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Not a Colorblind Major League
Posted by KTK

This year, Major League Baseball is celebrating the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s rookie season, which racially integrated the modern game. (There were in fact a few black ballplayers in the early professional leagues, before the same kind of belligerent yahooism we’re seeing again today swept the country and imposed segregation where, in some cases, it hadn’t existed before. That only underscores Robinson’s importance.) Robinson entered an all-white league that was not merely segregated but in many corners virulently racist. He withstood hostility from some of his own teammates and local fans, as well as vicious abuse, and even death threats, to prove the point that black players could succeed in the league. The history of baseball since is the history of Jackie Robinson’s achievement.

I was startled to hear, just recently, that Robinson’s Hall of Fame plaque does not say a single word about any of this. It merely lists his relevant statistics and records. It does not mention that he was the first modern-day black player, that he is credited with integrating the game single-handedly, that he was so respected for his courage in this and an earlier incident in which he faced court-martial - and won his case - for . . . refusing to sit at the back of a bus on a military base that he was cited as a specific inspiration by later leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, or that he spent the rest of his life as a civil rights icon and leader. It does not even mention that he was black.

That seemed . . . odd. But I wondered if it was perhaps a ham-handed way of honoring racial equality - since none of the white players are identified by race, race should not be mentioned in honoring the black player whose career, more than anyone else’s in history, was defined, and almost prevented, by race.

Today, though, on the Hall of Fame Web site, I discovered that there is a plaque honoring a member for achieving the racial integration of baseball.

It belongs to Branch Rickey, the white manager who hired Robinson to play in 1947. It lists as Rickey’s only two noted accomplishments that he developed the modern farm-club system, and the fact that he hired Jackie Robinson. It, too, does not mention integration, or that Robinson was black, leaving visitors to puzzle out why signing a second-base-player would qualify a former general manager for the Hall of Fame, but it’s there. To be fair to Rickey, his step was a calculated move to overcome baseball’s greatest shame, and it required courage and determination on his part, too. He deserves honor for it. But the fact that the only reference - even obliquely - to combatting racism in baseball by Hall of Fame members goes to the white guy who simply . . . refused to be a racist . . . and not to the black guy who faced down a whole nation to make it happen, makes one wonder . . . a bit.

             

Update: This site gives a synopsis of Rickey’s and Robinson’s collusion in breaking the color bar; it also mentions the early history of black players in the professional leagues. (It also retails the probably-apocryphal story of Pee Wee Reese standing by Robinson as he was being abused by fans in Cincinnati.) It includes the fact - another thing I didn’t know - that segregation of the league was instigated by Cap Anson, another Hall of Fame player, in 1887.  His plaque doesn’t mention that accomplishment, strangely.

UpUpdate: The site linked above mentions another fact I find compelling: It was exactly 60 years after the official segregation of the leagues that MLB finally integrated, making this year’s celebration especially appropriate. Major League Baseball has now been desegregated as long as it had previously been segregated. (In fact, this is the first year past the equilibrium point for professional baseball in general, if you count Robinson’s year in the minor leagues.)

May 5th, 2007 General, Sports, Culture, MLB, News & Current Events, Race | 5 comments