Curse of Bambino Really Curse of Jackie?
Hello, it’s April 16. In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon attack, the hearts of Yankee fans went out to Red Sox fans, conservative Republicans prayed for liberal Democrats, and Americans across the nation expressed pride in New England’s patriots, past and present
Jack Roosevelt Robinson made his debut on April 15, 1947, a historic breakthrough celebrated yesterday in major league parks around the country. The spirit of the day was captured by baseball fans in Oakland, who altered their usual chant of “Let’s go, A’s!” to “Let’s go, Boston!” And at Yankee Stadium, where "Sweet Caroline," the Red Sox's signature song, was playing at the (New) House That Ruth Built.
And so it went. Yet today’s date also reminds us that baseball’s color barrier might have fallen sooner, and in Boston, not Brooklyn. On this day in 1945, Jackie Robinson and two other black players were given a tryout at Fenway Park.
As World War II wound to a close, and the nation began to anticipate that stars such as Ted Williams, Dom and Joe DiMaggio, and Warren Spahn would soon be exchanging their military uniforms for the uniform of their teams, some Americans began to speak out about a source of national embarrassment: the nation that had fought lunatic racist regimes in Europe and the Pacific was itself racially segregated.
Among those mustering out of military service in 1945 were black ballplayers who had been consigned to the Negro Leagues because the major leagues were still all-white. One of the voices raised in opposition to this shameful situation was that of a Boston city councilman named Isadore Muchnick.
Like many locales, Beantown had “blue laws on the books back then – regulations against selling, among other things, beer on Sundays. Baseball had long been exempted by local authorities from the prohibition regarding beer, but Muchnick was making noise about rescinding the exceptions unless the two local teams, the Boston Braves and the Boston Red Sox, agreed to integrate.
“I cannot understand," Muchnick had written to Red Sox general manager Eddie Collins in late 1944, "how baseball, which claims to be the national sport and which receives special favors and dispensation…from the federal government, can continue a pre-Civil War attitude toward American citizens because of the color of their skins.”
Collins’ disingenuous response was that in the 12 years he’d been associated with the Red Sox, “We have never had a single request for a tryout by a colored applicant.” Collins went on to say that he was willing to sign a qualified black ballplayer, but that they didn’t wish to leave the bosom of the Negro Leagues for an uncertain fate in the major leagues.
Reading this exchange, crusading African-American journalist Wendell Smith got in touch with Muchnick and told him it was nonsense. Moreover, Smith said he could personally deliver several Negro League stars for a tryout. Caught in a web of lies – not his, really, but the central dishonesty of Jim Crow – Collins replied that if Smith’s newspaper paid for their transportation to Boston, he’d give the players a look.
This bluff was called. On April 16, 1945, Sam Jethroe of the Cleveland Buckeyes and Marvin Williams of the Philadelphia Stars donned their spikes and walked out onto the storied field at Fenway. They were joined by a third player who had been a college football star at UCLA and was a recently discharged U.S. Army lieutenant. Twenty-six years old, he’d been playing shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs. His name was Jack Robinson.
All three looked like ballplayers, although at 20, Marvin Williams was probably too young to make the Sox’ roster that season. Jackie Robinson was another matter. When asked to hit, Robinson began rattling line drives off the “Monster” with such authority that it sounded like machine gun fire.
“What a ballplayer!” muttered 78-year-old Red Sox scout Hugh Duffy. “Too bad he’s the wrong color.”
“If we had that guy on our club,” Sox manager Joe Cronin confided to Muchnick, “we’d be a world-beater.”
For many years, as the Red Sox amassed a dismal record of futility, Bostonians drolly adopted a notion that they’d been “cursed” by a previous Red Sox owner’s decision to trade Babe Ruth for cash in 1919.
But some discerning observers, among them NPR’s Scott Simon, have wondered if The Curse was actually of a later derivation. In mid-century, the Red Sox brass did not have the imagination, as Branch Rickey did, to see that the “wrong color” mindset could be broken.
“I’ve come to see their hardships after 1945 as a blight they brought on themselves,” Simon wrote. “Boston barred the door to Jackie Robinson in the spring of 1945, when the team and the city had an exceptional, indispensable chance to advance themselves and enrich the country.”
The Curse, whatever its cause, was finally lifted in 2004 when the Red Sox won the World Series. Ballplayers are more superstitious than political writers, but I would note that 2004 was also the year that a lefthander out of Hawaii, by way of Illinois, was given a tryout at a Boston convention hall then called the Fleet Center.
Barack Obama’s debut was as auspicious as Jackie Robinson’s had been. This time, the city, his political party, and the nation was ready for change. Four years later, Obama was elected president of the United States.
