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Anniversary Edition YEAR TEN BEGINS! |
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MAY 20, 2001 |
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Two Towering Figures in the History of Baseball: At left, Jackie Robinson. At right, Roger Maris. |
Saluting two men who changed baseball history
of TheColumnists.com
One walked on the
field on April 15, 1947, and marched into history.
Another walked off the field on October 1, 1961, and marched
into history.
The first was an African American, born in Georgia, raised in
California and came to fame in Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field.
The second was Swedish-American, born in Minnesota, raised in
North Dakota and came to fame in Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
As we prepare to experience the historic change in our country
with the new Obama nation next month, it is time to examine the
two most significant events in the history of the Great American
Pastime.
Baseball had its moments with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Willie
Mays and Hank Aaron, Walter Johnson and Bob Feller, Mark McGwire
and Barry Bonds and dozens more.
None could have the lasting impact of that first walk on the
Brooklyn grass by Jack Roosevelt Robinson or the last stroll
home by Roger Eugene Maris before the roar of the Bronx crowd.
Robinson made history just by showing up, the first African American
in 20th century Major League baseball, the forerunner for a Supreme
Court decision seven years later, a massive civil rights movement
led by an Atlanta preacher almost 20 years later and the majestic
change to begin in some few short weeks.
Maris made history--no matter what McGwire and Bonds recorded
later--with the greatest challenge of any baseball player’s
career, downing the ghost of immortal Babe Ruth, the overwhelming
presence of Mickey Mantle and the shoddiness of a mean-spirited
Baseball Commissioner named Ford C. Frick.
I was a teenager in Brooklyn when Robinson made his revolutionary
appearance. I was a young sportswriter when Maris made his.
Robinson had been a four sport star in California, a basketball
great, a football thriller, a track wizard, a baseball hero when
he entered military service in World War II. He fought the system
before anyone knew the name of Rosa Parks when he refused to
move to the back of an Army bus. Controversy followed him everywhere.
The Army discharged him honorably to rid themselves of this headache.
He played a season for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro
League, was scouted by the Dodgers and signed a big league contract
in October of 1945. He played an MVP season at Montreal with
the Brooklyn farm club, led the team to the Little World Series
and was chased across a field by white fans anxious to place
the then-called dusky hero on their shoulders.
While teammates growled at his appearance in their spring training
camp in Cuba and several signed a petition against him and threatened
a boycott, manager Leo Durocher warned them of more serious consequences
if they continued with their plans: Expulsion.
Durocher said all he was concerned about was winning. He would
play Robinson and those players who didn’t like it could
kiss his ass. None took him up on his threat.
Robinson survived the hate mail, the death threats, the bitter,
racist bench jockeying led by the Philadelphia Phillies manager,
an Alabaman named Ben Chapman.
He was rookie of the year, an award now named the Jackie Robinson
Rookie of the Year award, he helped lead the Dodgers to a pennant
and he starred in a losing World Series against the Yankees.
He would play on the one and only Brooklyn Series winner in 1955,
hold on for a last season in 1956, be elected to Baseball’s
Hall of Fame in 1962, retire to private business in 1957 and
remain active in life and politics until his early death in 1972.
He was 53 years old.
Maris was a football star in high school in Fargo, North Dakota
when he turned down a scholarship at powerful Oklahoma University
to accept a baseball bonus from the Cleveland Indians. He was
soon traded to Kansas City, moved to an MVP season with the Yankees
in 1960 and electrified the world with the home run chase against
the Ruth record of 1927 and the Mantle challenge in 1961.
Commissioner Frick ruled that the Ruth mark could not be broken
unless it was done in 154 games, the same schedule Ruth played.
Young sportswriters and young fans challenged that bizarre ruling
as Frick never mentioned any other baseball marks set that year.
Maris got to 59 homers in game 154 in one of the most dramatic
games ever played. He made it to 61, without the help of steroids,
on the last day of the 1961 season when he hit a home run off
Boston rookie Tracy Stallard.
No player, except maybe Robinson for different reasons, faced
the pressures Maris did over that long summer and early fall.
He accomplished so much. He pulled the country along with him.
He was an introverted, surly, brutally honest guy so the fans
and most of his teammates favored Mantle in that challenge. He
won five pennants with the Yankees and two more with the Cardinals
before retiring after the 1968 season. He died in 1985. He was
51 years old.
The electees of Baseball’s Hall of Fame have ignored him
ever since. Shame on them.
Barack Obama will change the nation starting January 20, 2008.
Jackie Robinson changed it on April 15, 1947 and Roger Maris
changed the game of baseball on October 1, 1961.
©2008 by Maury Allen.
The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This
column first posted Dec. 1, 2008.
TO ACCESS MAURY ALLEN'S ARCHIVE OF COLUMNS
ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: ALLEN ARCHIVE.
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