"The First Guy Cannot Fail": The Jackie Robinson Story

On this episode of Our American Stories, Bob Kendrick, President of the Negro Baseball Leagues Museum, tells the story of a man who started in Kansas City, made his way to Brooklyn, and swept across the nation.

Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, a
story from Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro League's Baseball
Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. Today, Bob shares with us
a story that started in Kansas City, made its way
to Brooklyn, and then became a phenomenon nationwide. Take it away, Bob.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Many of the great changes that occurred in our society
occurred as a result of Jackie Robinson's breaking of Major
League Baseball's color area. Well, Jackie Robinson's illustrious professional baseball
career began right here in Kansas City nineteen forty five.
I think people think that Jackie just walked out of

(00:54):
nowhere and started playing for the Brooklyn Dodges. But his
real rookie season was here in Kansas City and the
three months because he didn't play a full year, but
the three months that he played here in Kansas City,
he fell in love with everything that Kansas City is
famous for, barbecue and jazz. He liked the ribs at

(01:14):
a place called Old Kentuck Barbecue. Old Kentuck Barbecue would
become the forerunner of the Great Gates Barbecue chain of
restaurants that are world renowned to this day. And while
New Orleans may lay claim to jazz, it was Kansas
City that gave jazz a soul. And by the end

(01:36):
of that forty five season, Jackie had literally disappeared. His
teammates had no idea where he was. Well, as we know,
he had been summoned away to meet branch Rickey, and
the two of them would meet there in Brooklyn and

(01:57):
make the epic decision that Jackie Robinson and would become
Baseball's chosen one, the man that would break Major League
Baseball's six decade long self imposed color barrier. Jackie Robinson's
breaking of the color barrier was not only a part
of the civil rights movement, it was the beginning of

(02:19):
the civil rights movement in this country. This is nineteen
forty seven, so this is before Brown versus the Board
of Education. This is before Rosa Park's refusal to move
to the back of the bus. As my dear friend
of late Gray Buck O'Neill would so eloquently say, Doctor
Martin Luther King Junior was merely a sophomore at Morehouse

(02:40):
College in Atlanta, Georgia, when Jackie signed his contract to
play in the Dodgers organization. Our very own President Truman
would not integrate the armed forces until a year after Jackie. So,
for all intentsive purposes, this is what started the ball
of social product gress rolling in our country. Baseball and

(03:05):
our country jumped on the coketail of baseball. And so
it was the great city of Kansas City and the
Negro Leagues that gave America arguably its greatest hero in
Jackie Robinson. And baseball was Jackie Robinson's weakest sport. He
was a much better basketball and football track athlete than

(03:28):
he was baseball player, and some say an even better
tennis player. And so people will say, well, was he
the best player in the negro leagues? No, he was
the right player in the negro leagues. Baseball was his
weakest sport. So there were other negro leaguers who were
far superior baseball players to Jackie Robinson. And that's not

(03:49):
to disparass Jackie Robinson, because Jackie Robinson is one of
the greatest athletes in American history. There was nothing that
Jackie couldn't do. This just speaks simply to the he
immissed talent that was there in the negro leagues. And
these were veteran ball players who had been playing the
game of baseball much longer than Jackie had. Jackie was

(04:10):
relatively new to the game of baseball. He had played
at UCLA and then he continued to play while he
was serving in the US Army little bit of Fort Riley, Kansas.
He was stationed there, and you know who was with him,
the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Joe Lewis. And
it would beat Joe Lewis who would help get Jackie

(04:32):
Robinson into officer school. Fort Riley wasn't admitting blocks into
his officer school program at that time, and Joe Lewis,
who had been doing exhibition prize fights to help raise
money for the Armed forces, called in some favors and
that's how Jackie gets into officer school. Jackie then moves

(04:53):
over to Fort Hood in Texas, where he was court
martial for refusing to give up his seat to a
white officer on the bus. And so for Jackie Robinson
to take the abuse that he took, this was totally
out of character for him. Jackie Robinson was as fiery
and feisty an individual as you will ever meet. I

(05:14):
think there is this belief that Ricky wanted somebody who
wouldn't fight back, and he absolutely needed someone who wouldn't
fight back. But the fact that Jackie wouldn't fight back
has nothing to do with the fact that Jackie wasn't
a fierce competitor and very fiery personality. He humbled himself
for the greater good. As I said, this is totally

(05:35):
out of character for Jackie. As buc O'Neal would say,
Jackie Robinson could duke and would duke. He knock you
on your rump. But again he humbled himself for the
greater good. And so Jackie's story is so prolific in
so many ways. So, no, he wasn't the best player

(05:55):
in the Negro leagues, but he was the right player.
Because you have to understand that the first guy cannot fail.
First guy fails, there is no second guy, and so
there was an immense amount of pressure on getting this right.
So Branch Ricky had what I call a double difficult

(06:19):
task of identifying the right guy, because if Jackie Robinson
cannot take the abuse, the experiment is over. If he
can't play, the experiment is over. It could have been
another ten, fifteen, twenty years or more before another black
man would have gotten an opportunity to play in the

(06:40):
major leagues. Think about it, if it's twenty years or later,
Think about the great stars we would have missed. We
would have missed Willie Mays, We would have missed Henry Aaron,
Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, Roberto Clemente, Bob Gibson. Can you
imagine our great sport without those great stars, And if

(07:05):
you can, you can imagine what it was like before
nineteen forty seven because they didn't learn how to play
baseball after nineteen forty seven, and so had the doors
opened similarly, there is no question that the record books
would be entirely different. But even more so, our sport
would have been that much better because we saw instantly

(07:27):
what happened after nineteen forty seven, when all of a sudden,
this black and brown talent could now flow into the
major leagues. What happens our game got better?

Speaker 1 (07:39):
And a special thanks to Monty Montgomery for the production
and Katrina Hinde for sending this story to us. Also
a very special thanks to Bob Kendrick, president of the
Negro League's Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. What a
story Jackie's career starts in nineteen forty five in Kansas City.

(08:00):
He falls in love with jazz and barbecue like anyone
who would spend some time there at the time. It
wasn't until forty seven, though, that while history changes in
America and Bob was right, it wasn't a part of
the Civil rights movement. What happened in Brooklyn at EBITs
Field it was the beginning of the civil rights movement.
And imagine that this was his weakest sport, Jackie Robinson.

(08:22):
We all laughed when we heard that. He was the
first guy. So he had to be the right guy,
because if the first guy failed, there's no second guy.
And it was a double whammy on Jackie. He had
to be able to take the abuse and at the
same time he had to be able to play. In
my goodness, he met both of those standards, exceeded them,

(08:46):
and changed American history. Brown v Board would come after.
The integration of the Army would come after. This was
the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. The story of
Jackie Robinson as told by Bob Kendrick here on Our
American Story