The Boys of Summer Read online

  “Can you?”

  “Man says I got to, I got to. Hey, you know what worries me? That sophomore jinx. I’m not gonna let that bother me.”

  I rechecked with Dressen. He knew about Black’s malformity. But he remembered another pitcher who had lost a halfinch off his middle finger. “Threw the livest goddamn fast ball you ever saw.”

  “Have you talked to Cox yet?”

  “What’s that?”—whistle—“Yup. Whatcha doin’, getting like them?”

  “Who’s them?”

  “Lang. Roeder. Every day they say have I talked to Cox yet, have I given him his thousand? Well, they can’t tell me how to run my club. I ain’t gonna talk to Cox until they stop askin’. Get it, kid? Write Black’s gonna win twenty. I’ll worry about Cox and them.”

  Jim Gilliam was a black deer, lovely to behold as he turned bases, elbows wide for balance, reaching, a dark arrow, toward a backhand stop. He was twenty-four then, but his face had not a single line and his body glistened, lean and dark. Bobby Morgan, a sandy-haired utility infielder, was the first ball player who offered an oblique comment. “Hey,” Morgan said, indicating a black player wearing a St. Paul uniform. “How come he ain’t a Dodger? He’s dark enough.” A reserve outfielder said, “Yeah. They’re gonna run us all right outa here.”

  Dressen was always experimenting with line-ups, as a good manager must, and it was a camp joke that each spring the Dodgers tried five new third basemen before rediscovering Cox. But Gilliam to certain players was not a joke. There existed in 1953 what John Lardner called the 50 percent color line; that is, it was permissible for a major league team to play only four black men out of nine. The ratio, five whites to four blacks, substantiated white supremacy. But to have five blacks playing with four whites supposedly threatened the old order. No straight paths lead from Bedlam or racism. In camp during 1953 was one Edmundo Isasi Amoros, a black outfielder from Matanzas, Cuba, who had played twenty games the year before and, according to coach Billy Herman, had miracle wrists. Changeups fooled Miracle Wrists and he batted .250. But he might improve. The team was uncertain in left field. A 1953 line-up might include Campanella, Black, Gilliam, Robinson and Amoros in left. Five out of nine would be black. As the reserve outfielder said, “They’re taking over.”

  Actually, by this time the Dodgers were exceedingly cautious crusaders. They dispatched Amoros to Montreal, where he batted .321, and the 50 percent color line was not tested until a full year later, when it vanished without trace and without protest. But in that uncertain spring of 1953, when Senator Joseph R. McCarthy challenged the fitness of the political centrist Charles Bohlen to be Ambassador to the new Soviet Court of Georgi Malenkov, the possibility of five black Dodgers playing at one time threatened uncertain men.

  When March was two weeks old, we left Vero Beach for the McAllister Hotel and a series of exhibitions with the Chicago White Sox. On the night of March 19, after a long, tedious game, I hurried back to the hotel, my head aching, and tried to sleep and failed and decided to order tea and toast in the coffee shop.

  Harsh lights and soiled tabletops welcomed me. The room was almost empty. From a distant table, Billy Cox made a small wave.

  “Hey,” he said when I joined him. “What the fuck is goin’ on?”

  “I got a headache, Will. The center-field lights shine right into the press box and kill your eyes.”

  “Don’t kid around. You know what I mean. I hit. I field. I’m fucking fired.”

  “Billuh’s real upset,” Preacher Roe said.

  “What do you think of Gilliam?” Cox said.

  “Helluva ball player.”

  “How would you like a nigger to take your job?”

  A waitress came, a chubby bored blonde, with mottled skin, and I gave my order.

  “You heard me,” Cox said.

  “I guess I wouldn’t like a nigger to take my job.”

  “Ya see,” Cox said, to Roe.

  “Can Robinson play third?” I said.

  “I don’t mean Jack,” Cox said.

  “Robi’son’s one hell of a man,” Roe said.

  “I mean the nigger, the kid,” Cox said.

  “They got as much right to play as anyone else,” Roe said, “but now they’re pushin’ Billuh around.”

  “The ball club’s doing it, not Gilliam, not Robinson.”

  “I don’t know,” Roe said. “It’s pretty fucked up.”

  “It sure is,” I said.

  “Ah,” Billy Cox said. “Fuckit. But what the fuck they want a guy to do?”

  Upstairs I found two aspirin. What an infinitely barren ending for the Robinson experience if Dodgers called other Dodgers “niggers.” Bobby Morgan’s nastiness meant nothing. Vituperation is the natural speech of bit players, beyond the earshot of stars. But Cox and Roe, roommates with shortest names, were magnificent athletes, real Dodgers. No game was scheduled for the following day. I had both space to place and time to plan a story. I wandered around the cramped hotel room remembering Fred Allen’s joke about a Philadelphia hotel room so small that even the mice were hunchbacked. I turned on the television set. A straw-hatted white tenor appeared, singing:

  She took my arm,

  Up in ol’ West Palm,

  Where the oranges grow

  On tree-ees.

  He swung a cane and tried to dance. No sense of rhythm.

  If I wrote a racial story, would the Tribune print it? I had not been permitted to set straight the nasty incident between Robinson and the Cardinals. If anything, this was nastier.

  I turned and looked about. Why do all hotel rooms display the same poor copies of Dufy’s racetrack and Van Gogh’s sunflowers? The story would force Dressen and Buzzy and O’Malley to face what was going on. That would be a good thing. But assuming I were able, somehow, to slip the story into a newspaper which was made nervous by race, was my motive really to do good—as Frost said, to do good well? Dick Young had just beaten me badly. Now I would not be appalled to beat Young’s brains out on this one, would I? Did a sense of justice impel me, or was it envy? I did not know. Cox and Roe might not speak to me again. I valued their acquaintanceship. Long after the straw-hatted man had faded into a minister telling me to put not my trust in princes’ gold and the reverend become a flag and then a test pattern, I stopped questioning my motives and decided on a course of risk. It was a fine thing to be a newspaperman and I wanted very much to be a good one.

  In bleary morning, I rode northwest to Miami Stadium and a workout and to interview several other players. Then, with great intensity and haste, I composed a cryptogram of a story. I had to mask my principal point from Tribune segregationists, who preferred Bobby Morgan to Jackie Robinson and had the power to censor. But I had to state my point clearly enough for sensitive readers to understand it. Eventually, the Tribune published the cryptogram without a single stroke of editing.

  MIAMI, Fla., March 20—While Chuck Dressen fiddles with his Brooklyn infield, Billy Cox burns. The deposed third baseman hoards his words, but he isn’t free with his job, either, and today, after the Dodgers’ morning workout, Cox stood before his locker shaking his head.

  What Billy will do next is a question serious enough to prompt Buzzy Bavasi, the Dodger vice president, to change his plans and fly here from Vero Beach tonight. The morale problem created by the switch of Jackie Robinson to third base is delicate now and may grow worse.

  Dressen is working with one goal—he wants to field the strongest possible team. And right now he thinks his strongest team must use Junior Gilliam at second, Jackie Robinson at third and Cox as utility man. Cox, first informed of the utility scheme by newspapermen three weeks ago, was a little disturbed then. He is very disturbed now.

  Dressen’s Explanation

  He has not been told the reasons for Dressen’s switch and it isn’t hard to see what’s behind his headshaking. For years now, he’s been told he’s one of the greatest fielding third basemen in history. He’s a .260 hitter on a club that boasts gre
at power. He’s out of a job.

  Dressen explained his position this way: “Billy isn’t going to get hurt and he ought to realize that. He’s making good money now and he’ll still make it as a utility man. This will give him more years in the big leagues.

  “He’s a .260 hitter,” Dressen continued, “and he isn’t going to get any better at thirty-four. This is the best thing for the club and the best thing for Billy.”

  But Dressen was explaining to a newspaperman, not Cox. When he announced that Cox was to become a utility man, Dressen said he was going to talk to Billy. He has not talked to him about the move, and he doesn’t want to, now. Charley thinks Cox should realize the reasons behind it and respect them.

  Resentment Noticeable

  But Cox himself is only a part of the problem, perhaps the easiest part. When Don Hoak and Bobby Morgan worked out at third, nothing was said by other players. When Gilliam moved to second and Robinson to third, resentment grew. The reason is near the surface and remarks passed by some Dodgers in the clubhouse and at their hotel indicate that the problem of Negroes in baseball has still to be finally resolved.

  Perhaps it was consciousness of this that moved Joe Black, a serious and deep-thinking man, to remark last night: “I’ll miss Billy’s glove at third. That was a big help.”

  And certainly it was consciousness of this that moved Black to point toward Gilliam and add, “I hope this doesn’t get the other guys upset.”

  At 3:15 I telephoned the story to a Tribune recording operator. When no one had called back to argue by six, I drove to the Sir John, the premier black motel of Miami. The two-story buff quadrangle rose around a small pool. I saw Robinson and Black sitting in lounge chairs. A cornet warbled. Black musicians, working Miami Beach hotels, had to live at the Sir John.

  In fading light, Robinson read my story quickly. “Is your paper going to print this?” he said.

  “I guess.”

  “Well, it’s your story and you’ve got to stand behind it yourself. I won’t say anything more than what you got in it.”

  “Jack’s right,” Joe Black said. “But, say, there might be a little excitement tomorrow.”

  “Are you coming to the clubhouse?” Robinson said.

  “I got to.”

  “Walk easy,” Joe Black said.

  The Associated Press picked up the story and a brief version ran in the next morning’s Miami Herald. But Woodward, revived in his full Tribune vigor, printed boldface excerpts in the Miami News. Stanley pierced my indirectness and wrote a story charged with his white rage at the South, saying that racial tension could tear apart the Dodgers. That night, the New York Post dispatched the columnist Milton Gross to write a series called “The Roots of Bigotry.” Bavasi telephoned and said, in a hard tone, “You better tell me who it was that talked to you.”

  “I can’t tell you. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Is it fair this way? You protect one or two guys and make everyone a suspect.”

  “I’m sorry, Buzzy. I didn’t mention names in the Tribune and I can’t tell you.”

  “Well, I’ll find out,” Bavasi said. He made a list of five Dodgers that he decided might have spoken to me and summoned them individually to his room.

  “In this morning’s Herald Tribune,” he told each ball player, “there’s a story about some stupid bigoted remarks. The story says you called Gilliam a nigger. I don’t care what you think and neither does Charlie or Mr. O’Malley, but you’ve got to learn to keep your goddamn mouth shut.”

  “Hey, Meat,” Carl Furillo roared as I walked into the Dodger clubhouse at 6 P.M. “You got it wrong. You loused it up. Who are you, Roeder?”

  I walked to him quickly. “You got nothing to do with this story, Skoonj.”

  “Five, six years ago, maybe I didn’t know about them colored guys. That was then. This is now. Know what I mean?”

  “You’re not in the story.”

  “Bavasi says I am.”

  “Honest, Carl.”

  He jabbed my arm. “You’re still okay,” he said.

  Billy Cox reared up in silence, holding a bat and grinning a hard smile. “Goddamnit,” he said. “Next time let me see what you write before you print it.”

  I stepped back. Cox winked and lowered the bat. Then he turned and started toward his locker.

  “Billy,” I said. “Your name isn’t in the story. I wouldn’t use your name after a private talk.”

  Cox dropped to a stool. He sat facing the locker, and the pumpkin-colored wall beyond. He looked around. The horse face was expressionless, but the eyes showed huge and sorrowful. “It don’t matter none,” he said.

  “I didn’t quote you, Bill.”

  The large eyes gazed. Cox had been hurt in war and hurt by life, and although he played third base with glorious courage, the other part, the hours off the field, were forever wounding him more deeply. They made him afraid. So he kept his distance, held his tongue and drank his beer. “It’s all right,” Cox said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

  Sure, Cox told me with his eyes. Say what you want. One night I let my guard down and look what happens. But it don’t matter none. You’re a writer, no worse, no better than the rest. That’s how things are, that’s things and people. Abruptly, Cox said loudly, “Okay!” Then he extended his right index finger and made the gesture. Fuckit. He had had enough truck with humanity. The best third baseman on earth folded his small black glove into his pocket and hurried toward the safety of the field.

  Bavasi issued a statement that “reports of dissension have been exaggerated.” Jackie Robinson said in a burst of diplomacy, “I’m the one who should be upset. I’m being forced out of my position.” Carl Erskine said, “Race relations on the team are a model the whole country could learn from.” The story had cut clean. Dressen’s utility plan worked perfectly. That season Cox played a hundred games, mostly at third, but also at short and second, and batted .291, the highest average of his major league life.

  In April a bakery hired Admiral Byrd, the Antarctic explorer, to push sales of frozen bread. J. Fredd Muggs, a chimpanzee clothed in rubber pants, made his debut on Dave Garroway’s dawn television program. And in Washington, D.C., Charlie Dressen canceled plans to remake Joe Black, the pitcher. “I told him,” Charlie said, after an exhibition game with the Senators, “to pitch like he did last year.”

  “But what about the screwball and the fork ball and the change-up?”

  “He don’t throw none of them any good.”

  The classic flaw of Dodger management—manipulating pitchers toward ruin—gaped again. I sat beside Black as the team flew to La Guardia Airport. “Sophomore jinx,” he said glumly. “It’s got me.”

  “You don’t believe in jinxes.”

  “How else can you figure it? I pitched, right? Did everything the man said. Fast ball high. Curve ball low. Ask Camp about my control. Now I been throwing so many damn things I don’t know if I can control anything.”

  “It’ll work out,” I said. It never did. A man needs touch, concentration, poise, confidence as well as strength, if he is to be a great pitcher, and Joe Black was a great pitcher in 1952. To all these elements, Dressen added doubt, like a solvent of lye. The saddest spectacle of the 1953 season was watching Joe Black recede. The outward mansion never changed. The man remained warm, perceptive and fiercely determined to do well. But now his fast balls moved to the center of the plate and became high doubles, and the small, sharp curve, breaking at belt level, was driven on a long, low line. Clem Labine became premier relief pitcher, and in the autumn of 1953 Joe Black, last year’s proud gladiator, pitched one inning during the World Series. It was the last inning of an already lost game. He allowed a run.

  This season the Dodgers came of age. Carl Erskine won 20 games. Every regular batted higher than .300, except for Cox (.291), Gilliam (.278) and Reese (.271). As lead-off man, Gilliam drew 100 bases on balls, only 5 fewer than Stan Musial. He hit
17 triples, and led the league. Reese, now thirty-five, stole 22 bases. Duke Snider hit 42 home runs. Roy Campanella hit 41. The Yankees of 1927, with Ruth, Gehrig and the rest, a benchmark of batting power, scored 975 runs. The 1953 Dodgers scored 955. The Dodgers were measurably superior in the field. They completed 38 more double plays and made 77 fewer errors. The Dodgers of 1953—not the pitching staff but the eight men in the field—can be put forth as the most gifted baseball team that has yet played in the tide of times.

  Curiously, the season began with stumbling. Dressen experimented with his pitching staff and the Dodgers lost as often as they won, and Walter O’Malley called a press conference and said that he expected the team to win consistently. “In the past,” he said, “sentiment has entered into decisions made by this office. Such will no longer be the case.”

  Dressen squirmed and perspired at O’Malley’s side, but by the end of June the Dodgers had seized first place by defeating the Milwaukee Braves, 11 to 1. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were electrocuted at Sing Sing. Elizabeth II was crowned. President Eisenhower sent Fleur Cowles as his representative and Mrs. Cowles wore a plain dress, she said, “so as not to detract from the Queen.” Someone marketed a vodka containing chlorophyll, “to take your breath away and fool your wife.” Although Senator Robert A. Taft died at sixty-three and Lavrenti Beria was condemned at fifty-five and Senator Joseph R. McCarthy continued to rage, it did not seem to be a troubled summer. By late July the Dodger lead was seven and a half games.

  There was no hazard now, except for memory. The Dodgers still remembered the Giants and 1951. Then one day in August, Dick Young asked Charlie Dressen about Leo Durocher’s team.

  “The Giants is dead,” Dressen said.

  Young wrote a one-column box, and “The Giants is dead” became a familiar quotation. Young beamed, but Dressen grumbled. “I coulda give it to him the other way,” he said. “I can say, ‘The Giants are dead.’ I know that, too. And next time that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  Through the hot months, the Dodgers played phenomenal .800 baseball. They clinched the pennant in Milwaukee on Saturday, September 13, when Erskine defeated the Braves, 5 to 3, in a game punctuated by three Milwaukee errors. Dave Anderson, a young reporter who had succeeded Harold Burr on the Brooklyn Eagle, wrote the best lead. “The Milwaukee Braves,” he began, “died with their boots.”