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 Rachel Robinson, right, widow of baseball immortal Jackie Robinson, accepts a Congressional Gold Medal award on behalf of her late husband from Senate minority leader Nancy Pelosi as Pres. Bush looks on. |
She was a pillar of strength
behind a man of courage
of TheColumnists.com
Rachel Robinson is 83 and still beautiful.
When I talked to her last week at the Baseball
Hall of Fame inductions in Cooperstown, New York, it suddenly
dawned on me that she is the Eleanor Roosevelt of the game’s
history.
She has carried her husband’s legacy proudly for 34 years
since Jackie Robinson died suddenly in 1972, a man hardly appreciated
in his lifetime for pulling 18 per cent of the American population
along with him into the American dream machine.
Jackie was a Hall of Fame baseball player with a heavy chip on
his broad shoulders. No one dies at the age of 53 with a broken
body unless he has lifted great weight all of his life.
Last week there were 17 players and executives from the old Negro
Leagues being introduced as Hall of Famers along with the one
elected by the baseball writers, Bruce Sutter, at the glorious
sun-filled dedication ceremonies.
Rachel Robinson, proud of her legacy, was honored and fussed
over by many at the event. Effa Manley, a white lady who believed
in freedom for all, was elected to the same center where the
plaques of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Walter
Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Rapid Robert Feller and all of the
others among the 278 selectees of 15,500 who have played the
game, now reside in glory.
It was Ladies Day as much as it was the Negro League day.
Manley made it as the first woman selected for the Hall.
Rachel Robinson made it as the First Lady of the baseball land.
Rachel was studying nursing at UCLA in 1940 when this big athlete
named Robinson, a star in football, basketball, track and even
a little baseball, was fixed up with her.
Through World War II, they connected and corresponded before
Jackie was signed to a Brooklyn contract in 1945 and ordered
to report to the Montreal Royals in 1946.
“Get married,” Brooklyn GM Branch Rickey suggested
to Robinson when he described his life off the field and his
connection with his gal pal.
They started in Montreal together in 1946.
“I was supposed to scout Jackie as a man, not as a player,”
former Dodgers GM Buzzie Bavasi told me. “I went up to Montreal
and saw Rachel sitting with half a dozen of the other wives.
She was as comfortable as any of them. I knew then if the wives
got along the players would get along.”
Some did that next season of 1947 when Robinson was promoted
to Brooklyn and some didn’t. Rachel made it easier for many
of them.
She supported her tempestuous husband through all those years
from 1947 to 1956. Jackie’s retirement letter sits proudly
in a corner of the Hall of Fame Museum. It is about his choice
to enter business with the Chock Full O’ Nuts Company rather
than play for the New York Giants, a team the Dodgers had traded
him to a few months earlier.
Rachel was strong through the business years and was at his side
during the passions of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
They held each other’s hands at the funeral for their damaged
son, Jackie Junior, after he returned from Vietnam with drug
problems and later was killed in a car crash.
Rachel can brag now about her daughter, Sharon, a writer and
baseball executive, who spoke of the historic legacy of her father
at the induction ceremony and her son, David, a coffee planter
in Africa and father of 10 children.
“We see him here every year and we visit there every year,”
Rachel said.
Rachel laughed when I told her the statue of Jackie and Pee Wee
Reese, first suggested by Stan Isaacs of TheColumnists.Com, survived
well its first roaring winter in Brooklyn.
“I’m very proud of that,” she said.
Buck O’Neil, who played in the old Negro Leagues when Jackie
was with the Kansas City Monarchs and later broke a barrier as
the first black coach in the big leagues, hugged Rachel warmly
after speaking strongly in support of the nominations of many
of his old pals. He is 94.
“Still single, ladies,” he advised the crowd, to much
laughter.
In an historic note, Hall of Famer Monte Irvin, once considered
the first candidate for the big leagues after World War II ended,
pointed out how his contract was respected by organized baseball.
“The Giants paid Mrs. Manley $10,000 to get me from Newark,”
he said. “The Dodgers didn’t pay Kansas City anything
to get Jackie.”
Wisely, in 1945, Robinson had signed for one year with the Monarchs.
He really wanted to make a few dollars before he took a job coaching
at an all-black school.
“I guess Mr. Rickey changed all that,” Rachel said.
Jackie Robinson was signed by the Brooklyn organization in October
of 1945, a good nine years before Brown versus the Board of Education
integrated schools and a good 20 years before the civil rights
demonstrations forced legitimate, democratic integration in the
United States.
I think of Effa Manley now as a brave lady, proud of her team
and her town in a different time.
I think of Rachel Robinson now as a figure in American history
equal to Martha Washington, Dolly Madison, Mary Todd Lincoln,
Eleanor Roosevelt, the gigantic pillars of strength beside the
history makers.
Jackie Robinson integrated the Great American Pastime. Rachel
Robinson is worthy of a statue of her own for standing next to
him in troubled times and alone in extolling his legend for all
the years since 1972.
©2006 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The photo is courtesy of the White House. This
column first posted Aug. 7, 2006.
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