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Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season

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The story of Jackie Robinson has been told in several books by many distinguished authors. Now Jonathan Eig, author of the definitive book on Lou Gehrig, has given us a fresh look at the Brooklyn Dodgers of 1947, which was Robinson's initial season with the team. First let me say this man (Eig) can write. This is not a rehash of other stories you may have read. The author skillfully weaves the role of influential individuals such as Branch Rickey, Pee Wee Reese, Harry "The Hat" Walker, Leo "The Lip" Durocher, Burt Shotten, Eddie "The Brat" Stanky, Dick Young of the New York Daily News, and others in this historic story. Baseball rosters were heavily made up of players from the south. The Dodgers were no exception, and they brought their long held prejudices along with them. You may think you have heard all the anecdotes relating to Robinson and the Dodgers, but the gifted author of this book will provide you with nuggets of information culled from a variety of sources. Years after the fact, several former Dodger players said Robinson "made them better men." However, the author notes, these claims were made only after supporting civil rights became fashionable. In 1947, when Robinson needed these friends, he found none on the Dodgers. At least significant ones! Reese developed a genuine friendship with Robinson, but in 1947 Pee Wee was one of the boys and whether the often told incident of him supporting Robinson in Cincinnati when he was being heckled is open to question. At least for 1947. This is quite simply one of the very best of hundreds of baseball books that I have read. It is definitely a keeper for anyone's library. It's a great story, especially with the 60th anniversary rapidly approaching. I can't wait to see what this new author, Jonathan Eig, is preparing for us to read next.

I just finished Jonathan Eig's book "Opening Day", and loved it. Like his earlier work "Luckiest Man", Eig sticks to facts and historical sources (interviews [old and new], newspaper sources) and is able to separate some of the myths surrounding Jackie Robinson and the 1947 season from the truth. For example, the story about Pee Wee Reese draping his arm around Robinson's shoulder in Cincinnati in 1947. Great story, but not much fact supporting whether it happened. Eig reports the known sources and lets the reader decide whether to believe the facts or the myth (in this case, I like the myth!).

This is the first book that I know of that chronicles the 1947 season (w/some "flashbacks", which are necessary to understand some of the people and the culture and thought of the time). Eig's writing style keeps the reader interested, as Robinson joins the Dodgers after a year with the minor league Montreal Royals, proceeds to take the field and ultimately become Major League Rookie of the Year - there was only one for both leagues at the time. Interviews with Rachel Robinson, Jackie's wife, show both the courage Robinson shows, as well as the emotional turmoil, as Robinson had promised Branch Rickey that he would not fight his tormentors.

As the season progresses, Eig does a great job of how Robinson's Dodger teammates loosen up to him, believing that his playing as a ballplayer is more important than skin color. By the end of the season, Ralph Branca is catching Robinson who is diving for a foul ball, something that might not have happened earlier in the year. There's a great scene where Dixie Walker, possibly unfairly maligned as an instigator of a potential major league strike against Robinson, calls Robinson aside to give him batting tips. Rachel Robinson is even invited to hang with the other players' wives.

All in all, an awesome book. The cliches are true, as this is a book about courage and facing adversity, but it is also a plain old good baseball book, chronicling a very important moment and year in history, not just baseball history. I heartily recommend this book, as well as Eig's first book "Luckiest Man".

I am a born and raised Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodger fan. In fact my family moved from New York to Los Angeles the same year as the Dodgers. Before my brothers and I were born, my parents went to Ebbets field every weekend. I still have a box full of Brooklyn scorecards from those days. I was too young to see Jackie in his prime, but my Dad took me to some games in 1956 and I got to see Jackie and all the "Boys Of Summer"! I was a Brooklyn Dodger fanatic even at that age. Besides watching the Dodgers, I read everything available on them, and still do, 50 years later. I can unabashedly say I love Jackie Robinson. One of my many fond memories of my Dad, was him talking to me in front of our tiny black and white TV watching the Dodgers. He said "I have gone to hundreds of baseball games, and have seen 1,000 players, and the most exciting player I ever saw was Jackie Robinson!" "What Jackie did, was not displayed only in the statistics. Over the history of baseball, many players stole more bases. (Such as Ricky Henderson stealing bases with a 7 run lead in the 8th inning.) But no one unnerved every player on the team just by leading off the base and dancing on his pigeon toes, like Jackie. This book points out little, subtle, beneficial affects, on the whole Dodger team, that the average fan wouldn't see. The pitcher and catcher would be so nervous with Jackie dancing around on the base paths, that they would be afraid to throw curve balls, so the batters got better pitches to hit. Jackie stole home more times, than just about anyone except Ty Cobb. When we moved to Los Angeles there was a program on called the "Million Dollar Theatre", in which they showed the same movie on TV every day for a week. When the "Jackie Robinson Story" was on, I watched it every night, and literally memorized the dialogue. People forget that the Brooklyn Dodgers were the "original America's team". And that was because of Jackie. When Jackie broke the color line, he wasn't only fighting for the blacks, but he also was fighting for the Jews, and every minority that has been suppressed. When I watch old sports shows, when they talk about Jackie, I actually get tears in my eyes, because I know what he went through. I've read just about every meaningful book on Jackie and the Brooklyn Dodgers. I would rate this book as the 2nd best Jackie book of them all. (My personal favorite is "Great Time Coming".)

This book was interesting to me as compared to many others, because it not
only zoomed in on his first year as a player, but also went deeper into
his personal life during that first year. All the way to the size of a little room he and Rachel rented, along with their infant son. If you were to ask me, what, with all my knowledge, I have on Jackie's playing, was the biggest thing I learned from this book, I would say his affect, and dominance, in every facet of the game, that didn't appear in his batting average, in a losing cause as a rookie in the 1947 World Series against the hated and despised Yankees. This is a great book and I recommend it to everyone. P.S. In my opinion Jackie was the greatest all around athlete since Jim Thorpe. A lot of people forget that Jackie was the first 4-sport letterman at UCLA. He was an All American football player, the top scorer on UCLA's basketball team, a record setter in the long jump, and of course baseball, which was actually his weakest sport at that time. Duke Snider tells a story about when Duke was in high school in Compton California, and Jackie was playing for Pasadena City College (A junior college). Duke went to see Jackie play a baseball game. One inning Jackie hit a homerun, and then in his full baseball uniform, with spikes on, ran over to the track field between innings, won the broad jump, and ran back to the baseball field in time to play the next inning!

Before entering into Branch Rickey's radical experiment in integration, Jack Robinson was already a proven winner and fiery competitor. This is driven home in Eig's accounting of Robinson's youth in Pasadena, his athletic experiences at UCLA, and his wartime tour of duty as an Army officer whose beliefs were tested when he courageously made a stand against Jim Crow. Whereas many would not have believed Robinson a viable candidate to break baseball's race barrier, this book conveys the genuis of his selection and his immediate impact on the game and the nation. For the most part, we are all familiar with the Jackie Robinson story. What Eig does is take us through the infancy of this tenuous journey and provide us an inside look at the loneliness, isolation, and anxiety that Robinson had to endure in addition to the normal pressures of a rookie season in the Majors. An excellent work!

Seven years before the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, which illegalized segregation in the United States, one man's actions spoke much more loudly than nine men's words. With extraordinary courage, discipline and strength, Jackie Robinson broke organized baseball's unwritten, but tightly enforced, color line. This act, imbued with unique symbolism, required an athlete who would have to excel while enduring unimaginable loneliness, unspeakable viciousness and unprecedented pressure. Jonathan Eig's masterful "Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season" eloquently reminds us of the enormity of Robinson's determination, the scope of his impact and the enduring legacy his presence had on the American people. With "Opening Day," Eig, who earlier had written a moving account of Lou Gehrig, has moved himself to the forefront of baseball historians. He is an author whose tempered love of the game meshes with his abiding belief in the principles of American democracy.

Now memorialized every April 15, Robinson's entry into major league baseball was the culminating act devised by Brooklyn Dodger general manager Branch Rickey, equal parts social visionary and tight-fisted administrative visionary. Recognizing the vast, untapped talent laboring in the Negro baseball leagues, Rickey understood the advantages to be gained by tapping into such a rich, but shunned, pool of players. He also had enough of a social conscience to understand that America was entering a pivotal turning point in its own social history. World War II, fought in part to defeat a facist ideology permeated with racism, generated momentum in African-American demands for greater inclusion. Jackie Robinson was part of that seismic shift. As a soldier, he refused to abandon his seat on a segregated bus, precipitating a courts martial (in which he was ultimately exonerated). As a child, he came of age in Pasadena, California, driven to success by his proud mother and his own will to excel, despite the implicit prejudice of the dominant society. At college, he defiantly wore white shirts as a means of highlighting his dark skin. This was a man who very being radiated strength.

Jonathan Eig's research dutifully chronicles Robinson's remarkable first year with the Dodgers. The author presents, both anecdotally and statistically, sufficient evidence to buttress the thesis that it was Robinson's presence that caused a relatively average club to win the National League pennant and force the New York Yankees to a seventh game in the World Series. Jackie Robinson, limited by his agreement with Rickey, to eschew direct confrontation with his tormentors, expressed not only his talent, but his rage, on the diamond. His daring baserunning, his unflinching refusal to back down to racist taunting and his willingness to allow reluctant teammates to absorb the reality of forced integration reveal a man who not only transcended his sport, but who transcended his time.

Eig's graceful writing is complemented by his willingness to explore some of the myths that attached themselves to Robinson's story. In examining the alleged embrace between Pee Wee Reese and Robinson (as a sign of baseball solidarity and racial amity) in front of a hostile crowd in Cincinnati, the author explains the origins of the myth and gently presents evidence that explodes the cherished, but historically inaccurate, account. This same attention to detail and need to describe the "real" events of 1947 present themselves in Eig's lucent analysis of Dodger star Dixie Walker's initial antipathy towards Robinson.

"Opening Day" also includes numerous side stories about how Robinson's influence extended itself to spectators, many of whom experienced something akin to a religious revelation watching him play. My favorite was about a young man who talked his way in a carload of fans who drove some 330 miles from Virginia to Brooklyn to watch the Dodgers play a crucial series against the Saint Louis Cardinals. The grandson of slaves, this fan watched in horror as one of his favorite players, Enos "Country" Slaughter, deliberately spiked Robinson, a gashing so severe that the Brooklyn trainer later said, "Jackie was lucky he wasn't maimed." The young man pondered what he had witnessed for months and later concluded that what he had seen "was Robinson's greatest moment, in showing how he would rise over and over to be the person he was." The fan, Lawrence Douglas Wilder, who in 1990 become our nation's first Black man elected governor of a state, revered Robinson's example: "It's a matter of saying, `No matter not withstanding what you did, it doesn't prevent me from being the man I am.'"

We now live in a nation that adores celebrity and has difficulty assessing genuine greatness. Jonathan Eig's stirring "Opening Day" not only restores the reputation of Jackie Robinson; it instructs us as to what greatness truly is.

A complex, nuanced portrait of Jackie Robinson, told with stunning detail and insight into the first black man to play major league baseball in the 20th century. As an historical account, this book goes beyond myth and revisionist morality to create what feels like a genuine account of a complicated man in a complicated place. As a baseball book, it is wonderfully expansive on an important era with lots of legendary players. As a literary work, it is a top-notch narrative told in an elegant, rhythmic cadence. It also gets high marks for journalistic technique and style. If all writers of sport possessed Jon's rare combination of gifts, the genre would be a lot richer.

Eig's extensive research and thoughtful treatment of Jackie Robinson does not vary or question the general truth of his legend: Robinson played the game well under tremendous pressure with little or no support and demonstrated in the process the skill and courage that entitled blacks to equal opportunity. But Eig does add some new perspectives that make the legend far more interesting.

First is the general unpleasantness of Robinson. He's like Pete Rose in his burning desire to win at all costs and would rub some people the wrong way regardless of his color.

Second and perhaps most important is Eig's ability to introduce more subtlety into the story. Eig destroys the legend of Pee Wee Reese publicly encouraging Robinson on the field in the face of racial abuse. That did not happen, at least not in 1947. Robinson is utterly alone in 1947 and has to prove himself to his teammates. Branca is the only guy to make a point of shaking his hand when he first appears, which adds to Branca's own legend as a man of character, but even Branca essentially ignores him for much of the season. Some of this is racial, of course. But some of it is the culture of baseball: a rookie must prove himself.

Robinson's ability to peform in these circumstances, under the most tremendous pressure possible, adds to his legend and makes his 1947 season perhaps the most admirable of all seasons. Eig is also good at introducing subtlety into the legends surrounding Robinson's oppressors. There is some rumbling on the team, but that quickly dissipates. Most interesting is the role of star player Dixie Walker. Walker felt compelled by his southern roots, and by his desire not to have his business punished in the south, to make a point of objecting and asking for a trade. But thereafter, he drops the protest. The problem for Robinson was not simply the obvious bigotry, but his freeze-out by the rest of his team until he could prove himself under the most trying of circumstances. Walker may have given Robinson a few batting tips and may have dropped his trade demands, but neither he nor anyone else took Robinson under his wing. Even in baseball's demanding culture of ritualized abuse of rookies, a rookie will eventually be taken under someone's wing. Robinson did not have that benefit.

The protests of other teams has also been exaggerated. It appears that there were some murmuring on the Cardinals to try to boycott Dodger games, but that fizzled before it started. The Phillies were grossly racist in their bench jockeying, but backed off early in the season. The Yankees in the 1947 World Series had a few nasty bench jockeys.

What emerges from all this is the pain of the gross racism aggravated by the agonizing loneliness of Robinson as he has to endure everything and prove himself. Eig convincingly shows that by the end of 1947, Robinson succeeded in proving himself and was the MVP of this team. Only then was he accepted by Pee Wee Reese, the team's captain.

All of which demonstrates Branch Rickey's wisdom in choosing Robinson as the man to break the color barrier. Robinson had mental toughness and competitive fire. The rap on black athletes was that they were not mentally tough, and Robinson was exactly the right guy to disprove that myth. Choosing a more passive personality would not have made the point, and choosing a less disciplined soul who would have got into physical fights in 1947 would not have worked either. But it is interesting to learn how Robinson sometimes crossed the line (such as spiking Rizzuto in the 1947 Series) and how close Robinson came to losing it.

Robinson emerges as a complex and truly great man in this narrative. This is an excellent book that I highly recommend.

I found Mr. Eig's book very well written and felt it was well researched, though not until I read the `Acknowledgments' section did I realize how much leg work he put into "Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season." He interviewed Rachel Robinson three times and that background is readily apparent throughout the book. She tells how Jack felt about certain situations, which sometimes were in complete contrast to published reports that historians rely on when writing these types of books. (Interesting also that Mr. Eig's research uncovered the fact that Mr. Robinson did not like to go by the name `Jackie' but preferred `Jack.' And my recollection is that every time I've heard Rachel Robinson talk about her husband, she always referred to him as `Jack.') Mr. Eig also interviewed some of the principals written about in the book like Ralph Branca, Carl Erskine, and Joe Garagiola, as well as the Robinson children and Branch Rickey III.

The book did a fine job of painting a picture of the United States circa 1947 and with that perspective, made the reality of Jack Robinson's first major league season much more believable. I'm in my 40s and what I learned about Jack Robinson's first season - from watching baseball games first on Saturdays on NBC and then later on cable, was much more passive than what was presented in this book. However, as much as I would have wanted to stay comfortable with my pastel-colored memories, I do believe this presentation in part because of my own life experience, but also because of the copious research Mr. Eig invested in the writing.

I would recommend this book for any baseball fan, as well as for people interested in the history of civil rights and the long, not-so-steady growth and improvement of equal rights for African Americans in the United States.

On April 15, 1947, a young Holocaust survivor who had arrived in New York just 14 weeks before, attended his first baseball game at Ebbets Field. That young man was my Dad. Just having arrived in the United States and unfamiliar with the country's social ferment, he was unaware at the time that he was present at an historic moment---Jackie Robinson's Major League debut.

In OPENING DAY, Jonathan Eig presents us not only with an account of April 15, 1947, but of the months both preceding and following it. Eig wisely and honestly paints us a portrait of Jackie Robinson not as the infinitely patient hero of the film THE JACKIE ROBINSON STORY (in which he played himself), but as a mercurial and talented young man who restrained his natural impulses toward bellicosity in order to bring down the walls of the segregationist citadel of white America.

In a world which had not yet experienced Brown v. Board of Ed., Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., CORE, Little Rock, or the Voting Rights Act, Robinson crossed the white sky like a dark comet. Promoted to the Majors by Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman, Robinson not only broke the color barrier, but excelled at his craft, leading the National League in hitting that year.

Eig examines (but does not utterly explode) some of the urban legends surrounding Robinson, in particular his supposed Christlike passivity in the face of discrimination. Robinson was a warrior by nature, and if he couldn't fight back directly due to his circumstances, he fought back indirectly by being an aggressive and accomplished player on the field.

An intelligent, articulate, gifted and deservedly angry young black man, Robinson had faced down a Court Martial while in the Army for arguing with a segregationist officer who called him "boy." To turn the other cheek was not in his character, and he did not suffer fools gladly, nor did he suffer in silence. Nonetheless, he kept his promise to Branch Rickey not to respond to the inevitable racial provocation that greeted his appearance on the field.

For the first several months of that baseball season, Robinson was the only black player, not only on the Brooklyn Dodgers squad, but in Major League Baseball. As such, he was a magnet for abuse both from fans and many fellow players. Shouts of "N****r!," "Shoeshine!," "Sambo!," "Rastus!," "Watermelon!" and other such bon mots flowed freely; beanballs were a common occurrence. Hate mail was received by the bucketload. Petitions were circulated (even within the Dodger organization) to exclude Robinson from baseball. A general strike was threatened.

Fortunately, Major League Baseball had more farseeing men than bigots at the helm. Diamond-in-the-rough Dodger Manager Leo Durocher uttered his immortal words about a zebra one day in the clubhouse, and stopped the griping. His successor, Burt Shotton, a quieter man, treated Robinson unexceptionally.

Dodger Captain Pee Wee Reese, a Kentuckian born to segregation, and the most influential man on the team, refused to sign any petitions, and the revolt in the ranks collapsed as a result. Eig cannot find any 1947 documentation of Pee Wee's physical embrace of Robinson on the field in the face of a catcalling audience, an incident now immortalized in bronze at the Brooklyn Cyclones' Keyspan Park in Brooklyn, but more important than the arm over the shoulder was the popular Reese's treatment of Robinson as just "any other player," which encouraged his acceptance by teammates, fans, and other players.

Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick announced that any team refusing to play with Robinson would be suspended en masse. Robinson did use his position as a bully pulpit by speaking honestly but not with hostility about his rightful place in the game. And Brooklyn---an inherently tolerant blue-collar hodgepodge palimpsest of races, nationalities, ethnicities, and languages---embraced Robinson unreservedly just as soon he demonstrated he could play the game. Fans of all colors in other cities supported Robinson, and his legitimate fan mail was enormous.

Given the later volatility of opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, Robinson's acceptance as an everyday teammate seems remarkably free of incident. In fact, the relative calm of Robinson's admission to the ranks, and the quick signing of black players by several other teams as well as the Brooklyn Dodgers, probably did much to energize the nascent Civil Rights movement to take on Jim Crow everywhere. By so being, Jackie Robinson was the belleweather of a new age, an age whose Opening Day was April 15, 1947.

Over 30+ years, I've read *many* books on baseball. This is one of the very best.

It is rare anymore that I learn many new things from baseball books. This book, however, contained a number of interesting and new-to-me details about Jackie Robinson and the story of his integration of baseball. Besides those bonuses, the book is well-written and honest. This story is very important not only to baseball, but to the U.S. civil rights movement. It is a risk to write about such important events because much has already been written about them, and you can't make missteps--as an author you have to be careful with this emotional story and with the many other versions that have appeared in the 60 years since the event. Mr. Eig does a masterful job and comes through with a book that will remain on my bookshelf (no selling to the used bookstore on this one!)

This is a real treasure and I look forward to reading more of Jonathan Eig's work.