Aesthetic
Realism seminar:
"Care for Yourself & Justice to Others;
Do They
Have to Fight?" Part 2
with a
discussion about Branch Rickey
By Michael
Palmer
Thomas said, “If I could
just get the color off I’d be as good as anybody else.” Outraged at the
terrible injustice Thomas had met, Rickey tried to console him, saying,
”a time will come when there’ll be equal opportunity for all” And
he vowed, “Tommy, we’ll lick this one day.”
Three years later, at the age of 25, Rickey married Jane Moulten, the daughter
of a well-to-do store-owner in his hometown. She and her family were hoping
Rickey would have a more stable career than in baseball, perhaps in business
or law, but they soon saw where his heart was. The Rickey’s honeymoon turned
out to be a road trip to four cities for his St. Louis team. Writes biographer
Murray Polner, “It allowed Jane... to see how much the game meant to her
husband and his ability as a teacher.”
II. A FIGHT BETWEEN FAIRNESS
AND ACQUISTION
In his essay “Justice Near
and Far,” Eli Siegel points to a deep fight in every person and very much
in Branch Rickey:
"Man is an acquisitive
and careless being, but his deepest desire, akin to his desire for happiness,
is to be fair to the other realities accompanying him in this world."
As an executive with the Browns
and then the St. Louis Cardinals in the early 1900’s, Branch Rickey showed
his great care for baseball in his ability to encourage and teach young
players and come up with ideas to improve the game. He was the first to
have a team go to spring training in Florida, and he developed training
techniques—such as sliding pits-- that are still used. Meanwhile, he also
created the farm system where players skills are honed in the minor leagues
so they’d be ready for major league careers. While the Cardinals
farm system made for outstanding teams in the late 1920’s and 30’s, it
also showed Rickey as “an acquisitive and careless being.” He was able
to form a monopoly tying up players to minor league teams for years in
the Cardinals organization even when they were good enough to play in the
major leagues with other teams. Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain
Landis called the practice “outrageous and a form of slavery.” Landis was
right and many players’ careers were ruined by their being tied to one
team for years. Rickey was choosing wrong care for himself--profits and
acquisition--over justice. Mr. Siegel writes about this fight in
the self:
"History consists
largely of man’s attempts to acquire what he sees as justice for himself
with the rather clever desire of not giving it to another."
Over these years, Rickey, like
other baseball executives, did what he could to discourage the formation
of a players union and he got the reputation for paying players as little
as possible. Biographer Lee Lowenfish wrote:
"Branch Rickey was
an old hand at dealing with players wanting more money and he was serenely
confident of being able to use his verbal skills to talk down any player’s
salary demands to a level more to his liking."
This was a tremendously unjust
and ugly thing, and I do not think that deeply Rickey was “serenely confident.”
Rickey was in a huge fight between a genuine love for the game and a narrow,
contemptuous desire to get what could just for himself. In an Aesthetic
Realism Consultation, he might have been asked. “What effect do you think
this fight had on you?” During these years, Rickey suffered from Meniere’s
Disease—an inner ear ailment that causes vertigo, nausea and a general
lack of balance. And, as time went on, he had periodic heart trouble as
well.
III. JUSTICE AS AN INSTINCT
IS THERE
In TRO 591, Eli Siegel wrote:
"The desire for
good sense in every field is an instinct: there is a possibility of it
at the time we are born, and it’s always there."
The desire for good sense was
also in Rickey. As he moved from St. Louis in late 1942 to take over as
General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Rickey felt there was something
big missing in his life, and remembering how Charles Thomas had been treated
some 40 years earlier, he began the process of getting a Black player for
the Dodgers. Said Rickey, “The Negro in America was legally, but not morally
free.” This was true of baseball in the segregation horribly practiced
for so many years. I remember seeing it graphically when I was a boy while
in our family car as we drove past Yankee Stadium. I was surprised to see
the Stadium lights on because I knew the Yankees were on the road. When
I asked my father who was playing, he told me “the Black Yankees of the
Negro League.” I had read about the accomplishments of legendary players
in that league such as Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson and knew there was
something terribly wrong that they had to play segregated, with little
or no publicity and very few fans as was the case that day. But I wasn’t
as angry at this injustice as I should have been.
About this time, in late 1945, after convincing the conservative Dodger
ownership that segregation in baseball had to end, Branch Rickey sent a
top aide to scout Jackie Robinson in a Negro League game in Chicago. Rickey
had heard of Robinson’s ability and knew that he had also excelled in other
team games at UCLA—in track, football and basketball. And he knew that
in the Army during the war, Robinson had been unjustly charged with conduct
unbecoming an officer for refusing to move to the rear of a segregated
bus at a Texas army base. Told of Robinson’s fight for vindication, Rickey
had big respect. “A man of ideals,” he said,“ a battler.”
Several months later, Rickey invited Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers office
at 215 Montague Street in Downtown Brooklyn. This was 9 years before the
landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Ruling; 18 years before
Dr. King would lead the valiant protests in Alabama.
In “Justice Near and Far”
Mr. Siegel wrote:
"Man will not be
fully human until he is interested in justice with great intensity and
with the comprehen- siveness which does not wish to miss any of its forms."
Rickey
showed some of that intensity in the meeting with Robinson. He began by
saying, “I’m interested in bringing you into the Dodger system.” ”Then,
surprisingly, he asked, “Do you have a girl? Robinson said, “Yes, her name
is Rachel and we intend to be married.” “Good, ”said Rickey heartily,
He felt Robinson would need that support in what lay ahead. Rickey knew
that Robinson would be the target of terrible abuse and insults and he
was worried that if Robinson fought back it would—in his words—“set the
cause back a hundred years.” And Rickey asked Robinson to ignore the insults,
the abuse, and not respond for three years. He thought it to be clever
strategy, but I think he was also deeply ashamed. He was asking this man,
Jackie Robinson to endure horrible abuse in silence for three years.
click here for Part 3
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