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AJ McKenzie
  • 6 weeks ago
Mays, Aaron, Frank Robinson
IG: aj_mckenzie416
Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
Transcript
00:00Phelan is at the bottom of that pile!
00:02See, I'm at the center for the door!
00:05On the door!
00:06Door!
00:08The box that runs!
00:10Play, mate!
00:12Let's talk with Ron to a speed!
00:14I'm going to have a point!
00:15I'm going to have a point!
00:16I'm going to have a point!
00:18Hold it, hold it, hold it!
00:19Hold it, hold it!
00:20I'm going to have a point!
00:20I'm going to have a point!
00:23I'm going to have a point!
00:28I'm going to have a point!
00:30I'm going to have a point!
00:31I'm going to have a point!
00:32I'm going to have a point!
00:45Hello, I'm Chris Fowler for SportsCentury.
00:48The story of Jackie Robinson breaking the Major League color barrier
00:51glows proudly in our primary history books.
00:54But in truth, it was just the opening skirmish in a prolonged battle for racial equality.
01:01This is the story behind the story.
01:03It's about the journey of Robinson's disciples,
01:06who, with bat and glove, fought a virulent racism awakened in 1947.
01:11Their battle for acceptance raged for more than a quarter of a century.
01:21A bunch of those kids, we dashed over to the train depot there.
01:24And we were standing out on the platform.
01:27And there was Jackie.
01:28He was way back to us, you know.
01:30I looked upon him as being some sort of messiah because prior to that time,
01:35what was the hope?
01:38There was Jackie.
01:40He brought hope.
01:42We were in Minnesota, and he came in the clubhouse,
01:44and he told me that regardless of all of the indignancies,
01:50that when you went across them lines, you had to play ball and win.
02:02For many African Americans, playing was often the easiest hurdle.
02:07Outfielder Kurt Flood, while in the Carolina League in 1956,
02:11endured not only jeers from the stands in the opposing dugout,
02:15he was also hit with a special form of isolation from his teammates.
02:19He said he played on a team that first year where no one talked to him.
02:25They didn't want him there.
02:27He said they hated his guts.
02:30That was part of the game.
02:32You know, when you talk about baseball,
02:34you talk in terms of separation as far as the team is concerned.
02:40Henry booted the ball, and it cost us a ball game.
02:43He had a pitcher, and he's from New Orleans.
02:46And he made a comment to the extent that, you know, you can't trust a nigga.
02:52When pull comes to thug, they're going to go in the tank every time.
02:57And sanity.
02:57I didn't mix with my white teammates at that time.
03:02I just wouldn't let anyone get close to me, because I didn't want anyone to hurt me.
03:10Beyond the challenge of winning over teammates steeped in a long history of white supremacy,
03:15there was the implacable face of baseball's institutionalized racism.
03:20Unspoken quotas and lineup manipulation conspired to keep more black players from breaking through in the 1950s.
03:27Yep.
03:27Players are being traded. Players are being released.
03:30I don't think any Major League Baseball team wanted more than four blacks on their team at the time.
03:38I was playing for Cincinnati. Birdie Tevis was the manager.
03:42In 56, Brooks Lawrence was 12-0 at All-Star game time.
03:48And Birdie said, I bet you don't win 20.
03:52Now, can you imagine this?
03:53The manager telling his ace pitcher 12-0 that he's not going to win 20.
03:58And Brooks had 19, and he stopped pitching me.
04:04So, when he asked me, ain't no black man going to win 20 games for me.
04:12How come a boy who loves to hit as much as Hank takes such a long time meandering up to
04:17bat?
04:20Insanity.
04:21The manager said, you're nonchalant the way I carry myself.
04:25And he told me a lot of people are going to interpret that as being lazy.
04:29It was a spectrum of us that, regardless of condition,
04:35we had to perform at a level comparable or better than the best white player.
04:43Was there bigotry toward black players in those days?
04:45Absolutely.
04:46Salahima said that Bob Gibson would never be a good Major League pitcher.
04:49What?
04:50He threw all his pitches the same speed.
04:52And he was right.
04:54Fast.
04:54Hard.
04:56Explosive.
04:57They'd have a team meeting with the pitchers and how to pitch to certain hitters.
05:02And he would say that, Bob, this isn't for you.
05:05That touched one of the most profound stereotypes and the rawest nerve of all with black athletes.
05:14You're not as smart as the white pitchers.
05:18And that really was a spur.
05:21Yup.
05:24But Gibson's intelligence was never in doubt.
05:27Nor was his courage when the Cardinals ace faced the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1964 World Series.
05:33In the ninth inning, the power pitcher gave up two homers.
05:36And with two outs and a two run lead, he appeared to be out of gas.
05:42Johnny Keene, the manager of the Cardinals, stayed with him in a very tight spot.
05:48And his comment was, I had a commitment to his heart.
05:53And Gibson came through.
05:55It was a tremendous important cultural moment.
05:58I think you had two kind of stereotypes.
06:00I think one was the idea if a black player had the intelligence to be a pitcher.
06:07And I think the other thing was the stamina, the concentration, that sort of thing.
06:11And Gibson broke down all those stereotypes.
06:14The late 50s, the early 60s is when the black athlete really started to show what he could do
06:22because it was the first time he was ever allowed.
06:26If acceptance had been won by the black man on the baseball field, social and economic...
06:31See, the thing about the racism in these days is that black athletes, great black athletes,
06:39could be anything except the top guy.
06:42Black football players could be anything except quarterback.
06:45Black baseball players could be anything except pitcher.
06:50Black football players could be anything except the world heavyweight champion if you go back to the 30s.
06:58That's the insult.
07:01Comic equality remained a long way down the road.
07:06They gave me a $5,000 bonus.
07:09And they had to promise me not to send me south.
07:11Emmett Till, young black kid, had been hung and beaten and burnt.
07:16And there were pictures in my mind.
07:19I was petrified of the sun.
07:24The murder of the 14-year-old Chicago resident who was visiting relatives in Mississippi while on summer vacation in
07:301955
07:31was just one of many nightmares of the civil rights movement.
07:37It is impossible for young Americans today to remember how awful it was in the late 50s and early 60s
07:46when you had state-sanctioned racism.
07:50Saying, you're inferior.
07:52You're a lesser person.
07:54You can't eat at this lunch counter.
07:56You can't stay at this hotel.
07:58You can't come into this diner.
08:05Whether it was in the minor leagues or spring training, some southern fans came to the ballpark with an arsenal
08:11of projectiles and racial epithets.
08:15When you played anywhere in the south, we had the opposing players throwing at you all the time.
08:20The fans were just about like the players were.
08:24And they would literally throw stones at him, rocks.
08:27And I rode on the bus with Henry.
08:29I saw many a tear rolling out of his eye at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.
08:33He just said, why, Joe?
08:35Why?
08:37The only thing I want to do is play ball.
08:45Tears or rage were the only recourse to an endless tide of racial abuse.
08:50One night in 1955 in Columbia, South Carolina, Frank Robinson chose rage.
08:56I'll never forget, two of these guys, they gave him the worst verbal abuse.
09:02I never heard anything, not even to this day, as bad as that.
09:07And I could see the tears streaming down his cheeks.
09:10Robinson bolted from first base to the bat rack and grabbed the bat.
09:16He was out of control.
09:18He wanted to kill those two guys.
09:20He might have faced some time in prison down there as a consequence if he had managed to get into
09:27the stands.
09:28I just couldn't understand why people were this vicious.
09:32It just made me more determined.
09:34Because I used to tell myself that I was going to have a good deal and get the heck out
09:37of there.
09:38I wouldn't have to put up with that anymore.
09:44This public hostility, fueled by the deep-seated mores of the South, encouraged the separation of Kurt Flood from his
09:51minor league teammates.
09:54In the Savannah clubhouse, he had partitioned off a space for him.
09:59It was outside.
10:02It was with the dirt floor.
10:05Well, during the double header, you wore the same uniform.
10:09And the clubhouse guy started screaming and yelling.
10:13And who, this nigger put his clothes in here?
10:16My God.
10:16And he took a long stick with a nail on the end of it and plucked Kurt's clothes out of
10:23the pile of dirty, sweaty uniforms and took his and dumped it into a paper bag.
10:29He called a colored taxi company, told the taxi driver to take it to the colored cleaners while he sat
10:38there naked.
10:41Wow.
10:43A large hole in Jim Crow's wall was punched out in 1962, when Cardinals owner Gussie Bush leased a motel
10:50in St. Petersburg, Florida, so that his entire team could live together during spring training.
10:56For the first time, you could go out and see Musial and his wife and his children in a swing
11:02pool.
11:03And you could see Gibson and his kids and his wife.
11:06We'd all get together.
11:07And really, we got to know each other better.
11:10Those Cardinal teams of the 60s were enormously important, not only in sports history, but I think in American social
11:16history.
11:17They demanded of the whites on the team that we're going to be a family and we're all going to
11:21work together.
11:22And I think they really helped change the chemistry of how an integrated baseball team works.
11:32But the family feeling didn't always extend beyond certain lines.
11:37In 1964, after the Cardinals won the World Series, Kurt Flood was again confronted by white hate, this time in
11:44the San Francisco Bay Area.
11:46Most of us lived in the inner city area at the time.
11:51Kurtis ventured out. He moved over to one of the suburban areas called Alamo, and they burned a cross on
11:59his lawn.
11:59Oh, of course he did.
12:00The murderality that's undoubtedly going to be in Wazira will make people aware, if nothing else, that prejudice is not
12:10only compliant to the southern part of our United States,
12:12and if they move their mustache and look under their nose, it's finally right here at home, too.
12:18We had a way of dealing with problems like that when we would just mostly laugh about it, and I
12:27think we were laughing to keep from crying.
12:31We got through it because we fought these racists who had no respect for another human being.
12:38Flood got through it. I got through it. Aaron got through it.
12:42In my case, I felt if I got through that, I can get through anything.
12:58The movement was taking place, the sit-down movement, the Freedom Riders, my coaches in the athletic department at Southern
13:05University,
13:06I ruled that any athlete I caught in that would lose a scholarship.
13:10And so that was a real tough decision for us. So I did not join the Freedom Riders.
13:17Minorities just could not step over the line in those days because baseball controlled you, and they could do whatever
13:25they wanted to do with you, really.
13:26They called you a troublemaker. That's one of the reasons I was trained from Cincinnati.
13:32We wasn't Martin Luther King trying to fight it. They accused guys like myself and Mays and Aaron and Banks
13:39as not doing enough, but we wasn't politicians, you know.
13:43Guys like Muhammad Ali was outspoken. But you can't expect everybody to be like that. We tried to let our
13:50profession do the talking for us.
13:53I'm not the type of guy to go out and just say, hey, I'm raising my fist to do this
13:57and do that. I don't think I'm that type of guy. I wasn't maybe a leader the way other people
14:03wanted me to do it.
14:05We also label us Uncle Tom, because you didn't question anything. That's a real bore in my life. I see
14:15a lot of people who struggled and went to jail, and I look at them, and I say, God Almighty,
14:24I wish I'd have been there.
14:26My children sometimes, they think about, Daddy, where were you doing all the times that the struggle was going on?
14:33And I could only ask one way. I was playing baseball. That was the struggle.
14:42While most black players kept hope alive by demonstrating daily that color didn't matter on the playing field, a few
14:49were moved to action by such seminal moments as Rosa Parks' refusal to give a white person her seat on
14:55a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
14:58I used to go in this club and sit all night and never got served one drink, but I made
15:06my presence known. I am supposed to be free. You are supposed to serve me regardless.
15:14I admire them for doing that. I admire them for having that much fortitude. Sometimes you kind of take your
15:20life in your hands when you do something like that.
15:23If I am willing to sit there all night long and not get served, then they have to think just
15:30a little bit.
15:30Well, maybe this is not right, but the idea is to get them to think that blacks are human beings.
15:40If Willie Mays was conspicuous by his silence, Hank Aaron found his voice after he endured repeated death threats in
15:47pursuit of baseball's ultimate career record.
15:50When he passed the babe in April of 1974, Aaron used the national stage to push the African-American's cause
15:57one step further.
15:59I'm looking forward to one day that a black will be able to run a professional ball club.
16:05And I'm hoping that that black will be me.
16:09When I first came into the league, if I had said something about racial indifference, then would it have made
16:16the paper? No, it wouldn't have.
16:18And when I hit the home run, then people started listening.
16:22Hank Aaron was, by his own testimony, close to Jackie Robinson. He felt that it was his responsibility as best
16:30he could to carry on this fight.
16:32In his mind, he was fulfilling his responsibility at a time when very few others who may have had the
16:37opportunity to do it wanted to do it.
16:39I just felt like, as a black person who had played for 23 years and is concerned about the progress
16:46of the game, it was my responsibility to tell the truth about issues that people didn't want to hear.
16:55And there are still issues in baseball that need to be talked about.
17:01Right.
17:02Jackie Robinson made his final public appearance to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his breaking baseball's color barrier.
17:10I'm extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon.
17:14But must admit, I'm going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third base
17:20coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball.
17:28Two years later, in October of 1974, Jackie's dream became reality and the Cleveland Indians hired Frank Robinson as player
17:36manager.
17:37But the price of progress was steep.
17:41He was up giving a speech and some guy right beside me said, sit down, shut up, nigger. And I
17:48was just in a state of shock.
17:49Frank Robinson was enormously important because America was just getting over the idea that blacks and whites could play together
17:58on an equal footing.
18:00Here was the ultimate that whites would be subservient to a black man, that they would answer to a black
18:07man.
18:14During the next decade, two other African-Americans, Larry Doby and Maury Wills, served short stints as manager and Robinson
18:21piloted a second team.
18:23In April of 1987, after almost three years had passed without a black manager, baseball's hiring practices were called into
18:30question when institutional racism surfaced on national television.
18:35There are a lot of black players, there are a lot of great black baseball men who would dearly love
18:42to be in managerial positions.
18:44Is there still that much prejudice in baseball today?
18:47No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be,
18:56let's say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.
19:01I was sort of disgusted because in light of the fact that there are so many blacks who have proven
19:10themselves throughout the years, I'm like saying to myself, well, this guy, what a shell is he living in?
19:16And I think that's where a lot of people began to look at baseball and began to say, well, we
19:23still got a long way to go.
19:28Right.
19:30Two years later, Bill White was unanimously voted president of the National League.
19:34From 1989 through 2003, seven blacks were hired as managers, but some see racism lurking behind baseball's public curtain.
19:46Racism is in baseball, I don't care what anyone says.
19:49For instance, an owner has said to me is, well, Frank, you're not well rounded on the player development side.
19:55What?
19:56Well, the other thing is you don't have the experience in the front office.
20:00Well, I was assistant general manager for five years.
20:03I was on a couple of lists where I interviewed where I was wasting my time, you know, absolutely wasting
20:11my time.
20:12And they were doing it just because it was mandated from MLB that they had to interview minorities at all.
20:23As some of Jackie's disciples fight for a place in baseball's hierarchy, the ground on which they stand is crumbling.
20:30American blacks are disappearing from the game.
20:33Exactly.
20:34People are coming from all corners of the globe to play major league baseball, and it's a great thing.
20:38But the black community should be just as evolved now as they were in the 60s and 70s.
20:43The issue now is an economic issue. Black schools need more revenue in order to have kids to play the
20:50game of baseball.
20:52Part of the problem may also be sociological. Over the last four decades, the percentage of urban black families with
20:59two parents has dropped precipitously from 80 to 20 percent, leaving fewer fathers to pass on the tradition.
21:07The inner city little leagues are decimated now. They're really in a shambles, and there are very few success stories.
21:15When I was growing up here in Brooklyn, the first sport you played was baseball. Now it's probably basketball and
21:20football, and baseball being glass.
21:24If you look at a lot of public schooling within inner cities, when they start cutting programs, the first sport
21:29to be cut is baseball.
21:31Because they don't feel there's a general interest there. They're not using baseball as the escape route to get out
21:38of economic situations the way they're using football and basketball.
21:42Probably the biggest factor has been the rise of basketball. There was something hip and fresh about basketball that appealed
21:48especially to very young people.
21:50African Americans, I think, are more attracted to playing professional basketball than they are baseball.
21:56I think one of the things that baseball fell behind the NBA in is marking to communities of color, using
22:01the cultural norms and changes in the community to help popularize the sport.
22:06Play to win, he'll play for stats. Brought the hood to the game, and they love him for the braids
22:10and tats, yeah.
22:15I think that baseball can reclaim some of the lost players and some of the lost African American fans, but
22:22I think that the popularity of the NFL...
22:24It hasn't happened. It's gone from 27% five decades ago to around seven, which is a quarter.
22:36On the NBA, the black community is going to make it very difficult for baseball to come all the way
22:41back.
22:41They cannot allow the face of baseball to be totally white. It would be a disaster in this country.
22:48I hope that Moore decided to play after seeing the things that I was able to accomplish, not only myself,
22:54but other African American players.
22:56Hopefully they see that and they go out there and kick up or batting the ball and go out there
23:01and play.
23:01We got to tell them, say, listen, you can throw a baseball and make $11 million a year.
23:09And there was two guys a long time ago. Their names were Jackie Robinson and Larry Dolby.
23:15And baseball did this wonderful thing of providing opportunities. We have to do that.
23:25In 1975, African Americans filled 27% of the roster spots in the major leagues.
23:32In 2003, only one in ten big leaguers was black. The downward trend is most likely to continue.
23:39In the spring of 2003, about 150 premier high school players gathered at a private camp in Fort Myers, Florida,
23:46where each hoped to catch the eye of a scout. Just six of the prospects were African American.
23:51For SportsCentury, I'm Chris Fowler.
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