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Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Barrier

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From Black Athlete Sports Netwrok
This N' That with Tony Mack:
Book Review: Rickey and Robinson

-"It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out where the strong man stumbles, nor where the doer of deeds could have done better. On the contrary, the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena -- whose vision is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives vallantly; who errs and comes up again and again; who knows the greatest devotions; the great enthusiasms; who at best knows in the end of the triumph of high achievement."

-- Theodore Roosevelt

Harvey Frommer lived in Brooklyn that summer in 1947 when two men, one black and one white, came together to right a long overdue wrong in the sport of baseball. Just two years removed from the end of World War II, the climate in America and the world had taken on a major change.

More than 50 years later, Frommer gives us a brief snapshot of the life and times of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey. Blending exclusive interviews with Rachel Robinson, Mack Robinson (Jackie's brother), Hall of Famers Monte Irvin, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Ralph Kiner, and others, Frommer evokes the lives of Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey and heralded baseball player Jackie Robinson to describe how they worked to shatter baseball's color line.

"Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Barrier" gives a vivid account on the lives of these two men and how their collaboration helped bring change to the game of baseball and to society. "Many Blacks had just returned home from the war, including Jackie", said Frommer. "They had just served their country in a war and were tired of being considered second-class citizens."

In an excerpt from the book, Frommer talks about that day in April when Robinson played his first game in Brooklyn:

"With the blue number 42 on the back of his Brooklyn Dodger home uniform, Jackie Robinson took his place at first base at Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947. It was 32 years to the day since Jack Johnson had become the first black heavyweight champion of the world."

Writer James Baldwin had noted: "Back in the thirties and forties, Joe Louis was the only hero that we ever had. When he won a fight, everybody in Harlem was up in heaven. On that April day the large contingent of blacks in the crowd of nearly 40, 000 had another hero to be "up in heaven" about, another hero to stand beside Joe Louis."

Frommer's book also examines the decisions and oppositions that existed during a time when black athletes underwent the kind of scrutiny that would be embarrassing to this day. In many instances, we can still see them existing in a subtle fashion now, but it showed how Robinson had to be the first to endure such indignities.

"Rickey and Robinson" is a dual biography tracing the convergence of the lives of two of baseball's most influential individuals in a special moment in sports and cultural history.

For anyone that wants to learn and grasp the period that these two men lived, this book does an excellent job of weaving that story.

I highly recommend that you check this book out.

Pinstripe Press
Rickey and Robinson
The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Barrier
Blending exclusive interviews with Rachel Robinson, Mack Robinson (Jackie's brother), Hall of Famers Monte Irvin, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Ralph Kiner and others,
- The Pinstripe Press

Celebrated author Harvey Frommer evokes the lives of Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey and heralded baseball player Jackie Robinson to describe how they worked together to shatter baseball's color line.
"This book clearly illustrates the elegance and class that BOTH men showed on the field and off. Frommer has provided a fresh perspective and a testament to overcoming adversity in the face of ignorance. Rickey and Robinson is a must read for hardcore baseball fans everywhere."

From Black Athlete Sports Netwrok
This N' That with Tony Mack:
Book Review: Rickey and Robinson

-"It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out where the strong man stumbles, nor where the doer of deeds could have done better. On the contrary, the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena -- whose vision is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives vallantly; who errs and comes up again and again; who knows the greatest devotions; the great enthusiasms; who at best knows in the end of the triumph of high achievement."

-- Theodore Roosevelt

Harvey Frommer lived in Brooklyn that summer in 1947 when two men, one black and one white, came together to right a long overdue wrong in the sport of baseball. Just two years removed from the end of World War II, the climate in America and the world had taken on a major change.

More than 50 years later, Frommer gives us a brief snapshot of the life and times of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey. Blending exclusive interviews with Rachel Robinson, Mack Robinson (Jackie's brother), Hall of Famers Monte Irvin, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Ralph Kiner, and others, Frommer evokes the lives of Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey and heralded baseball player Jackie Robinson to describe how they worked to shatter baseball's color line.

"Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Barrier" gives a vivid account on the lives of these two men and how their collaboration helped bring change to the game of baseball and to society. "Many Blacks had just returned home from the war, including Jackie", said Frommer. "They had just served their country in a war and were tired of being considered second-class citizens."

In an excerpt from the book, Frommer talks about that day in April when Robinson played his first game in Brooklyn:

"With the blue number 42 on the back of his Brooklyn Dodger home uniform, Jackie Robinson took his place at first base at Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947. It was 32 years to the day since Jack Johnson had become the first black heavyweight champion of the world."

Writer James Baldwin had noted: "Back in the thirties and forties, Joe Louis was the only hero that we ever had. When he won a fight, everybody in Harlem was up in heaven. On that April day the large contingent of blacks in the crowd of nearly 40, 000 had another hero to be "up in heaven" about, another hero to stand beside Joe Louis."

Frommer's book also examines the decisions and oppositions that existed during a time when black athletes underwent the kind of scrutiny that would be embarrassing to this day. In many instances, we can still see them existing in a subtle fashion now, but it showed how Robinson had to be the first to endure such indignities.

"Rickey and Robinson" is a dual biography tracing the convergence of the lives of two of baseball's most influential individuals in a special moment in sports and cultural history.

For anyone that wants to learn and grasp the period that these two men lived, this book does an excellent job of weaving that story.

I highly recommend that you check this book out.

This year has been very, very good to baseball books. Harvey Frommer: "Rickey and Robinson" (Taylor paperback). This recent re-release of Frommer's 1982 hardcover shows it to have lost none of its relevance. The book tells the story of Jackie Robinson's breaking of baseball's color line, and the important role played by Dodger general manager Branch Rickey in getting Robinson into the majors. -

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"Just a terrific book. It fills in so many of the blanks about the story of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey. It's like a history lesson. And the intro by Monte Irvin puts it over the top." - - -Billy Sample, MLB Radio
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The Story Of Rickey And Robinson
by Russ Cohen
BASEBALLOLOGY.COM

If you have never heard of Branch Rickey or Jackie Robinson, boy do I have a book for you, it's called Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Barrier! Jackie Robinson was one of the greatest multi-sport athletes to ever walk the earth and Branch Rickey was the guy with the guts that gave Robinson his chance to shine, it's a truly amazing story.

Rickey was a lawyer with a rich history that will amaze you in this book. As always author Harvey Frommer goes into tremendous detail to shed even more light on a great story!

Robinson was a true American hero and this book talks to all the right people to give you a feel of how Jackie felt and was feeling during his playing career. The book also points out how he was a civil right's activist as well.

The book talks a lot about the Negro Leagues and mentions even more players that you may not have heard of that unfortunately never made it to the bigs. Anytime you can read about Josh Gibson, Roy Campanella and Satchel Paige you are in for a fun time.

Jackie died a young man at the age of fifty-three-years of age. This great man had to endure more stress, on and off the field, than most people could imagine. His funeral had 2,500 mourners and when you see the names you will see the type of respect that Robinson garnered.

The author does a great job of keeping the final chapter of Robinson's life as upbeat as possible. It was sad but there was so much good to reflect on and the book did that. The afterword was a nice little story and the boxscore of Robinson's first game along with Rickey's player and managerial record are priceless.

Buy this book now

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Professional athletes are probably no more ignorant of history than the rest of us, but there was something especially disturbing about the number of modern players who, in 1997, during the fiftieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the baseball color line, revealed that they didn't know who he was. Pollsters probably didn't ask, but it's likely even fewer would have known who Branch Rickey was. That black players in particular, whose careers follow the path that these men blazed, do not comprehend and honor the debt is most troubling of all. Anyone wishing to remedy their own lack of knowledge, and even those who think they already know the whole story, will find Harvey Frommer's Rickey and Robinson an invaluable resource and a truly moving read.

Mr. Frommer had the novel idea of structuring the book as parallel biographies of the two men, their stories overlapping and lives knitting together for that remarkable period of years when they, almost by themselves, integrated major league baseball. Jackie Robinson's is the better known tale, from UCLA to the Army to the Negro Leagues to the Dodgers' minor leagues and then to Brooklyn, with a significant career in business and politics afterwards. And most baseball fans will be familiar with Branch Rickey's reputation as an innovator, his most lasting contributions, besides integration, to the game including the batting helmet and the organized minor league farm system. Met fans too will recall Ralph Kiner's stories about how tight-fisted and patronizing (in both the positive and negative senses) Rickey was with his players. But Mr. Frommer gives us a full picture of the man, of his religious background (which seems to have played no small part in his willingness to be a racial pioneer), his keen mind for the game and for business, and his endless maneuvering to improve his teams. Each man led a life full enough to support a biography of his own. Here we get both and they're fascinating.

But the event that defined their lives was the meeting on August 28, 1945, at Brooklyn Dodgers headquarters, between Rickey and Robinson. It's astonishing to realize that this first time the men ever met, Branch Rickey asked Jackie Robinson to take on the daunting task of being the first black man to play organized white baseball (at least since the color bar had been erected decades earlier). But Rickey had made a true project of the whole idea, had scouted the Negro Leagues and the personal backgrounds of the prospective players thoroughly, and he knew Robinson was uniquely well-suited-- by his ability, his intelligence, his education, his relatively middle-class California upbringing, and his temperament, desire, and will--to bear the burdens. And so "The Meeting" was not just a get acquainted session, but an opportunity for Rickey to probe and to prepare Robinson, even to the point of demonstrating the kind of taunts he should expect to hear, before offering him the bittersweet role of, as he put it: "carrying the reputation of a race on your shoulders."

The whole book is enjoyable but it is this chapter that really sings. The Meeting has been the subject of books, film, stageplay, and more, but it's never been told better than here, with high drama and a sense of history, but also with an immediacy that makes the reader feel like he's a fly on the wall in Rickey's office those sixty years ago. No one can understand what happened in baseball and in American society over those sixty years without knowing the story of Rickey and Robinson and, Mr. Frommer having given us such a rewarding and readable book about the men and their noble achievement, there's no excuse for not knowing it.
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AT HOME PLATE
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We all have some preconceptions of certain people, places or things and in no way am I immune to this failing. In starting this book I had a very limited knowledge of who both Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey really were. What I had were the stereotypes that other writers had projected and the history that these men are noted for. Basically Jackie Robinson was the great black player who shattered baseball's color barrier and later became a very outspoken black activist. Branch Rickey was one of the greatest general managers that baseball has ever seen - but with a reputation for being a skinflint to the point that players hated dealing with him.

Now both of those things were true, but I had no idea who the men behind these accomplishments really were and how they earned their reputations and their places in the history books. In reality this book is a dual biography of two men whose lives intersected, at the right moment, at the right point in time for them to make history together. History often requires all of the same ingredients as a murder; it requires motive, opportunity, means and players brave enough to make them happen.

Rickey had already made history and as Frommer reveals was perhaps the greatest judge of player talent who ever had his hands in the game. He also knew how to beat the system, how to tweak it, and even how to invent it - as he did when he created the modern farm system used in baseball today. He also had a fire to win, and to win at all costs, no matter how many boundaries he had to cross.

Rickey never claimed credit for breaking the color barrier, although it was something he definitely felt needed to be done and something he deliberately set out to do. However Rickey always admitted that he was not doing it just for altruistic purposes but he was doing it because black ballplayers were good and were an untapped source of players which could help Rickey build yet another winning team.

He spent a huge amount of time looking for the right man to break the color barrier. It took Rickey and his scouts months to come up with a list of three candidates who could handle the job on the diamond and it took the even longer to learn about the men off the field. In the end it came down to Robinson and Roy Campenella. Rickey made his decision after interviewing them both.

Robinson was atypical of the majority of players from the Negro leagues. He was college educated, grew up in a neighborhood of mixed ethnicity where he was accepted. That he also had a fire to win and to be the best is what matched the person that was in the heart of Branch Rickey. It was the heart of a man who would do whatever it took to prove himself the best - and that meant dealing with the hatred and prejudice, which would be used to show that black men were not ready to play in the major leagues.

Jackie had that fire and endured far more than many other men could have. In fact, several Negro leaguers who joined him that inaugural season on the Dodgers farm team in Montreal could not take the pressure and quit. Through it all Robinson persevered, turning when in doubt to the council and advice of Branch Rickey who Robinson throughout his life respected.

Because of this, Jackie was able to swallow the insults, the pain, the prejudice, hate, and his own bitterness - at least until it was clear that the game had truly been integrated and could never go back. Then he became very vocal, outspoken and to many minds militant and antagonistic. It was that desire for betterment, not just of himself, but also for his race that drove him - despite the resentment of many black men who did not want Robinson speaking for them.

Still Branch and Jackie took those initial steps together and they admired and respected each other from the day they first met. They made history happen and while each may have had their own motives and walked their own path afterwards - the story of how their lives came to intersect and their need for each other is a fascinating one.

This is a book any baseball fan will enjoy although it's not as much about the action on the field as it is about what went on off the field and in the minds of the two men themselves.

WTN Radio - Nashville
A great story told in a great book. You can re-live all the details leading up to the breaking of the color line and the
moving story of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey. Harvey Frommer is a top baseball historian, and he has written a very important and enjoyable book.

The Pinstripe Press

"This book clearly illustrates the elegance and class that BOTH men showed on the field and off. Frommer has provided a fresh perspective and a testament to overcoming adversity in the face of ignorance. Rickey and Robinson is a must read for hardcore baseball fans everywhere." -