Sometimes a serendipitous encounter can result in the discovery of a journalistic jewel right in your own backyard.
I was fortunate to find one — while researching Farrington’s 1965 football championship story, “The day the Govs won it all …” — in author and legendary Associated Press writer and foreign bureau chief Jim Becker.
I spoke — in this case I listened — to the 95-year-old Becker in December because I wanted to hear his stories of the Dalai Lama, the tragedy of the 1972 Munich Olympics and Jackie Robinson — with the possibility of turning some of those into column topics.
On Tuesday, Becker called to remind me that Jackie Robinson Day is Friday and I should run that story “because I’m 95 years old!”
Becker, who speaks with a strong, confident baritone voice, has a total recall.
“I was 20 on Jackie’s first day,” he said. “I’m sure everybody on the field that day is gone.”
He said that Robinson played the year before in the International League for the Montreal Royals — corroborating a hand-written letter sent to me from an 87-year-old Army war veteran living in Kakaako who said he was there to see Robinson play on April 18, 1946, in Jersey City, N.J., against the Jersey City Giants.
Becker even recalled the position Robinson he played and his batting average while with the Royals.
But all that was a predecessor to the day major-league baseball stood still.
Here’s how Becker remembered it.
Under pressure
“On April 15, 1947, I think it was a Tuesday afternoon (it was), 1 o’clock game. It would be the official day he would break the major league color line.
“We knew it was important. We didn’t realize how important it turned out to be.
“We knew — the writers — we knew almost half the Brooklyn team had signed a petition that they didn’t want to play with Robinson, play with a black man.
And that they had met with (manager) Leo Durocher in his suite on Saturday night and they gave him the petition. And Durocher, who was about as foul-mouthed as anyone I knew, said to them, I would play an elephant if he would help me win. But this guy ain’t no elephant. (He’s) a better ball player than any man in this room. And he said, furthermore, get used to it, because there’s a lot more where he came from, and they’re better than you are, too. Get out of my room.”
“The press guy for the Brooklyn club told us that and asked us not to publish it, but he wanted us to know what pressure Robinson was under.”
Ultimate athlete
“I grew up in Los Angeles, and I had seen Robinson in college, UCLA, in his senior year. Robinson, without much dispute, was the greatest all-around athlete that ever lived.
“Robinson was the best football running back in the country, he was the best basketball player in the United States. I saw him do things on the basketball court that I didn’t see for 30 years until Elgin Baylor. He broke the NCAA long jump record and he ran the sprints. He played baseball, of course, four-letter man, he won two tennis tournaments in southern California during at a time when all of the tennis players were centered in that area.
“He once he told me that tennis was his favorite sport, because it was one-on-one.”
“And he was the Pacific Coast Conference golfing champion. He left school in summer of ’41 and he came to Hawaii and spent four months here, played 18 games in the old Honolulu Stadium.”
The enduring day
“That morning, there were three of us from the AP who went to cover it. I remember getting there about 11 o’clock in morning and I was on the field by the batting practice cage in Ebbets Field.
“So here we are opening day, and we knew that a large number of ball players on the team don’t want him. And players are walking out of the first base dugout. And they were coming out 1 or 2 at a time with their gloves and ready to pepper.
“And all of a sudden out of that dugout came one guy, and he was very black — and they wore the starched white uniforms they wore in those days, flannel, it was sparkling white and the season was just starting — and I looked at him and a chill ran up my spine. Still does.
“And I thought, this magnificent athlete — and I knew he was because I’ve seen him. This courageous man, he is carrying the banner of dignity and decency and fair play and the American promise. He’s carrying for all of us in this stadium and for the millions yet unborn.
“And he is carrying it alone.”
“I still remember it. I thought, ‘How can he do it?”
Postgame and beyond
“I talked to him before the game. I talked to him after the game. He went hitless although he laid down a bunt that could have been scored a hit in today because of the first baseman of the Boston club threw the damn thing into the right field and Robinson went on to second base and he scored a run.
“Robinson always said he wanted to be treated like everybody else. Just another ball player. Sort of like Marlin Luther King wanted people to be judged by the quality of their character rather than the color of their skin.
“I asked, ‘You went hitless. Was it Opening Day nerves?”
“’No, I went hitless because Johnny Sain was pitching.”
“I talked to him several times during the season. Covered a lot of his games.
“The St. Louis Cardinals threatened to strike rather than play against Robinson. (Commissioner) Ford Frick said if they strike, he would ban every player.”
“We knew it was important,” Becker said Tuesday. “We didn’t realize it was this important. That would be the opening gun in the campaign for civil rights and would become an important calendar day.”
