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Out of Left Field |
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and JACKIE ...FOREVER |
 Stan Isaacs poses with the statue that was his original dream. |
After six years, a statue finally rises in Brooklyn
of TheColumnists.com
Pee Wee Reese was the heart and soul, the guts of the team that came to be known, courtesy of Roger Kahn, as “The Boys of Summer.” The Dodgers of Reese, Jackie Robinson, Carl Erskine, Gil Hodges, Duke Snider and Roy Campanella played together for almost a decade. The tone of class that endeared them to Brooklyn fans was set by the actions, demeanor and soft-toned, wry approach of Reese.
Anybody who covered that team adored Reese, who came to Brooklyn in 1940 and was the leader of the team through 1957 and for a year after that when the Dodgers had skedaddled to Los Angeles.
I covered the Dodgers on and off for the Daily Compass and Newsday from 1949 until they left Brooklyn. The last time I saw Reese was at Cooperstown for the Hall of Fame ceremonies inducting Bill Veeck. Seeing him there with his son Mark, the documentary filmmaker, I had an odd thought and timorously approached Mark to ask him something.
I said, “All of us who covered the Dodgers loved your father. Sometimes, though, a person who was a beloved public figure, would be regarded quite differently by his family. Was your father the same kind of person to you as he was to the public?”
Mark Reese considered the question, paused, looked at me and said, “More so.”
I thought of that meeting when I was driving off to the St. Patrick’s Church in Brooklyn on a summer day in 1999, thinking about what I would say as a speaker at a memorial for Reese, who had died, August 14. It occurred to me that there ought to be some memorial for Reese in Brooklyn. I felt, though, that the practice of naming a highway for a ball player was no great thing because we would hear discouraging morning traffic reports about there being a breakdown on the Jackie Robinson parkway or slow going on the Joe DiMaggio West Side Highway.
For all his 16 years as a solid ball player with the Dodgers, the thing that stood out most about Reese was his befriending of Jackie Robinson. This was personified by his action on May 13, 1947 when he made a gesture of friendship to Robinson when Jackie was being pilloried by Cincinnati fans and players, probably during pre-game practice at Crosley Field.
Reese, a native of nearby Louisville, quietly walked over to Robinson and put his arm around Jackie. In a biography by Arnold Rampersand, Robinson was quoted as recalling the incident this way: “Pee Wee kind of sensed the sort of helpless, dead feeling in me and came over (and) stood beside me for a while. He didn’t say a word, but looked at the chaps who were yelling at me and just stared. He was standing by me, I could tell you that.”
The hecklers ceased their attack.
There are no photos of that incident. But Lester Rodney, the sports editor of the Daily Worker, made that trip out west with the Dodgers and he recalled seeing it. “It was quick,” he said, “and I thought it was typical of Pee Wee.” Rodney , now 92, retired in Walnut Creek, Calif., does not remember if he wrote anything about it.
Reese, ever modest, said his nomination to the Hall of Fame probably stemmed from that incident rather than his feats on the ball field. Certainly, his plaque at Cooperstown notes his role in befriending Jackie Robinson.
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sculpture, showing Pee Wee Reese's arm around teammate Jackie Robinson. |
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All this prompted me to suggest that a proper memorial for Reese would be to cast a statue of that action. The suggestion was picked up on a Mets telecast that night, then Jack Newfield, a great muckraker, took up the cause and wrote some strong columns urging the city to erect such a statue. This goaded Mayor Rudy Giuliani into action, and philanthropist Ted Forstmann put up seed money to get the project going.
So it was that a sculptor, Williams Behrends, fashioned the winning model for the project that was unveiled at New York’s City Hall the morning of Sept.11, 2001. While the meeting was in progress, the sounds of the second terrorist plane hitting the Twin Towers reverberated in the room, and all activity stopped. The incident stalled the project for some time until new Mayor Michael Bloomberg advanced the cause.
A total of $1.2 million was raised by sports, civic figures and the pennies of school children. This led up to a lovely, crisp morning this Nov. 1 outside the ball park of the Mets’ farm team, the Brooklyn Cyclones in Coney Island, where the statue was unveiled.
The wives of the ball players, Dottie Reese and Rachel Robinson, were there along with their children. The son, Mark Reese, spoke eloquently. He said, “My father had done his own soul searching. He knew that some fans, teammates, and, yes, some family members didn’t want him to play with a black man. But my father listened to his heart, and not to the chorus.”
Dottie Reese said, “Pee Wee thought nothing of it. For him it was a simple gesture of friendship. He had no idea that it would become so significant. He would be absolutely amazed. I just wish he were here today.”
I wish Jack Newfield were there, too. He died last December, and was represented by his widow, Janie. Jack wrote those columns and he, union activist John Turciano and I, having retired from Newsday, did some behind-the-scene needling of the mayors’ people to keep the project alive. Newspaper pieces by Vic Ziegel in the Daily News, Joe Gergen and Bob Keeler in Newsday and Bob Lipsyte and Frank Clines in the New York Times helped.
The theme of brotherhood dominated the inspirational proceedings of the unveiling of the statue. School kids, dignitaries, old Dodgers and enthusiastic old Dodger fans were among the crowd of more than 300. The cacophony of the inimitable Brooklyn Sym-phony band enlivened the ceremonies.
The mayor’s people were generous in giving Newfield and me our due. And friends were lavish in their praise. Among others I treasure the comments of Marty Appel: “You left a fantastic legacy,” and Larry Merchant: “It’s a monument to you, too, for a lifetime of good work.”
I would urge anybody visiting New York to enjoy two splendid statues: Eleanor Roosevelt at 72nd Street and Riverside Drive in Manhattan; and Pee Wee Reese with his arm around his friend Jackie Robinson in Coney Island. As Lonnie Wheeler of the Cincinnati Post wrote, “It stands eight-feet tall, about two feet shy of the height at which a guy named Pee Wee towered on a great May night at Crosley Field.”
©2005 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted Nov. 14, 2005.
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