It's World Series season, and lately, I've been thinking a lot about Jackie Robinson. I'll tell you right off the bat, pun intended, that I've cribbed a lot of Jackie Robinson's biographical material from Wikipedia. And I'll tell you something else: This post isn't really about Jackie Robinson. Or, at least, it's not just about Jackie. It's about many of my other heroes, too, -- it's about Frederick and Harriet. It's about SoJo and Martin. And if you think about it, it's about Barack. But I'm starting with Jackie because I think most of us at DKos will see the point if I do. Round the bases with me...
I started thinking about the baseball of politics because of two anniversaries, both of which belong to Jackie Robinson -- a man who certainly understood the politics of baseball. Sixty years ago, in 1947, Jackie made the jump from the Negro Leagues to the Major Leagues. He died 35 years ago in the middle of World Series season, on October 24, 1972. Nobody disputes -- or can dispute -- that he was a great ballplayer. I want to make a point about Jackie, about what he has to do with what I'm calling "the baseball of politics."
I won't go through Jackie's high school and college sports career, which you can read about in his Wiki; all that needs to be said was that he was a hellacious athlete, an outstanding player in tennis, basketball, football and baseball. (His brother Matthew was no slouch either; "Mack" Robinson won the silver medal in the 200 meter run at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, finishing just .04 seconds behind Jesse Owens). After college, in 1942, Jackie joined the "Black Panthers," the U.S. Army's all-black 761st Tank Battalion. Fully eleven years before Rosa Parks had had enough, while still in the Army, Jackie had his own issues with the back of the bus.
From the Wiki:
[H]e was ordered by a white bus driver to move to the back of the segregated bus, which he refused to do. Robinson was then arrested by MPs and transferred to the 758th Battalion by the base commander, because his white battalion commander rejected the court-martial charges against Robinson. While the commander of the 758th consented to the insubordination charges, Robinson was later acquitted by a white military jury. Shortly thereafter, he received an honorable discharge.
Needless to say, the bus stayed segregated, and for that matter, the Army stayed segregated.
When I think of this incident, I think of Frederick Douglass' early years, and Harriet Tubman's, and Sojourner Truth's. Each of them suffered savage beatings by their owners. They knew what was wrong. They knew they couldn't live with what was wrong. They acted against what was wrong. But until they approached the problem of slavery and racism with a different mindset, in a different way, they just got the living daylights beaten out of themselves, with not much else to show for their actions. It seems to me that something like this change of mindset must have occurred to Jackie Robinson.
Again, from the Wiki:
In the late 1940s, Branch Rickey was club president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Dodgers began to scout Robinson who had joined the Negro League Kansas City Monarchs in 1945 after his discharge from the Army. He played shortstop and had a batting average of .387. Rickey eventually selected him from a list of promising African-American players. Robinson became the first player in fifty-seven years to break the Baseball color line.
Rickey reminded Robinson that he would face tremendous racial animus, and insisted that he not take the bait and react angrily. Robinson was aghast: "Do you want a player afraid to fight back?" Rickey replied that he needed a [black] player "with the guts not to fight back." Robinson agreed to abide by Rickey's terms for his first year.
In 1946, the Dodgers assigned Jackie Robinson to the Montreal Royals.... Because of Jackie's play in 1946, the Dodgers called him up to play for the major league club in 1947. Robinson made his Major League debut on April 15, 1947, playing first base when he went 0 for 3 against the Boston Braves.
Throughout the season, Robinson experienced harassment at the hands of both players and fans. He was verbally abused by both his own teammates and by members of opposing teams. Some Dodger players insinuated they would sit out rather than play alongside Robinson....
On April 22, 1947, during a game between the Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies, Phillies players called Jackie a "nigger" from their dugout, and yelled that he should "go back to the cotton fields." Rickey would later recall that the Phillies' manager, Ben Chapman, "did more than anybody to unite the Dodgers. When he poured out that string of unconscionable abuse, he solidified and united thirty men."
Branch Rickey may be right in saying that Ben Chapman united the Dodgers. But Robinson himself, through the most rigorous self-restraint, united America. It goes without saying that it was "unfair" for Rickey to impose on a grown man and a proud man the requirement that in order to integrate major league ball, he must swallow insults and abuse, that he must not react even to the ugliest and most extreme provocations. But it worked.
It worked because, I imagine, some white Americans saw the self-restraint and were reassured by it. They recognized the provocations while saying to themselves, "he's not a threatening person," and they could allow Robinson a place in the majors because of it. Perhaps other white Americans saw his self-restraint and thought of it as noble, and 'rewarded' his nobility by 'allowing' him to remain with the Dodgers -- by not withdrawing support for the team. And I imagine yet other white Americans failed to register that Robinson was being self-restraining at all. To these people, Robinson was just acting humbly as all blacks did who 'knew their place,' and as long as he continued to be humble, they could come to accept --albeit reluctantly -- an expansion of 'his place.'
But I have to think that the main reason Jackie was able to live with such self-restraint without losing his dignity was because his own people -- black people -- recognized exactly what he was doing, and supported him. Black people were familiar with every nuance of his unthreatening demeanor, his silence, his refusal to rise to the race-baiting. Black people were familiar with every nuance of his demeanor because it was ever thus. It still is.
When Frederick Douglass got invited to the White House, black people of his day did not see him as an Uncle Tom, or as a capitulator, or as a triangulator. Douglass was polite and deferential because that's what he had to be in order to get whites to listen to him. He got them to listen without ever compromising his principles.
Harriet Tubman was polite and non-confrontational with her cheating and insulting husband, a freed man who -- had she riled him -- would have turned her in as an escaped slave. She bore the pain of his infidelity, swallowed his insults, and never once let him deter her from her mission as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
When Sojourner Truth's master reneged on his promise to free her, with the excuse that, because of an injury, she wasn't laboring hard enough for him, she worked until her own conscience said they were even, and then she escaped to freedom. The period during which she continued to work was not about his power, it was about her pride; she never compromised who she knew she was.
Forty years ago, the kind of thinking that mistook self-restraint for self-abnegation would have put a pitcher on the mound who thought ..."this boy doesn't stand up, this boy doesn't fight back ... this boy is someone I can intimidate." Yeah, right. Forty years ago, that ball was outta the park so far and so fast it made the pitcher's head spin. Jackie made it to the majors and stayed there, thrived there, kicked butt and took names there, because he never, ever mistook self-restraint for self-abnegation.
I said at the beginning that this diary was partly about Obama, and it is. There are lots of people -- lots of people on this site and in the rest of America -- who think Barack Obama pulls his swings, bunts too much, hits too many singles. They're frustrated, and they're beginning to doubt whether he deserves their support. He's hitting singles and they want to see him hit the long ball. They want the World Series king; they're want Mr. October. For them, Barack is too safe, too non-confrontational, doesn't have the fire in his belly for stand-up controversy. Well, don't you believe it. Barack Obama knows Frederick Douglass. He knows Harriet Tubman. He knows Sojourner Truth.
In 1962, Jackie was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot, with more than 77% of the vote. Maybe Barack Obama will never match those numbers. Still ...watch out, you who think he's too safe and too soft, 'cause he knows Jackie Robinson and he knows himself. He knows the baseball of politics. He's not Mr. October. He's Mr. November.