annual lovefest for #42, presenting and remembering a highly-distorted version of reality. And the sports media has yet to outgrow its blatant double standard when it comes to athletes of colour. To this day, dark-skinned athletes are labelled aggressive and ill-tempered (or just plain angry) while their white counterparts are often referred to as tough, intense, and gritty.

The US media structure (of which MLB is a part) has white-washed Robinson's life and baseball experience in much the same way it has bleached all the radicalism and anger from Martin Luther King's life, his repeated condemnations of capitalism and militarism, his demand for a socialist revolution and universal basic income. The neutering of King's beliefs has been a second assassination.

The Guardian recently reported that for King's entire life (he was only 39 when he was murdered), there wasn't a single day when a majority of white Americans approved of him. (my emphasis)

In 1966, Gallup measured his approval rating at 32% positive and 63% negative. That same year, a December Harris poll found that 50% of whites felt King was "hurting the negro cause of civil rights" while only 36% felt he was helping. By the time he died in 1968, three out of four white Americans disapproved of him. In the wake of his assassination, 31% of the country felt that he "brought it on himself".

One does not have to reach back into the historical archives to explain why King was so despised. The sentiments that made him a villain are still prevalent in America today. When he was alive, King was a walking, talking example of everything this country despises about the quest for Black liberation. He railed against police brutality. He reminded the country of its racist past. He scolded the powers that be for income inequality and systemic racism. Not only did he condemn the openly racist opponents of equality, he reminded the legions of whites who were willing to sit idly by while their fellow countrymen were oppressed that they were also oppressors. "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it," King said. "He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."

To be fair, King readily admitted that it was his goal to make white people uncomfortable. . . . [In A Letter from Birmingham Jail, he stated that nonviolent direct action] was an attempt to induce the white community to a point where marginalized people's desperate cries could no longer be ignored.

According to those polls, from 1966 to 1968, support for King among white Americans actually dropped, from 32% to about 25%. King believed most Americans were unconscious racists who refused to seriously examine their racist beliefs, ideas and practices. In 1967, he asked: "Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains?" Those questions remain off-limits 55 years later – and will continue to remain taboo for many more years.

King's stinging, blunt rhetoric would have only gotten stronger and more pointed over time. I don't believe King would be well-loved today. If alive, he would be 93 years old. But let's pretend he was 65-70. He might have a majority of support (maybe), but a significant number of Democrats and liberals would be urging King to tone down the anger and take things a little slower. 

Last week, I read an article at The Daily Beast about the newspaper coverage of Robinson's major league debut, which happened on this day 75 years ago. 

Sidebar: In December 2020, MLB recognized seven Negro Leagues between 1920 and 1948 as major leagues. One of those leagues was the Negro American League, where Robinson played shortstop and first base for the Kansas City Monarchs. So . . .  isn't his major league debut now the date on which he played his first game for the 1945 Monarchs? May 6, 1945. Robinson's B-Ref page now lists 11 major league seasons (not 10); 1947 is his second season. Of course, MLB won't stop celebrating April 15, 1947 – which is the right thing to do, since at that time, that day was clearly his debut. But as of December 2020, Jackie Robinson's first major league season was two years before his recognized major league debut.

In "When Jackie Robinson Made History, The Sports Pages Shrugged", Theodore Hamm took a look at the New York papers before, on, and after April 15, 1947 (my emphasis)

Sportswriters had focused their attention in the run-up to opening day focused on the surprise full-season suspension of the Dodgers feisty manager, Leo "The Lip" Durocher, by baseball commissioner Albert "Happy" Chandler. Along with his close pal, Hollywood star George Raft, Durocher was known to consort with gamblers. . . . Early in 1947, Durocher—who clearly enjoyed the limelight—eloped with actress Laraine Day to Mexico . . . In response, the Brooklyn Catholic Youth Organization vowed to boycott the team's games. . . . [J]ust five days before the season started, Chandler suspended Durocher. . . .

On Opening Day, the Brooklyn Eagle, then a large-circulation paper with two daily editions, gave its most sizable front-page headlines to Joe Hatten, the Dodgers' starting pitcher against the Boston Braves. A sub-headline read, "Robinson, Jorgensen in Lineup"—thus equating the first Black player in the modern major leagues with a white fellow rookie memorable only because his nickname was "Spider."

The following day's Eagle coverage was found only in the sports section, although it did include a photo of Robinson shaking hands with Brooklyn Borough President John Cashmore and another with the first baseman in the dugout with his three fellow infielders. . . .

Such a reaction stood in contrast to what had happened a few days prior, when the Alabama-born [Dixie] Walker received a chorus of boos during an Ebbets Field exhibition game against the Yankees. Walker was one of a handful of Dodgers players who opposed adding Robinson to their roster. Noting that the jeers came from Robinson fans, the Eagle editorial board denounced the "mistreatment" of Walker, warning that it could imperil the "expansion of the Dodgers experiment in bringing a Negro into the national game." . . .

The front page of the April 16, 1947, Brooklyn Eagle was devoid of baseball news:

Harold Burr's game story on page 19 did not mention Robinson until the ninth paragraph – he "again went hitless against big league pitching". (The Dodgers had played a three-game exhibition series against the Yankees on Friday and the weekend; Robinson went 2-for-11. Friday's game was treated as his "big league debut". See below.)

Here is the Brooklyn Eagle of April 12, 1947, calling Robinson's appearance in an exhibition game at Ebbets Field his "debut" and "big league unveiling". Robinson is referred to as the "Black Meteor".

The New York Times, April 16, 1947:

New York Times, April 16, 1947, page 32:

In the Times's game story, Robinson is barely mentioned. We learned that he bunted, reached base and scored and then later grounded into a double play. (And, really, what else is there to say about his debut?)

Arthur Daley's Times column had a bit more about the "muscular Negro" who has a "ready grin" and "minds his own business" but "speaks quietly and intelligently when spoken to":

Another fact that is never discussed: major league teams moved at a glacier's pace to integrate.

I realize glaciers move much faster now; I'm referring to the really slow glaciers of the 1940s and 1950s.

1947: Dodgers [Robinson's debut], Cleveland, Browns

1948: —

1949: Giants

1950: Boston (NL)

1951: White Sox

1952: —

1953: Athletics, Cubs

1954: Pirates, Cardinals, Reds, Senators

1955: Yankees

1956: — [Robinson retires!]

1957: Phillies

1958: Tigers

1959: Red Sox

Note: Hank Thompson was the first black player for both the St. Louis Browns (1947) and New York Giants (1949).

Six years after Robinson's debut (after the 1952 season), only six of 16 teams had integrated (three in each league) and white players still made up 94.4% of major leaguers (2.9% black, 2.7% Latino).

Robinson was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1962, on the first ballot, but he just squeaked in. He needed 120 votes (out of 160) and he received 117 (77.5%).

A new four-hour documentary on Robinson from Ken Burns aired on PBS this past week. Burns calls Robinson

the most important person without a doubt in the history of baseball. I would argue that he is the most important person in the history of American sports and he is one of the greatest Americans who's ever lived – period.

At the time of Robinson's debut, according to The Daily Beast, more than a third of all major league players came from formerly Confederate states.

Teammate and pitcher Don Newcombe (the third black major league pitcher, the first black pitcher to start a World Series game, the first black pitcher to win 20 games in a season, and the first pitcher to win the NL MVP and the Cy Young in the same season): "I really don't know how he survived and performed the way he performed on the baseball field."

Robinson said the mistreatment was relentless. "I was overestimating my stamina and underestimating the beating I was taking." As was the pressure. Rachel Robinson, his wife: "He knew if he failed that social progress was going to get set back."

The second half of Burns's documentary examines Robinson's political activism (which was more varied than you might think; he supported social justice and racial integration, but he also spoke out against Paul Robeson before the House Un-American Activities Committee and supported Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy (though he later admitted his mistake)).

MLB is extremely careful about revealing only the barest (and blandest) sliver of that side of Robinson. MLB avoids myriad topics, such as how Robinson refused to participate in a 1969 Old Timers game because MLB was not showing "genuine interest in breaking the barriers that deny access to managerial and front office positions" for black people and initially refused to throw out a pitch at the 1972 World Series for the same reason. And things like this: