I Never Had It Made Read Free

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    When I think about Jackie Robinson, there is something that bothers me a great deal, which shows what baseball is all about. At the end of his career, Jackie was traded to the Giants. At the last moment, after all the things he’d done for the Dodgers, after everything he had suffered, they found it necessary to trade a man of his stature, a man who was the Dodgers. I thought at the time: Stan Musial was never traded; Ted Williams was never traded. We’re talking about someone who was very special, who should have always had a place with the Dodgers. It should have been understood that this man started with the Dodgers and that he would end up with the Dodgers. Certain people you never trade, and Jackie Robinson should never have been traded.
    Even before he retired, Jackie Robinson was involved in politics. He was always concerned about what was going to happen to blacks in this country. His involvement with the NAACP and other civil rights organizations merely demonstrated that his skills and concerns went further than the baseball diamond. I will never forget Jackie’s last speech, especially the end of it. He said baseball will always have its head buried in the sand until it can find the strength and the vision to have a black man coaching at third base. This was in Cincinnati and he was half blind by then; it was the last time I heard him speak.
    It’s as clear now as it was then that Jackie Robinson was the right man for the right job—intelligent, educated—I think that’s what we needed. There were so many temptations put before him. He was a man on trial—not only on the field. But off the field as well, and he had the skills to survive and transcend this ordeal.
    I’m often asked if I miss the game. But I don’t miss anything at all about baseball. I had a very good career. I did just about everything I wanted to do in baseball, and I am satisfied with my accomplishments. Now my life has changed, it’s a new life for me. I played baseball for twenty-three years, and I owe it in part to Jackie Robinson, who gave me the strength I needed and the opportunity to play—the chance to do everything I could do.
    Atlanta, Georgia
1995

Preface: Today
    Jackie Robinson
    I guess if I could choose one of the most important moments in my life, I would go back to 1947, in the Yankee Stadium in New York City. It was the opening day of the world series and I was for the first time playing in the series as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers team. It was a history-making day. It would be the first time that a black man would be allowed to participate in a world series. I had become the first black player in the major leagues.
    I was proud of that and yet I was uneasy. I was proud to be in the hurricane eye of a significant breakthrough and to be used to prove that a sport can’t be called national if blacks are barred from it. Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, had rudely awakened America. He was a man with high ideals, and he was also a shrewd businessman. Mr. Rickey had shocked some of his fellow baseball tycoons and angered others by deciding to smash the unwritten law that kept blacks out of the big leagues. He had chosen me as the person to lead the way.
    It hadn’t been easy. Some of my own teammates refused to accept me because I was black. I had been forced to live with snubs and rebuffs and rejections. Within the club, Mr. Rickey had put down rebellion by letting my teammates know that anyone who didn’t want to accept me could leave. But the problems within the Dodgers club had been minor compared to the opposition outside. It hadn’t been that easy to fight the resentment expressed by players on other teams, by the team owners, or by bigoted fans screaming “nigger.” The hate mail piled up. There were threats against me and my family and even out-and-out attempts at physical harm to me.
    Some things counterbalanced this