Get history right on Jackie Robinson and Red Sox
WASHINGTONON MY WAY out of a moving ceremony last week on Capitol Hill honoring one of the civil rights movement's most important figures, I happened to overhear a casual remark by a television technician.
He told his friend that he hadn't known Jackie Robinson had come up with the Boston Red Sox and had thought he had played his baseball somewhere in New York.
It was a rare chance to see the impact of public relations overkill on history. Ironically, the event took place on a day when baseball's Hall of Fame once again turned a blind eye to history, declining entry to old timers central to the national pastime's past for the second year in a row.
Actually, the original thought of the TV guy was the correct one. But the occasion of the posthumous award of the Congressional Gold Medal (Congress's highest honor to an American) to the courageous athlete who made a lot more than baseball history nearly 60 years ago was weird.
The main speakers were Massachusetts congressman Richard Neal and Senator John Kerry. Their remarks were replete with laudatory references to the Red Sox and a certain event last fall that had nothing to do with civil rights or Jackie Robinson and was being celebrated that day with a Red Sox team visit to the White House.
For the record, Robinson made history and broke baseball's infamous color line in 1947 by taking the field at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers -- whose general manager, Branch Rickey, taught the nation the meaning of integration over the next four seasons by bringing in several African-Americans to play.
The Red Sox were involved last week because of its new owners' commendable desire to erase the team's deep stain of racism. It was under Tom Yawkey that one of the many sham ''tryouts" for black players occurred -- pathetic pseudo-events arranged by lily-white organizations to maintain the fiction that they weren't really prejudiced. One of the most infamous occurred just before the Dodgers signed Robinson at Fenway Park. One of the players the Red Sox never contacted again was Robinson; another was Sam Jethroe, the outfielder who was Rookie of the Year in the National League for the Boston Braves shortly after Robinson's historic debut.
Indeed the Red Sox not only were the last team to desegregate a dozen years after the Dodgers, the atmosphere of unfriendliness to people of color persisted at Fenway for years thereafter.
I was pleased to support the new owners' diligence in trying to erase this deep stain, which included an early role in launching the drive here to get Robinson his Gold Medal. But the PR got in the way of history last week.
The one person who got it right at the ceremony was a former partner in the Texas Rangers at the dawn of the steroid era -- President Bush, who was the ninth speaker and noted the lineup metaphor. The president correctly observed that the most important point was not that Robinson was the first, but that the intensity of his huge character made it work and changed his teammates, baseball, and the country. The still-amazing story, Bush said, ''shows what one person can do to hold America to account."
The president also was the only big shot to acknowledge the Dodgers, including the now-Los Angeles team's efforts to support the Robinson family foundation, which helps poor kids get through college.
Unlike the Massachusetts politicians, Bush also acknowledged another Massachusetts person -- Frank McCourt, the developer who now owns the Dodgers and has built upon the Dodgers' already well-known devotion to its unique past. At a reception later that day for Robinson's widow and children, McCourt showed class in ignoring the snubs to focus on his understanding of his role as ''steward" of a tradition that includes having shown America the way out of segregation nearly 20 years before it officially acted.
The day's joys were diminished, however, by the news that once again the Hall of Fame had rejected the man who played catcher on the day Jackie Robinson changed history. Gil Hodges went on to become the premier first baseman of baseball's Golden Era and the inspirational manager of the Miracle Mets of 1969.
Hodges was not alone in rejection this week by the establishment's so-called Veterans Committee -- Tony Oliva of the Minnesota Twins, Ron Santo of the Chicago Cubs, Maury Wills of the LA Dodgers, and Curt Flood of the Cardinals are some of the others ignored again.
Part of the magic that baseball still has in this era of TV football and NASCAR is the sense of generation-connecting history it exudes. Sometimes, as with Jackie Robinson, baseball gets it sort of right. But ignoring people who built the modern game without press agents and zillion-dollar contracts is self-defeating. As we used to say in Brooklyn, Wait'll next year.
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com.
