Baseball's Other Color Barrier
GREENFELD, KARL TARO
Baseball's Other Color Barrier Extra Innings By Frank Robinson and Berry Stainback McGraw Hill. 270pp. $16.95. Reviewed by Karl Taro Greenfeld Contributor, New York "Times Book Review,"...
...Can blacks get hired in the minors...
...My appointment wasahistoricmoment...
...But Frank refused, out of fear that he would be labeled a troublemaker...
...Robinsonpointsoutthat"inthepast40 years there have been hundreds of managerial changes in major league baseball, yet only three black men were judged worthy of hiring in that time...
...How does one get experience...
...in RBIs, seven of the top 12...
...Robinson has for many years been a great figure in the game—one of the greatest of all time...
...See Catch-22...
...Extra Innings goes far toward rectifying Robinson's past silence...
...You telling me we don't have a black today who's qualified to manage in the major leagues...
...Black players are told they can't manage in the majors because of a lack of experience (despite the fact that plenty of white managers have never guided a minor league team—Lou Piniella, Pete Rose, George Bamberger, and Whitey Herzog, to name only a few...
...in hits, 10 of the top 13...
...Baseball, for Robinson, is properly thedomainof intelligent, hardworking, hustling players and managers...
...No big league club has hired a black general manager ever...
...At present there are two black managers in the major leagues—Robinson (now with the Baltimore Orioles), and Cookie Rojas, a black Hispanic...
...His playing and managerial honors include a Triple Crown, a World Series Most Valuable Player Award, first ballot induction into baseball's Hall of Fame, and a Manager of the Year Award...
...in home runs, six of the top 10...
...But more significant than all that for Robinson—and for his fellow blacks— was his simply having been chosen manager of the Cleveland Indians in 1975...
...In Extra Innings Frank Robinson drives home the point with respect to baseball...
...The shame on baseball," he makes us aware, "is that anyone has to holler in the first place...
...Baseball is a sport where performance can easily be measured by statistics, and the statistics show that in the 25 years between 1947—when Jackie Robinson became the first of his race to play in the major leagues—and 1972, black and Hispanic players established themselves as a dominant force on the diamond...
...Extra Innings says on its cover that it is the "grand slam response to AI Campanis' controversial remarks about blacks in baseball," and it lives up to this description...
...Although he got the sack for his remarks, he was merely stating what has obviously been the received opinion in the upper echelons of baseball organizations for years...
...The only regret I have in my heart today," he tells us, "is that I didn't speak out a whole lot more about baseball's injustices to blacks...
...It's all alibis, what they give you...
...It was a great day for baseball...
...By managing in the minor leagues...
...Jackie Robinson overcame Jim Crow barriers on the field years before legislation finally guaranteed his rights at polling places and colleges, in hospitals and on park benches...
...Perhaps if the coaches' and managers' ranks were fully integrated, front offices might follow—and corporate America, too...
...During Frank Robinson's playing days, Jackie Robinson asked him to help make a public issue of the condition of blacks in baseball, including the fact that off the field there was barely any camaraderie with whites...
...Anything that stands in the way of using one's ability is anathema to him, whether it be cocaine, foul play or racism...
...The list goes on and on...
...Even in the hiring of players blacks face discrimination," he declares...
...in total bases, eightof thetop 11...
...Look at the managers...
...The criticisms he makes in it are persuasive and forceful...
...Yet the reader of Extra Innings is impressed not so much by Robinson's anger at this state of affairs as by his love of and concern for the sport of baseball...
...Reviewed by Karl Taro Greenfeld Contributor, New York "Times Book Review," "Spy" A well-wisher once looked in on Louis Armstrong backstage at Birdland and asked him, "How's it goin' Louis...
...Heisvexed by the corked bats and scuffed balls that have always been apart of the game, as well as by the drug use among players that has emerged as a serious problem in the '80s...
...Satchmo replied, "White folks still in the lead...
...Other blacks have addressed themselves to unfairness in the sports world, but Frank Robinson's voice is among the loudest and clearest...
...In about every case when a roster decision has to be made between two players of equal talent, one white, the other black, the white player will be kept and the black sent packing...
...it had taken the major leagues more than a quarter of a century before summoning up the decency to hire the first black manager...
...Well, if baseball is our "national pastime," then it should also be a symbol of this country's supposed commitment to equality...
...In even, measured tones, Frank Robinson recounts the efforts of numerous qualified blacks to obtain managerial employment after their playing careers were over, only to be repeatedly rebuffed...
...The good-field, nohit player is almost always white...
...In runs scored, nine of the top 12 players were black or Hispanic...
...You don't have to be a genius to figure it out," he quotes fellow player George Scott as saying...
...I doubt that any press conference introducing a new manager was attended by as many members of the media as was mine," he recalls...
...Last year, on the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking the color barrier at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field, Al Campanis, vice president for player personnel with the Los Angeles Dodgers, told Nightline host Ted Koppel that blacks "lack the necessities" to manage or hold decision-making jobs in baseball...
...And through 1987, only one American-bom black has been allowed to coach third base in the majors...
...If that'strue, then this country is in a world of trouble...
...He wants the sport to be kept clean and fair, both on and off thefield...
...He enjoys the distinction of being the only man ever named Most Valuable Player in both leagues...
...Writing about his boyhood days in Oakland or of the time he has spent coaching young ballplayers, he takes on a sweet, almost paternalistic tone...
...Is it petty to worry about inequality in baseball when there are still great disparities between blacks and whites in health care, education, housing, and income...
...At the conclusion of their playing careers, however, blacks have found that there is little future for them in baseball...
...Policies for hiring managers were blatantly discriminatory before 1947, and they have not changed much since...
...racism...
...The bottom line is...
Vol. 71 • September 1988 • No. 15
