Branch Rickey by Jimmy Breslin

Author:Jimmy Breslin
Format: epub

ocher. In return, Leo went to the taxicab that took King away from the old Polo Grounds ballpark each night and left a note saying “You are a stumbling drunken bum.”

In the Cincinnati Reds’ old Crosley Field, two big, wonderful German women had a counter near the press box from which they served the largest sandwiches in all of baseball, and maybe sports. Surely, members of the Baseball Writers Association deserved such service, even though, because of them, there was not a black mouth to feed.

The Baseball Writers Association of America organization was a fake and a fraud, a shill as white as the Klan. The teams paid the way for the writers traveling with them, starting with spring training. They also gave the writers $8 a day meal money. Only one or two newspapers declined to be part of such a corrupt arrangement. The others were delighted to save the money.

The association was in charge of all press boxes at baseball games, and only reporters working for daily newspapers, and thus only whites, were permitted to enter. Association rules kept out reporters from the weekly papers, almost all of whom were black. There was the New York Amsterdam News and similar papers in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Baltimore, and elsewhere, all shut out.

In Brooklyn, the only reporter from a weekly paper admitted to the Baseball Writers Association was Jack Butler of the Brooklyn Tablet, the official publication of the borough’s Roman Catholic Diocese. As there were perhaps fifteen black Catholics in the entire diocese, this made their weekly newspaper safe and white.

The association rules were so sinful and scandalous that even a faint voice in protest could have shattered the arrangement. But it continued to exist because the team owners allowed it. The newsmen opposed not. Everybody was silently satisfied at working in the atmosphere of a restricted country club. Comfort would be ruined by the opening of the door for even one black sports reporter. Who would sit next to him?

When the rumor of Jackie Robinson first turned real, the association polled members in each city. Someone had the notion that a strong negative reaction to Robinson by baseball writers would keep him out. It did not. In Cincinnati, there was a single vote against Robinson. Everybody assumed it had been cast by Tom Swope of the Cincinnati Post, an old-timer, gruff as a watchman. Swope said nothing. Of course he was far better than voting to keep some infielder from earning a living just because he has dark skin.

In New York, Jimmy Powers, the sports editor of the Daily News, then with a circulation of nearly three million, wrote not even one column during this time that called for making room for black players. The thought of Powers, with that immense circulation behind him, losing the clear chance to become a new and commanding figure in America causes you to wince. Oh, he lost that chance, don’t worry about that. He was the most persistent and vicious of Rickey’s enemies.

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