racial about it. Then he tried to blame it on Casey Stengel, who was about seventy-five years old at the time and doing some scouting for the team. Can you believe that? I couldn’t. I know I never saw Casey Stengel when I was being scouted—and how could you be in a ballpark and not know if Casey Stengel was there?
Ten years later, when I was a free agent, the Mets
still
didn’t even try to sign me. After the free-agent draft, Bob Scheffing told a reporter from the St. Petersburg
Evening Independent
, “Jackson wasn’t the best ballplayer available, Joe Rudi was. Jackson was the best press-agent around.” He said I was “a pleasure to talk to” but that I was “not an outstanding offensive ballplayer.”
This was the sort of thing that put that chip on my shoulder, when I was a young man. It had a lot to do with what went on with the Yankees, when I finally did get to New York.
It’s hard for many people to understand what a different place the world was when I was young. And it’s hard for them to understand the ways in which it still hasn’t changed.
I wasn’t raised in the Deep South. I grew up in Pennsylvania, in a nice town outside Philadelphia called Wyncote. I was in a nice neighborhood; the people were nice. The neighbors were wonderful. But it was 95 percent white. Not far away, across the Mason-Dixon Line, there were regular Ku Klux Klan meetings that went on in Maryland, maybe sixty to eighty miles from my home. There were certain towns down there where you didn’t go.
Pennsylvania was considered the North. But there were often reminders that color was a social issue, and I was colored. I went to a white school, and being black, you were a second-class citizen. The
n
-word was overheard from time to time. Socially, in those days, the world was different. You weren’t allowed to (or, it was
preferred
you didn’t) swim in the community pool in Glenside if you were colored. You weren’t allowed to go to the country club in Elkins Park and play golf, because you were colored!
The parents of a lot of kids I knew didn’t want me to play with them. I was in Glenside one day and was riding a buddy of mine’s bicycle back to my house. I had been hanging out with him all day, and rather than make me walk the two or three miles back home, he lent me his bike. On the way home, I got maybe a mile, and his step-dad saw me. I can still remember he was driving a ’57 yellow Chevy,with a Continental kit. And when he saw me, he stopped that beautiful car, and then he stopped me. He made me get off his stepson’s bike and walk it back to his house
—walk it back!
How’s that for a memory? I don’t know if I felt embarrassed, small, humiliated … I don’t know how I felt, except bad. I knew exactly what was going on. He did not want a colored kid riding his son’s bicycle, and we were best friends. I know the guy—my friend—to this day. Still a great guy, and one of my longtime elementary school, junior high, high school buddies. I’m sure it broke his heart, just as it broke mine. We were thirteen, fourteen, and we didn’t know what to say. I just felt like the sole of a shoe.
Call it a petty humiliation, but there was nothing “petty” about it. “Mountainous” would be a better word. Those humiliations become scars. They become wounds—and then they get opened up again, on another day. And then before the scab heals, someone else opens it up. You wind up getting in a fight with someone because of something else you’ve had on your mind for two years.
And dating—there was a girl in our neighborhood, her name was Helen S. She was cute, and we wanted to be friends. We were, you know, thirteen, fourteen, but her parents wouldn’t allow it. Because I was colored. There was another girl in high school, a few years later, named Sandy H. I had a friend, George Beck, a white guy. He had a ’55 Chevy and I had a ’55 Chevy, so he would pick her up at her house when it was light out. Then,
Ten years later, when I was a free agent, the Mets
still
didn’t even try to sign me. After the free-agent draft, Bob Scheffing told a reporter from the St. Petersburg
Evening Independent
, “Jackson wasn’t the best ballplayer available, Joe Rudi was. Jackson was the best press-agent around.” He said I was “a pleasure to talk to” but that I was “not an outstanding offensive ballplayer.”
This was the sort of thing that put that chip on my shoulder, when I was a young man. It had a lot to do with what went on with the Yankees, when I finally did get to New York.
It’s hard for many people to understand what a different place the world was when I was young. And it’s hard for them to understand the ways in which it still hasn’t changed.
I wasn’t raised in the Deep South. I grew up in Pennsylvania, in a nice town outside Philadelphia called Wyncote. I was in a nice neighborhood; the people were nice. The neighbors were wonderful. But it was 95 percent white. Not far away, across the Mason-Dixon Line, there were regular Ku Klux Klan meetings that went on in Maryland, maybe sixty to eighty miles from my home. There were certain towns down there where you didn’t go.
Pennsylvania was considered the North. But there were often reminders that color was a social issue, and I was colored. I went to a white school, and being black, you were a second-class citizen. The
n
-word was overheard from time to time. Socially, in those days, the world was different. You weren’t allowed to (or, it was
preferred
you didn’t) swim in the community pool in Glenside if you were colored. You weren’t allowed to go to the country club in Elkins Park and play golf, because you were colored!
The parents of a lot of kids I knew didn’t want me to play with them. I was in Glenside one day and was riding a buddy of mine’s bicycle back to my house. I had been hanging out with him all day, and rather than make me walk the two or three miles back home, he lent me his bike. On the way home, I got maybe a mile, and his step-dad saw me. I can still remember he was driving a ’57 yellow Chevy,with a Continental kit. And when he saw me, he stopped that beautiful car, and then he stopped me. He made me get off his stepson’s bike and walk it back to his house
—walk it back!
How’s that for a memory? I don’t know if I felt embarrassed, small, humiliated … I don’t know how I felt, except bad. I knew exactly what was going on. He did not want a colored kid riding his son’s bicycle, and we were best friends. I know the guy—my friend—to this day. Still a great guy, and one of my longtime elementary school, junior high, high school buddies. I’m sure it broke his heart, just as it broke mine. We were thirteen, fourteen, and we didn’t know what to say. I just felt like the sole of a shoe.
Call it a petty humiliation, but there was nothing “petty” about it. “Mountainous” would be a better word. Those humiliations become scars. They become wounds—and then they get opened up again, on another day. And then before the scab heals, someone else opens it up. You wind up getting in a fight with someone because of something else you’ve had on your mind for two years.
And dating—there was a girl in our neighborhood, her name was Helen S. She was cute, and we wanted to be friends. We were, you know, thirteen, fourteen, but her parents wouldn’t allow it. Because I was colored. There was another girl in high school, a few years later, named Sandy H. I had a friend, George Beck, a white guy. He had a ’55 Chevy and I had a ’55 Chevy, so he would pick her up at her house when it was light out. Then,
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