After today’s “You Could Look It Up” went live, my BP colleague Jay Jaffe reminded me that I had left out a key fact about Preacher Roe: that despite being a Southerner, and unlike other Southerners on the Dodgers, he had no problem playing with Jackie Robinson. When Jay brought that up, I looked sadly down at my notes. There it was–in my haste, I had passed it by. Let me give you my favorite part of that story, courtesy of Roger Kahn’s classic The Boys of Summer. Roe remembered:
A few times people come up to me in the winter and said, “Say, Roe. If you’re gonna go up there and play with those colored boys, to hell with ya.” But very few. I always said, “Well, if that’s how you feel, I considered the fellers I play with, I considered your remark, and to hell with you!”
There’s also this very fine remembrance of Branch Rickey:
Mr. Rickey said, “Remember, it isn’t the color of a man’s skin that matters. It’s what’s inside the individual.” And he said some of the people with the whitest skins would be the sorriest I’d meet and some of the darkest would be the best. That was 1938. I know now that Rickey had in mind breaking the color barrier almost ten years before he did. I respect him for that, and I went through my career with that respect always in mind.
I well know that Rickey was no saint. He was a hardened businessman who was not above pettiness in his dealings. I also know that his motives in breaking the color line had an economic component. That said, I’d like to see a statue of him and Jackie somewhere on the National Mall.
Ralph Kiner is among those who is a bit equivocal about labeling Rickey a saint. In his memoir, "Baseball Forever", he provides what I consider a very honest appraisal of his own attitudes towards Robinson and integration in 1947, and those of his contemporaries. After giving Rickey due credit, he appends two paragraphs (p. 78-79) stressing the complexity of Rickey's motives, mentioning that he never compensated the "Negro league teams he raided for players" and commenting that Rickey was in no hurry to integrate the Pirates ("Nobody ever mentions this when assessing baseball's 'Great Emancipator'...." He concludes by saying that Rickey's only defense for moving so slowly was that he "might have been too penurious....", perhaps a reference to his own conflicts with the GM.
He goes on to say that he had more faith in Bill Veeck whose motives, Kiner believes, were based more on convictions than economic concerns. There is likely a residue of personal animus in the memoir, and I agree with your view that Rickey deserves national recognition along with Robinson, but it is an interesting bit of detail emphasizing your point that Rickey was no saint.
I think Kiner may be attributing the cheapness of Pirates ownership to Rickey. Lee Lowenfish's excellent biography on Rickey paints a picture of an ownership that was only intermittently committed to winning. For instance, one little gem from Lowenfish's book (pp. 526-527) is that the Pirates lost out on signing Sandy Koufax in 1954 because the owner wouldn't increase the team's initial bonus offer of $15,000 despite the pleading of scouts.
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to write a thesis on the Newark Eagles their owner Effa Manley while at Rutgers University, and I have to agree that Rickey was no saint. While I absolutely recognize the progressiveness it took to promote Jackie Robinson, I would refer to his actions with Ms. Manley and her Eagles, who received almost no compensation for losing players like Newcombe to the Dodgers (or Larry Doby to the Indians). Ms. Manley had several confrontations with Rickey because of his raiding tactics that established how Negro League players were to be taken from their original clubs. Had Rickey established an adequate drafting or compensation system for Negro League players and their teams, the raids by other teams would likely have been curtailed. We have to remember that many Negro League players lost their livelihood when the Negro Leagues collapsed after the color barrier was broken, and only a handful of players had the opportunity to play in the Major Leagues.
Equality is born from exploitation. Like Lincoln, Rickey's decision was multivalent and ultimately appealing to the majority of his constituency. But most importantly, it made them a better team. That's the bottom line, and that is the profundity here. It was a decision that trancended all economics and political systems because he was trying to improve *his team,* and he did it in a way that disregarded precedant (in a way that Billy Beane has done for his team over the last decade, obviously without the staggering social aspects).
If you are looking for unimpeachable figures on race relations, looking at white baseball guys isn't going to be helpful. Rickey was a great GM for *his* team, and he needn't be weighed for other obligations. He was one man in the middle of an ocean of opinions and impossible-to-navigate circumstances, and he improved his team (and, indirectly, the world) with good ol' western pragmatism. That's why he deserves a damn statue.
Oh, he deserves a "damn statue" for more reasons than that. No seemingly altruistic and noble act is ever completely devoid of self-interest, including the other things that get one memorialized in a statue on the National Mall. I'm with Steven: this is a statue that needs to be created, even if the characters depicted have their warts. After all, who doesn't?
I agree that what Rickey did was transcendent for this country, and courageous on his part. He should be recognized for what he did, but I wanted to note the other side of what happened when the color barrier collapsed.
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Ralph Kiner is among those who is a bit equivocal about labeling Rickey a saint. In his memoir, "Baseball Forever", he provides what I consider a very honest appraisal of his own attitudes towards Robinson and integration in 1947, and those of his contemporaries. After giving Rickey due credit, he appends two paragraphs (p. 78-79) stressing the complexity of Rickey's motives, mentioning that he never compensated the "Negro league teams he raided for players" and commenting that Rickey was in no hurry to integrate the Pirates ("Nobody ever mentions this when assessing baseball's 'Great Emancipator'...." He concludes by saying that Rickey's only defense for moving so slowly was that he "might have been too penurious....", perhaps a reference to his own conflicts with the GM.
He goes on to say that he had more faith in Bill Veeck whose motives, Kiner believes, were based more on convictions than economic concerns. There is likely a residue of personal animus in the memoir, and I agree with your view that Rickey deserves national recognition along with Robinson, but it is an interesting bit of detail emphasizing your point that Rickey was no saint.
I think Kiner may be attributing the cheapness of Pirates ownership to Rickey. Lee Lowenfish's excellent biography on Rickey paints a picture of an ownership that was only intermittently committed to winning. For instance, one little gem from Lowenfish's book (pp. 526-527) is that the Pirates lost out on signing Sandy Koufax in 1954 because the owner wouldn't increase the team's initial bonus offer of $15,000 despite the pleading of scouts.