Robinson's First 10 Days in MLB Were No Cakewalk

The front page of the morning’s New York Times contained stories on U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall’s plan to keep Germany disarmed, Soviet Prime minister Joseph Stalin’s conversation with presidential candidate Harold Stassen, talks to end a week-long national strike of telephone workers, and news of a local smallpox outbreak. It did not, however, report that history was about to be made at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. The only time baseball had broken through to the front page of the Gray Lady that month was on April 10, when commissioner Happy Chandler suspended Brooklyn Dodgers manger Leo Durocher for one year due for “the accumulation of unpleasant incidents detrimental to baseball.”