"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.

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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 cling 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 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 the

(02:19):
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
grey Buck O'Neill would so eloquently say, Doctor Martin Luther
King Junior was merely a sophomore at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia,

(02:42):
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 intensive purposes,
this is what started the ball of social progress rest
rolling in our country. Baseball and our country jumped on

(03:06):
the coattail 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, football,

(03:27):
track athlete than 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

(03:49):
that's not 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 emissed 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

(04:10):
was 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 a 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

(04:30):
who would help get Jackie 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

(04:50):
officer school. Jackie then moves 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

(05:13):
ever meet. I 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,

(05:34):
this is totally out of character for Jackie. As Buck
o'needle 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

(05:54):
the best player 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

(06:16):
I call a double difficult 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 old.
It could have been another ten, fifteen, twenty years or
more before another black man would have gotten an opportunity

(06:40):
to play in the 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 idagine our great sport

(07:02):
without those great stars, And if 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

(07:24):
better because we saw, incidentally, 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 Monte 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. And
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