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Just finished "Baseball Has Done It," by Jackie Robinson. Not a biography or a work about "inside baseball," this 1964 book is a fascinating look into the status of integration as the Civil Rights Movement was reaching its peak --- not just sports integration, but integration as it stood in general American life. Robinson positions baseball -- which was strongly and securely integrated by the mid-sixties -- as an example that the rest of society ought to follow.
The bulk of the book consists of interviews between Robinson and various baseball personalities of the past and then-present about how integration has changed the game, about their own experiences of integration, and about how those experiences have changed them. Most of the top African-American players of the time are interviewed, and give extremely candid assessments -- Henry Aaron, for one, comes across as much more of a firebrand than his later image would lead one to expect, and Ernie Banks isn't far behind. Frank Robinson is, as you might expect, quite outspoken as well. Two players who refused to be interviewed come in for harsh words -- Maury Wills, who insisted he didn't want to get involved in politics, and Willie Mays, who declined by saying he wouldn't know what to say. Robinson doesn't call them Uncle Toms straight out, but he sternly rebukes both of them for their indifference to an issue that should, in his view, be at the forefront for every American, and especially every African-American.
A number of white players and former players also speak. Some don't come off well at all - Alvin Dark, then manager of the Giants, is embarassingly patronizing in a good-ole-boy kind of way. But Robinson's former teammate Bobby Bragan -- who had publicly opposed Robinson's presence on the Dodgers in 1947 -- states flatly that integration has made him question everything he ever believed about race, and that it's made him in every way a better American, and a better man. Another former Robinson teammate who had opposed his presence in 1947, former Dodger star Dixie Walker declined to give a full interview, stating with obvious embarassment that he wants to forget what happened in those days. But he does talk about the African-American players he was then working with as a coach for the Braves, and points out that without such talent, the game as it stood in the early sixties would have been in very big trouble. Robinson, in turn praises Walker as a "man of eminent fairness," whose love for baseball clearly transcended whatever racial feelings he might have had in 1947.
This is an interesting book to read today, in 2016, when African-American participation in baseball is far less than it was fifty years ago, and when racial tensions are still very evident in many aspects of American life. It would be interesting to read what Robinson would have written if he had lived long enough to update this book for the twenty-first century.
The bulk of the book consists of interviews between Robinson and various baseball personalities of the past and then-present about how integration has changed the game, about their own experiences of integration, and about how those experiences have changed them. Most of the top African-American players of the time are interviewed, and give extremely candid assessments -- Henry Aaron, for one, comes across as much more of a firebrand than his later image would lead one to expect, and Ernie Banks isn't far behind. Frank Robinson is, as you might expect, quite outspoken as well. Two players who refused to be interviewed come in for harsh words -- Maury Wills, who insisted he didn't want to get involved in politics, and Willie Mays, who declined by saying he wouldn't know what to say. Robinson doesn't call them Uncle Toms straight out, but he sternly rebukes both of them for their indifference to an issue that should, in his view, be at the forefront for every American, and especially every African-American.
A number of white players and former players also speak. Some don't come off well at all - Alvin Dark, then manager of the Giants, is embarassingly patronizing in a good-ole-boy kind of way. But Robinson's former teammate Bobby Bragan -- who had publicly opposed Robinson's presence on the Dodgers in 1947 -- states flatly that integration has made him question everything he ever believed about race, and that it's made him in every way a better American, and a better man. Another former Robinson teammate who had opposed his presence in 1947, former Dodger star Dixie Walker declined to give a full interview, stating with obvious embarassment that he wants to forget what happened in those days. But he does talk about the African-American players he was then working with as a coach for the Braves, and points out that without such talent, the game as it stood in the early sixties would have been in very big trouble. Robinson, in turn praises Walker as a "man of eminent fairness," whose love for baseball clearly transcended whatever racial feelings he might have had in 1947.
This is an interesting book to read today, in 2016, when African-American participation in baseball is far less than it was fifty years ago, and when racial tensions are still very evident in many aspects of American life. It would be interesting to read what Robinson would have written if he had lived long enough to update this book for the twenty-first century.
