Read Online The Era, 1947-1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World by Roger Kahn - Free Book Online Page A

game. Should one side fail to appear, the other team is awarded victory by forfeit. The score of a forfeit is recorded as 9 to 0.
    “Very well, Herbert,” Rickey said, “if you don’t field a team and we must claim the game, 9 to 0, we will do just that, I assure you.”
    Rickey hung up. Pennock was not through making mischief. When the Dodgers arrived at the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia and took taxis to the Benjamin Franklin Hotel on the morning of May 9, they were turned away in the lobby. Pennock and his employers had spoken to the hotel owners. The hotel would take “no ballclub nigras.” Harold Parrott, the Dodgers’ toothy traveling secretary, had to shuttle about Philadelphia for hours before he found a hotel — the Warwick — willing to accommodate the team. Until then, the Dodgers were considering commuting for the series. Recalling that Philadelphia story, Parrott summed up: “Talk about brotherly love.”
    Rickey, not satisfied with Ben Chapman’s feathery reprimand, continued to press Commissioner Chandler for significant action. Chandler responded by hiring Jack Demoise, a former FBI agent, to travel the National League “and look for troublemakers.” Then, finally, the commissioner telephoned Pennock. “If you move in on Robinson,” Chandler said, “I’ll move in on you.”
    Chapman himself was slow recognizing the new thrust of things. Gene Hermanski, a Dodger outfielder for seven seasons, is white-haired now, but so vigorous and feisty in his seventies that someone describes him as a “walking advertisement
against
Grecian Formula” (a popular over-the-counter product that turns white hair dark). Hermanski, who was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and resides in central New Jersey, says, as so many old Dodgers do, “Jackie Robinson was a great man.”
    “Philadelphia, Gene,” I say. “Do you remember Philadelphia, 1947?”
    Hermanski’s eyes light. “That bastard Chapman.” Hermanski moves backwards on wings of memory. His eyes are burning now.
    In Philadelphia, first game there, during pregame warmups, Chapman started shouting again. But not at Robinson this time. “Hey, Pee Wee,” Chapman yelled. “Yeah, you. Reese. How ya like playin’ with a fuckin’ nigger?”
    Reese ignored Chapman, who shouted the question again. And yet a third time.
    Reese stopped picking up ground balls and jogged over to Robinson at first base. Then, staring into the Philadelphia dugout, Reese put an arm around Jackie Robinson’s shoulders.
    “Pee Wee didn’t say a word,” Gene Hermanski remembers. “But Chapman had his answer.”
    Later that day or early the next, someone prominent in baseball placed a long-distance telephone call to Chapman. (Commissioner Chandler took credit for the call three or four decades later, but Chandler was a frightfully unreliable source.) The telephone call to Chapman probably came from Ford Frick, the president of the National League, or from one of Frick’s assistants.
    The sense of the call was this: Chapman’s behavior was out of line. It had to stop. On moral grounds and on
practical
grounds as well.
    Walter Winchell, the famous gossip columnist, had picked up reports on Chapman’s conduct. He was telling flunkies at the Stork Club in New York that he was going to “use the column to get Chapman out of baseball. I’ll nail him on my radio show, too. I’m gonna make a
big hit
on that
bigot
.”
    The caller told Ben Chapman that organized baseball would not tolerate syndicated embarrassment. If Chapman intended to keep his job, he had better curb his tongue immediately. An apology would not be out of line.
    Cornered, Chapman sent word to Robinson before the next day’s ballgame. He would like to start fresh. Maybe he
had
been kinda loud. Would Robinson pose with him for newspaper photographers?
    In a remarkably forgiving mood, Robinson agreed. The surviving prints show each man looking as though he’d like to be ten thousand miles away, but after