Readorama: Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson changed America

Roger Kahn’s most recent book — and probably his last — is a lot like his most celebrated book.

In “Rickey & Robinson,” Kahn details how Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey resolved to sign Jackie Robinson and integrate Major League Baseball after World War II.

It’s the same story Kahn told in his 1972 best-seller, “The Boys of Summer,” and then returned to in several subsequent books. But it’s still a great story, arguably one of the most crucial of the last century, especially as told by Kahn, now 87.

The heroic achievement of Rickey and Robinson has grown more so in the opinion of some historians. They emphasize how it wasn’t the federal government that served as an agent of social change for mainstream America, but a fearless athlete and his boss.

Robinson debuted for the Dodgers on April 15, 1947, more than a year before President Harry Truman issued his executive order desegregating the nation’s military.

But Kahn reminds readers that Rickey, a lawyer, also felt emboldened by the March 1945 signing of the Ives-Quinn law that forbade job discrimination in New York state. Rickey first met with Robinson, then playing for the Kansas City Monarchs, the following August.

“When Jackie came up to the Dodgers in 1947, there were no blacks on the Supreme Court and none in the Senate,” Kahn said recently from his home in upstate New York.

“The country was segregated.”

One vivid device Kahn uses to convey the prevailing conditions of the time is the Pullman railroad cars by which the Dodgers then traveled. The athletes and writers who enjoyed the integrated accommodations inside the car then would step out to confront the rigid segregation enforced at every stop during post-spring-training barnstorming trips.

“To Jacksonville, to Mobile, to New Orleans and then up through Alabama, Virginia and Maryland, the country was sharply segregated,” Kahn said.

“In Mobile, the cheering was ethnic. If Robinson took a strike, the white fans cheered. If the next pitch was called a ball, the black fans who were standing behind a rope in center field cheered.

“We got a good look at America.”

Some material appears in “Rickey & Robinson” for the first time. There’s the description of how Rickey, a devout Methodist, reported to the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn sometime in 1945.

Rickey told the Congregationalist pastor that he didn’t want to talk. He simply wanted to ponder the consequences of signing Robinson while inside a holy space. He then paced back and forth inside the office before pounding the pastor’s desk and telling him of his decision.

But if Rickey considered himself doing God’s work, Kahn also reminds readers of Rickey’s profound sense of thrift. He didn’t compensate the Monarchs when he signed Robinson. Rickey didn’t consider some of the Negro Leagues operators as legitimate, Kahn said.

The athletes themselves often fared little better.

“(Baseball Hall of Fame member) Enos Slaughter once said that Rickey had a distaste for money in other people’s wallets,” Kahn said.

“Rickey & Robinson” appeared last September, when many Kansas City Royals fans may have been distracted.

That brings us to Alex Gordon. Should he have tried to score in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series?

“I like aggressive play, which was Robinson’s forte,” Kahn said. “Aggressive running can force errors.”

Still, Kahn said, he knows the pain of Royals fans.

He remembers the last day of the 1950 regular season, when the Dodgers were battling the Philadelphia Phillies for the National League pennant.

In the ninth inning, Cal Abrams of the Dodgers tried to score the winning run from second base on a single but failed to notice, Kahn said, how Philadelphia center fielder Richie Ashburn had been sneaking in to back up a possible throw on a bunt play.

Ashburn grabbed the hit on one hop and threw home, where Philadelphia catcher Stan Lopata tagged Abrams out standing.

“Abrams was out by 10 feet,” Kahn said. “Brooklyn debated that for 20 years.”

To learn more about “Rickey & Robinson,” go to RodaleBooks.com.

This story was originally published March 13, 2015 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Readorama: Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson changed America."