An Interview with Jonathan Eig
Just in time for the sixtieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first appearance with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Jonathan Eig has recently released Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season
BrokenCowboy
I wanted to start out with this. When I was growing up I was a huge baseball fan, and I learned about baseball history -- and just American history, I think -- by reading biographies. And so as a young black boy growing up, Jackie Robinson’s story obviously had some special appeal to me. So I was curious -- what drew you to the story? What about Jackie Robinson’s story really touched you or made you want to pursue this?
Jonathan Eig
It wasn’t the baseball at all, it was the history. Like you, I learned about prohibition by learning about Babe Ruth, right? All I read was baseball stuff, so what little history I absorbed was through the baseball books. I think I can relate to that. And with Jackie Robinson’s story, I just became really curious about what it was like in ‘47, what that particular year was like. Because I knew all the stories about him, I knew all the myths. I knew all about his career with the Dodgers and the World Series, but as I got older what really got me going was thinking about this friendship with Pee Wee Reese. It’s probably what sparked the idea for me. When I realized that they weren’t such good friends in ‘47, that Jackie was really alone for that first year -- later on it got easier -- for that first year he was all alone. I wondered what it was like -- where did he live that year? I didn’t know any of that stuff, so I just became really fascinated by that.
BC
Obviously there have been a lot of books written about Jackie Robinson. What inspired you to do another one? I know that your angle here is a little bit different, but what made you think you could bring something new to the picture that we have of Jackie Robinson?
Eig
It was a challenge, there has been so much written. But I felt like lately over the years we’ve tended to mythologize him, and I felt like it was time for somebody to sort of scrape the barnacles off the story and look for the truth, just get at the bones of it. I felt like if you just focused on a really tight time period, on one year, you could really get beyond the baloney and find out just what happened. Just stick to the facts. And I was also intrigued by the fact that, you know, Rachel Robinson was still around, and she wasn’t going to be forever. She cooperated on a biography ten years ago, and it was a good biography, very good, but nobody had ever tried to force their way into that apartment with her and ask what their life was like as newlyweds, and I thought if I could get her to open up I might have a shot at doing something different.
BC
What was your writing process like? If you could just walk me through when you got the idea, when you started, what the research was like, and when you sat down to start writing.
Eig
I had to do the whole thing a lot faster than I wanted to because of the anniversary coming up. So I would say it was the summer of ‘05 when I started noodling along with this idea of doing something on Jackie and Pee Wee, and it fell apart when I realized the friendship wasn’t strong enough to sustain a book. But I kept coming back to Jackie over and over, and at the end of ‘05 it suddenly dawned on me that if Pee Wee wasn’t his friend, then he didn’t have any friends, and maybe that’s the story. Maybe the story is before he’s accepted, and how does he get accepted? It occurred to me that you could capture that whole thing by writing about his rookie season. And I didn’t even know much about that season. Off the top of my head I didn’t know that they went to the World Series that year, and when I found out they went to the Series, I realized that you’d have probably enough good baseball action to sustain the drama. So as a storyteller, I felt like I had a decent narrative arc there, and then I had to go about figuring out how I could tell the story, and what information was out there, and whether I would have anything new to say, and whether Rachel would cooperate. So I spent about four or five months just doing library research and interviews, calling all the old-timers before they croaked, and trying to get Rachel to cooperate. She was hesitant in her willingness to cooperate. She agreed to do a telephone interview, and eventually she opened up and started spending more time with me. So I would say I started writing in March of ‘06. I was still doing a lot of research as I went along, but I had to really slam. I wrote it basically in nine months, full-time. I wasn’t doing any other work, no newspaper work, no magazine work, just nine months from the first chapter to the last, and that was rough. I never want to have to go that fast again.
BC
Just for comparison’s sake, how long did the Gehrig book take?
Eig
It was more than three years. I was working at the Journal for much of that time, so I was doing nights and weekends, and that was also before we had kids. Once the kids came along...
BC
I know how that goes... And so what about Rachel? What was she like? Did she open up as much as you hoped?
Eig
Yeah, but it took her a long time to get her to. She was a tough interview. She’s been so protective of his image and protective of the story, and she’s kind of found ways that she likes to tell it, and she tells it the same way over and over. It took a long time before I wore her down and showed her that I was really doing some original research. I would send her clippings that I found in the newspapers, for example, like pictures of her getting her hair done before a big game in the World Series. I was able to figure out the name of the women they lived with that year, when they rented this room in an apartment, and she could never remember the name. In all these interviews I’d noticed, and even in the official biography, she couldn’t remember the name of the person they lived with, and I found it, and I mailed it to her. So I started to get her to open up by showing her that I was really taking it seriously and that I knew a lot about what her life had been like.
BC
I guess, like you’re saying, when you’re promoting a book you can kind of get tired of it, and she’s been promoting this story for sixty years, so I guess it’s not surprizing that she would be skeptical of each new person knocking on her door.
Eig
Sure, and the last thing she wants to do is open up to somebody who has some ulterior motive and wants to make Jackie out to be a creep. Maybe some people think that’s a good way to sell a book, by writing a slam job. I had to show her that wasn’t my intention.
BC
Because you were focusing on 1947 and your goal was, like you said, to demythologize the story, you focused on firsthand accounts. I’m interested in what that process was like. You’re looking back sixty years, so I assume you used a lot of newspaper clippings, like you mentioned, and spoke to a lot of people. How did they respond? You were also asking them to the look back sixty years. What was that like?
Eig
It was very interesting, first of all, to read the old newspaper clippings, because they didn’t cover it very well. The white papers didn’t cover it very well at all; they pretty much blew the story. So it was fascinating to read that and see what they did right and what they did wrong, and how Robinson was perceived by the press. I think most people had no idea what he was going through because the white papers did such a bad job of covering it. And that’s one reason he becomes mythologized later, because as we go back and we make up the story ten years later when he retires, we gotta tell it from scratch because nobody told it properly. But then tracking down these old timers was really fun and interesting. There were two kinds of old timers: there were the ballplayers, and then there were the average Joes who were fans who watched him play and watched him shape their lives. The ballplayers tend to lie through their teeth. They’ve been telling the stories over and over at cocktail parties...
BC
And then they have something to gain as well. It would be difficult, I would think, to say, “Yeah, I played with Jackie and I hated him.” Especially now -- he’s on stamps, you know what I mean? There’s Jackie Robinson Day!
Eig
That’s right. Bobby Bragan, to his credit, says, “Look, I was a white supremacist. I believed that blacks were inferior, and I didn’t want to play with him. I thought it would be miserable for my family, I thought it would be hell to have to go home and explain this, that’s just the truth. I did everything I could to get him off the team, I admit it.” He now, of course, has realized the error of his ways. But then there are a lot of other ballplayers who want to make it sound like they were Jackie’s best friend in ‘47, and they were there for him, when really nobody was in ‘47. Later, some of these guys became friendly with him.
BC
One thing I liked about this book, and I guess maybe the story in general, is that all the elements of fiction are there. You have interesting characters, you have a setting that’s important, you have a plot that’s obviously great. I want to talk about the characters, first with Branch Rickey. It seems like his image has changed a lot over the years. When I was first reading about him thirty years ago he was this paragon of virtue who righted a wrong -- everyone should have a chance to play because this is America. And then revisionist history came along, and maybe he was exploiting Jackie Robinson. Maybe he just wanted the best team out there. Maybe he wanted to play this great player the league minimum. But it seems like from your book that probably a little bit of both is true. Is that an accurate portrayal of him?
Eig
Yeah, I think he’s a very complicated guy, and I love that. I love my characters to be complicated. Jackie’s a very complicated guy, he’s not perfect. But Branch Rickey definitely wanted to make money, and he definitely couldn’t stand to pay Robinson a penny more than he had to even though he knew what he was putting him through, and he knew how much money he was making. And he wanted to do the right thing and promote civil rights at a time when it really wasn’t on too many people’s agenda. So I like him, for all his warts.
BC
I think that’s one thing that surprized me. I expected to be reading that Rickey just wanted to make money. It was interesting that was doing the right thing. It helped him out, too, but he was still doing the right thing.
Eig
Yeah, there were a lot of other ways he could’ve made money, and he was probably already making enough. It was actually a big risk to take on Robinson. A lot of people thought he wouldn’t make money by doing it, that he’d scare away white fans. So I think he had to have believed in it to take that gamble.
BC
We talked about Rachel Robinson a little bit earlier. Tell me if I’m wrong, but I don’t know that Jackie could’ve put up with what he did, or done what he did, without her at home. Maybe that’s a little too extreme, but it seems like she was definitely an important part of the story.
Eig
I think she was a real hero. She always sort of fancied herself an amateur psychologist, and I think her talents in that area were really put to use that year. Jackie was an explosive guy, and was really under the gun -- and that part of the story is well known -- he was very close at times to punching someone’s lights out. But she, all season long, had this strategy for keeping him happy and keeping him calm. I think that she was such a good listener and able to get him to talk about his feelings in a way that not a lot of people would have been able to do, not to mention keeping the home a happy place. He had no real comfort zone that year. The clubhouse was hostile, the ballparks were sometimes hostile. When he went on the road he didn’t have a place to stay, but home, that tiny little shell of a room, she made it feel like home.
BC
And Jackie Robinson. When I read about him when I was ten, he was “the man brave enough not to fight back.” That was the Branch Rickey Directive, I guess, be brave enough not to fight back, and nothing bothered him. But you were able to see, like you said, that there were many layers to him. How difficult was this for him? What kind of a sense were you able to get from the people that you spoke with? I kept wondering as I was reading it, “Is he gonna give up?” You know what I mean? You know he’s not, you know he’s gonna make it through, but is this gonna be too much for him? Did you feel like there were any moments like that?
Eig
I think the first month or so when he wasn’t hitting, because he really needed to perform to keep his ego healthy, to know that he could take the abuse, because he was proving something. But when he wasn’t hitting, I think he had a lot of doubts, and I think he came close to exploding because so much counted on him coming through, not only for his family but for all these people watching him. And when he felt like he was letting them down, that was the closest he came. There were people out there who really wanted to get him out of the game. People really thought that if they could get rid of him, they’d buy some time. They could keep blacks out of baseball for a while. He felt it, and he knew what they were doing, and he knew that he had to hit to make it all work. Biting his tongue and turning the other cheek wouldn’t matter if he was a .187 hitter.
BC
Right. Now looking at him just as a player, so much has been made of how he brought the Negro League style to the National League. He was aggressive on the base paths and bunting and stealing home and all of this. How different was he really? There must’ve been other fast guys playing in the National League at that time. Was he that much faster, or was he just playing the game differently?
Eig
It was different style. He wasn’t that much faster. Pete Reiser, his own teammate, was much faster actually, and Reiser stole home more than Jackie did in his career. But what Jackie did was taunt. He had some speed, and he had great instinct for running the bases, but what he did was put it in your face. He stole bases when the game was already out of hand, when they had the lead and didn’t need to steal the base, because he knew it would piss people off. That’s how he got his anger out. And he took these big leads, and these big turns, because he wanted to taunt. He wanted the outfielder to throw behind him so then he could sneak in to second. It was his way of releasing some of that frustration, I think.
BC
It seemed like a style, but a style designed for a point, for a purpose. As I was reading it reminded me of a story about Willie Mays. He said that he always wore his hat a size or two too large, so that it would fly off as he raced into second for a double and he’d have to stop and walk back and get it, and the crowd would be going crazy.
Eig
Right. Jackie easily could’ve not called as much attention to himself. And Branch Rickey could’ve picked a player who wouldn’t have called as much attention to himself. If you pick a home run hitter, you know, a Roy Campanella type. He’s just gonna single, hit a home run, he’s not gonna do anything daring out there. You end up with a much safer approach to this integration.
BC
And from everything that we know about Branch Rickey, that seems like that’s more what he would’ve wanted. Like you said, it is a risk if you have Jackie Robinson dancing around on the bases and angering people, there is a risk in that, and maybe it would’ve been safer to take Campanella or Monte Irvin, or someone like that.
Eig
I think that’s Rickey’s greatest move. He had the courage to not only integrate, but to do it in a very daring way that would send a message. We’re not taking this thing casually.
BC
And make it exciting enough that people would notice, that people would want to come and watch.
Eig
And to set an image that a black ballplayer is not just a go-along, get-along kind of guy, but also brave and strong and courageous. That’s important.
BC
So we’ve talked about the characters, now the setting. There were two parts to it that I thought were really interesting, that I hadn’t thought of. Several people in the book talk about how Brooklyn might’ve been the perfect place for this experiment, I guess just because of the diversity and the immigrant population. What was Brooklyn like in 1947?
Eig
It was still racially divided. A lot of black families were moving in, because Harlem was overcrowded and black families were moving South to North, and Brooklyn was probably their second stop after Harlem, the second most popular choice. But it was still a place of neighborhoods. You had Italian neighborhoods, you had Irish neighborhoods, you had Jewish neighborhoods, and kids knew that if you crossed one of those lines you ran the risk of getting beat up. So there was still a lot of division, but even so they were more tightly compacted, so you couldn’t grow up without knowing other kinds of people. And more importantly they had one thing in common, and that’s that they were all working class, lower-middle class, people trying to get up and out of Brooklyn. Everybody in Brooklyn wanted to get out of Brooklyn, so they had that in common. So it was a place where Jackie Robinson’s goal, his attempt to make it as an American, fit in.
BC
It matches what they’re all trying to do.
Eig
Right. And it was such a huge baseball town. People loved the Dodgers with such a passion that if Robinson proved that they belonged on the team, he would win a place in the hearts of fans.
BC
The smaller setting, I guess, was the clubhouse he was walking into. It was something that had never occurred to me, but once I read it, it made sense. You talked about the distinctly Southern culture that dominated most of these baseball clubhouses. It never occurred to me, but I had always read about how all these ballplayers did in the off-season was go hunting and fishing, and obviously you’re not doing that in New York. So what was that dynamic like? You even talked about how Phil Rizzuto had a tough time with that.
Eig
Yeah, think about it. Even the New Yorkers, even Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, they used to go hunting and fishing because the Southern guys on the ballclub were sort of the social leaders, and that’s what they did in the off-season. So if you wanted to be part of the pack, you learned to hunt and fish. Well, Gehrig was always a big fisherman, but hunting... not so much. So Jackie Robinson moves into that environment at a time when, as you said, even Phil Rizzuto was scared of it. You can only imagine. These guys dominate the clubhouse. Every one of the important players on the team, in terms of setting the tone in the clubhouse, was a Southerner. Dixie Walker, Eddie Stanky, Pee Wee Reese, Kirby Higbie. Those guys were the heart and soul of the team, and Jackie had to deal with that.
BC
Do you think that was specific to the Dodgers, or was that true in general throughout baseball?
Eig
I think most of baseball was that way. The Dodgers happened to probably be a little bit stronger than most. I think the Yankee clubhouse probably would’ve been a little tamer in terms of that, just because DiMaggio was the leader.
BC
So we talked briefly about the white press and how they kind of ignored the story, or mentioned it peripherally to game reports. But it seems like the black press was really integral to the whole process, and they almost seemed like they kind of parented the whole thing along from planting the seed in calling for integration in all areas to even warning the fans, telling the fans how to behave, which I wasn’t aware of. What was their role? How important was the black press?
Eig
They were huge, and Wendell Smith, in particular, of the Pittsburgh Courier is another one of the real heroes of the story. But you’re right -- the black press made this project their own. They helped fight for integration, and when it came along they realized they now had to help make it work. They were always coaching fans on how to behave, and they were also presenting Jackie as a symbol. They put more pressure on him, for one thing. There were these headlines saying, “Fate of Black People Rides on Jackie Robinson’s Shoulders,” and he had to read those headlines. He couldn’t avoid them. But they also helped shape his image. Wendell Smith, especially, was such a calm, mild-mannered guy, and such a staunch supporter of integration, that he wanted Jackie to be like him, even though Jackie’s personality was not that way. So any time there was a provocation, any time a white player got in Jackie’s face, Wendell Smith was always putting the best spin on it, saying that Jackie wasn’t bothered, he thought the Cardinals were a bunch of nice guys, and that [Cardinal manager] Ben Chapman was okay. He was always putting the best possible spin on it in a way that you know Jackie, if he were allowed to speak his mind, would not have. There was no doubt in the minds of anybody in the leadership of the black community that integration was the way to go. In the sixties it would become a more radical question. Maybe we’re better off on our own, doing this on our own. As Malcolm X would say, we’re not gonna do this peacefully, we’re gonna do it violently. But in the forties, there was no doubt. Everybody wanted integration to work, and they felt like it was the only way. There was no question that they were willing to sacrifice the Negro Leagues in order to get blacks into the majors. Nearly unanimous at the time. Nobody was a voice for Black Nationalism at that time.
BC
There was a book recently by William Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves, and one aspect of that book discussed the fact that integration destroyed the Negro Leagues and all of the peripheral industries attached to it. In talking to anybody -- I can’t imagine that anyone would say that they missed the good old days -- but was there anyone who saw anything to that?
Eig
There were a lot of black ballplayers in the major leagues who knew they weren’t good enough for the majors and they could see the handwriting on the wall. They were happy for Jackie Robinson, and they were happy for all their teammates who were getting called up, but they also knew that the clock was ticking on their ability to continue to be professional baseball players. So there was some sadness, definitely, and there was a question of who was gonna make it and who wasn’t. And certainly for a lot of business people there was some sadness, too. But like I said, overall, everybody believed integration was something people had to pursue.
BC
Another thing, and I guess it shouldn’t have been surprizing given what we know about Babe Ruth and all the stories that may or may not have happened, but a lot of the things with Jackie Robinson, stories that I’ve just taken for granted, have become gospel, and now here you go telling us that they didn’t really happen. Especially in the chapter “Pee Wee’s Embrace.” Talk to me about that a little bit, because it’s such a good story!
Eig
I know. It’s really the story that got me going on the whole book because one of my Gehrig readers suggested doing a book on the friendship between Pee Wee and Jackie. I immediately thought of the embrace. There’s a plaque! There’s a statue and the plaque has the specific date: May 13, 1947. Before the start of a game [in Cincinnati], Pee Wee goes across the diamond and puts an arm around Jackie’s shoulder to stop this crowd that’s being so hostile. So I looked it up, and I couldn’t find any mention of it in the papers. I checked more papers, I couldn’t find any mention of it. I checked with historians in Cincinnati, I checked all the black papers in Cincinnati, nothing. And then I started reading the accounts of it. I tried to find the earliest mention of this incident. The earliest mention was one of Jackie’s books written in the sixties, and he said it happened in 1948. And some other accounts said it happened in ‘49. I never found a single person anywhere close to 1947 who said it happened in 1947. Some people still say they remember seeing it, but nobody can prove it. And everything I discovered, including what Rachel Robinson told me, suggests that Pee Wee was sort of waiting and watching. There was no friendship, no overt gestures that year. It took a while before they really became friends.
BC
I guess that makes for two reasons. Number one, if something like that had happened, I think it would’ve been huge news. Even in a press that didn’t necessarily report the social aspect of what was going on, it would’ve been mentioned. And also, something that you mentioned in your book, even though there were good people in the clubhouse who knew this was the right thing, it was still a tremendous risk to stand up and say, “We need to support this guy. He’s having a rough time of it.”
Eig
That’s right. Why stand up for him when you don’t have to? Especially early in the season, and that was May, when it wasn’t at all clear that he was gonna stay with the team. So why risk your reputation with all the other guys on the team and in the league if he’s gonna be gone in six weeks? So I don’t think anybody did. I think a couple guys like Stanky and Ralph Branca made some subtle gestures of support, but I didn’t see any others that really struck me as all that brave.
BC
Something else that I took as being the gospel truth was the boycott. The petition that was supposedly circulated and a potential boycott of games. You leave it a little bit unresolved. What’s your feeling on that?
Eig
I think it’s all been blown up a little bit more than it ought to be. Ford Fricke himself tried to tell people later in life that this was all blown out of proportion. I think some members of the Cardinals were mouthing off and saying they didn’t want to play, and it may have gotten to the point where it was going to be a problem on the team, where they were barking too much and the management got sick of it, but I don’t think it ever came close to being an actual boycott. I’d be shocked. And again, nobody has ever produced evidence to suggest that. The reporting at the time says that there was this great movement afoot, and then the next day in the paper they corrected it and said that maybe it wasn’t. Ford Fricke never actually made the speech, never actually had to go to the ballpark. We know from that that Ford Fricke did not feel compelled to go to the stadium and deliver this famous speech saying “you’ll be banned from baseball if you do this thing.” That didn’t happen.
BC
Your book leads with a quote from Jackie: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” Obviously the integration of baseball affected the entire sporting world as we know it, but I think what was even more interesting to me, and maybe to you based on what you’ve said to me, are the non-sports issues. The individual stories, like Gilbert Jonas...
Eig
Right, that’s my favorite.
BC
Really? That was my favorite. I went to Stanford, so it was cool to read about how this white kid was so affected by a meeting with Jackie that when he arrived at an all-white Stanford University he started a campus chapter of the NAACP and eventually convinced the administration to integrate the school. I just thought it was really cool that a baseball player could affect these people individually in small ways -- or big ways. What were some of your favorite stories? You said this was your favorite, Gilbert, but what else?
Eig
I love the Gil Jonas story. I love the George Marchev story, this guy who had a factory and decided to hire a black guy to work on the dock loading boxes, and this guy shows up wearing a shirt and tie everyday for work loading boxes on a truck and suddenly sets this new image, this new standard for the guys who load boxes on trucks. I just think there was stuff like that happening all over the country. The other one is a guy from out here who’s coming to the book signing tonight, Myron Uhlberg
BC
It’s interesting, because you remember it was probably seven or eight years ago when ESPN was counting down the top fifty athletes of all time, and of course Michael Jordan was eventually number one. I remember Bob Costas saying almost what you just said, that he couldn’t imagine how you could have any athlete besides Muhammad Ali or Jackie Robinson, just for sheer impact.
Eig
Yeah, even Babe Ruth, as entertaining as he was and as much as he changed the game, there’s no question who changed the world more -- Jackie Robinson. I’d put him above Muhammad Ali. If you look at the lasting impact of the two, Ali was a bigger celebrity, and at a different point in black-white relations he was as important as Jackie in many ways, but Jackie came first, and he had to do something that I think was a lot harder.
BC
I’ve got a question about baseball biographies in general -- two questions, I guess. You’ve written about Lou Gehrig, and now Jackie. Do you have anybody next on the radar?
Eig
I don’t know who’s next. It’s hard to think of anybody who can equal those two in terms of their stories which are so much more than baseball. I like both of these guys because their stories went so far beyond the baseball field. They were heroes in a way that had nothing to do with the game. They both inspired me to want to tell their stories. It’s hard to get excited that same way about anybody else. I haven’t thought of it yet if there is anybody else out there.
BC
Do you think that fifty years from now there will be people writing books about Alex Rodríguez or Manny Ramírez or any of these other guys, or do we already know too much about them?
Eig
As somebody who’s dabbled in history, I can’t imagine that you could look back fifty years from now and think that any of those guys made history. They’re athletes and they’re businessmen. They’re all about driving in runs and putting money in the bank. I don’t see where they have the same sort of impact on society and culture as these ballplayers did back when the game was sort of the lifeblood of America. I can’t imagine it.
BC
Do you think maybe that’s why it seems like every year... just last year there was a new Ruth book out, a Clemente book came out last year. The Clemente book was subtitled “Baseball’s Last Hero.” Do any of these guys look like heroes to you?
Eig
Somebody asked me that the other day on the radio. Is there anybody out there who reminds you of Jackie Robinson? Are there any baseball players out there that you think are real heroes? I can’t think of any. I think there are some decent guys, some decent men, who live the right way and play the game cleanly, but nobody that I’d tell my kid he should be like him.
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