Black Sports: Jackie, can we go back to your early years? You starred in three sports-football, basketball and baseball. Why did you choose baseball? And what are your origins of your relationship with Branch Rickey?

Robinson: Well, I went to baseball after I played football. I played two years of professional football in the minor leagues because football was just like baseball at the time; you couldn’t get into professional sports-in any of ‘em at the time that we were getting out of school. I remember when Kenny Washington was playing. I always though Kenny was the greatest football player I’d ever seen. But still he couldn’t play in the East-West Shrine Game for charity out there. And then we were denied the opportunity of going into major league football. But even if I’d known that the barriers had broken down, I never would have played football; my legs and bones were not strong enough. I was constantly on crutches. So when I got the opportunity to go into baseball, I grabbed it.

Black Sports: Jackie, you talk about your legs not being strong enough. It didn’t seem that way when you were playing baseball; you never had any trouble.

Robinson: No, not playing baseball. I just think that, as a kid, I didn’t eat properly and my bones didn’t knit as well as others’; they weren’t as strong as other people’s. There were many times when we were at home, we would eat sweet water and bread and that kind of thing. I just didn’t have the proper food to develop my bones, and I am paying for t now-all of the pressures and strains on the leg. It’s caused me a considerable problem, and I can’t find out what’s wrong with them. But I believe that I had known that we were going to get into organized baseball, I would never have played all of the sports that I did. Because when you go from one spore to the others for the number of year that I did, it has got to take its toll. I firmly believe that you have only a certain number of hours or miles in you before the body gives out.

Black Sports: Knowing the inevitable pressures which accrued to your entrance into organized baseball; did you feel that your temperament was as great a determining factor as your ability to play the game?

Robinson: My temperament was such that I did what I had to do. You know when Mr. Rickey selected me, he did a lot of checking, so he tells me, on things that I had done in Pasadena. They did a thorough researching job on all of the people that he considered for it, and I did what I had to do. Even Mr. Rickey was saying that some of the things that he checked out on me, if I had been white, it would be absolutely nothing.

Black Sports: How did a young, hungry black kid like yourself, then, keep his aggressive temperament in check long enough to make the experiment work?

Robinson: Well, you had to know Mr. Rickey. You know, I would have done anything for him. He sat me down for three hours and explained to me what we had to do and what we would have to go through; that the only ay we’d win this battle was through the way we hit the ball, the way we ran the bases and the way that we caught the ball. “Those are the only things we have on our side,� he said. “Everybody is against us. And if we fight back in any other way, we will blow the whole deal.� I had so much respect and admiration for-the guy because, in my view, there were more pressures on Mr. Rickey than there were on me. I don’t know of any baseball owners that were on his side. He had trouble convincing hotel owners; he to succeed had trouble convincing his own team, his own ballclub. Many people were opposed to the Rickey ‘experiment, but he said, “It’s right and I’m going through with it.� I, at least, had him on my side. I, at least, had the commissioner of baseball working alongside of me. Mr. Rickey had very few people, at least as far as I know, that were helping him and the pressures had to be great on him. So I was willing to do whatever I had to do. He checked my background. I felt I was intelligent enough to know that even though I’m an aggressive black man and am proud of my Blackness, that we were to succeed and if this thing was going to move along fast enough the only way that it could fail was that I did not accept, and did not hold my tongue. If I fail as a ballplayer, well and good; they would have gotten another ballplayer. But if I had failed in the ability to get along with other players and if I failed in my ability to communicate in the right kind of way, then I think it would have been a much more difficult job. So, I listened. It was Mr. Rickey and my wife who were just fantastic being by my side and helping during the early crisis.

Black Sports: Was there any time factor set on the success of the experiment?

Robinson: No, there was not, as far as I knew, but he didn’t say we had to do it in any given time. I think it had failed within the first year, Montreal, say, if we had difficulties we couldn’t have gotten along, if I didn’t accept the kind of condition that were put down on us, although they ate us up inside, it would have held baseball back, in terms of the Blackman, for a number of years. They’re just scared to go out and have a Black guy. Basketball has done it. But Russell has proven successful, and Lenny Wilkins, too. And, you know there are so many guys that are doing extremely well. Here baseball is, wallowing around in the nineteenth century. If it hadn’t been, as I say, for the Black guy, where would baseball be today/ And yet, when he walks off the playing field, he doesn’t have a chance to go to that front office.

Black Sports: Jackie, how old are you at this time?

Robinson: Well, that was one of the problems; it was in 1946, and I was 25, 26 years of age.

Black Sports: You were a 25-year-old rookie?

Robinson: Well, yeah. By the time I knew about baseball, I’d reached my peak and was ready to go down hill. Mr. Rickey had said to me a number of times, “I certainly wish that I had you when you were 18, 19 years of age.� What we learned in those first three or four years was invaluable, and we were awfully quick to catch onto things.

Black Sports: Do you feel your best years in baseball were by you when you got to the major leagues?

Robinson: No, but my formative years were past. You see, it’s like anything else. You build; and you start building as a baseball player at 18, 19 years of age. When you get into organized baseball where they really develop you skills, you ought to be 18, 19 years of age. When you hit the minor leagues, and you have the ability, you ought to playing major league baseball at 21 or 22. Generally speaking, you don’t have more than five, six or eight good years. And you have those between 24 and 30, or something like that. By the time we were 30, we had learned all the things that we could apply. Had he been 24, 25, with the things that we learned, I believe, sincerely, that our contribution would even have been greater.

Black Sports: What do you mean when you say “we�?

Robinson: Well, I use it as an editorial “we.� I’m really talking about myself. It’s just a habit, you know?

Black Sports: You always read books about the nice Jackie Robinson, so I want you to tell me, what was your attitude? Where you a hard-nose guy at that point in you life?

Robinson: No. Let me say, I think the news media took it upon themselves to assign me a temperament because I would not accept, even then, in the early fifties, some of the things that the white newspapermen wanted me to accept. I don’t believe I have a bad temperament, at all. I just believe that I’m an aggressive athlete. Had I been white, I would have been just an aggressive, good baseball player, doing the things that I was doing. Being Black in the fifties and standing up and telling then that they were bigots, which they were, was pretty bold. And I tell them that today. You know, you run into a guy like Dick Young of the (New York) Daily News. Dick Young has always believed, in my opinion, that the Black man should accept everything. He believed hat if I didn’t, I would loose many awards. And I told him, to hell with his awards! What do you need the award for if you’ve got to accept things based upon what he likes, not what you like. So I think, very frankly, that I’ve been given this temperament. I’ve got a personality kind of a thing. I’m not an aggressive guy. I’m an introvert, I believe. I’m not outgoing in terms of people. And I’m learning it now. I just believe strongly in saying what needs to be said. And if they don’t like it, then that’s just too damn bad. And that’s the way I feel about it.

Check back on next week for Part 2 Exclusive with Jackie Robinson

Black Sports March 1972
Allan P. Barron Publication

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