He Don't Know Jackie
LAST, JONATHAN V.
He Don't Know Jackie A Hagiography of a Ballplayer Misses the Mark By Jonathan V. Last More and more, the world is driven by Events—Event movies, Event trials, and Event anniversaries, each one...
...Arnold Rampersad's Jackie Robinson is a furiously impressive piece of research...
...Rampersad shows us that after a youth in which he could do no wrong athletically, he proved to be a flop in almost all of his endeavors...
...In such an atmosphere, genuine milestones get the same treatment as Earth Day: an enormous splash of attention, a mad rush to make money, a climactic anniversary ceremony, and then it is time for the next Event...
...The Princeton professor has left little unsaid about his subject, from the intricacies of his athletic craft to the unappetizing details of his wedding night...
...Rampersad tries to paint Robinson as a vigorous statesman, but the truth is that for all his intelligence, he displayed no understanding of the political process nor any desire to learn...
...We can hear his high-pitched, agitated voice earnestly telling Nixon upon his retirement in 1962, "I hope that you will reconsider, Dick, because it is the great men people attack...
...Through a fabulous chain of circumstances, Jackie Robinson was chosen to be the first person to run the gantlet of segregation with the whole of America bearing witness...
...He was a hero...
...Whether it was the department store he started, the real-estate deals he made, the insurance company he founded, or his exploits in the political arena, Robinson was a failure in almost everything but life on the diamond...
...persad offers us too much information, he does so in dry and uninspiring prose...
...The final third of the book looks extensively at Robinson in his role of crusader for racial justice...
...He feels the need to clarify what he thinks Robinson really meant: "Robinson had taken upon himself to carry forward his people's struggle against injustice...
...Such seemed to be the case with the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut in the major leagues in April: a massive press blitz followed by silence...
...I am not carrying the cross for the Negro people...
...good for America...
...But now we are going to relive the event again, at least in the book review pages of the nation's press, because the first major biography of the ballplayer is just being released...
...Rampersad views Robinson with a sense of distanced awe, which, in the end, is vaguely demeaning...
...Rampersad, hearing words from the mind of a champion, cannot leave well enough alone...
...He has written a boring book about an extraordinary man...
...Maybe it's because I like to win more than some of the others...
...Jackie Robinson was not a great entrepreneur, or writer, or politician...
...Yes, we know that the Dodgers gradually grew to accept and eventually love Robinson, yet it is invigorating to read the account of the stir that was created when Ralph Branca caught Robinson in his arms as he fell into the dugout while chasing a foul ball...
...You are good for politics...
...And then, a few years later, with similar conviction, "If Nixon is elected president, we as Negroes are in serious trouble...
...he would not allow himself to fail his race or his country...
...In a 1953 interview, Robinson said of his increasingly frequent on-field outbursts, "Do they think I do things deliberately to harm my popularity...
...Maybe I take defeat harder...
...It is the middle passage that goes furthest toward educating the reader about Robinson, even though this is the phase of his life with which we are best aquainted...
...He Don't Know Jackie A Hagiography of a Ballplayer Misses the Mark By Jonathan V. Last More and more, the world is driven by Events—Event movies, Event trials, and Event anniversaries, each one bigger and more significant than the last...
...As great a second baseman as he was, he was hor-rendously naive and politically immature, yet he felt himself fit to hold forth on politics regularly, both in speeches and in his newspaper columns...
...At whatever cost to his happiness, he would continue to scream when he felt pain, lash back when unfairly attacked, shout the truth in the face of power...
...Robinson's greatness was not that he was all of the things Rampersad wants him to be, but that he was none of those things and yet still answered his call...
...I do them to win...
...Rampersad divides his book into three acts: Robinson's life before, during, and after baseball...
...It was his burden that he was not an avenging angel, or a saint, or a martyr, but simply a man, and we forget sometimes how terribly difficult that can be...
...The story of Robinson's life is sadder still...
...But while RamJonathan V. Last is research associate at The Weekly Standard and editor-in-chief of the webzine Squire: The Magazine for Washington's Water-Carriers, which can be found at www.squiremag.com...
...I do them emotionally...
...Rampersad views Robinson as an avenging angel of race relations...
...He may have pioneered the Elvis Presley form of executive communique, sending telegrams to sitting presidents telling them what he thought of current events and what actions he expected of them...
Vol. 3 • October 1997 • No. 4
