Read The Era, 1947-1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World for Free Online Page A

Too young for what he’d have to take, Rickey reasoned. No nineteen-year-old could survive the racist garbage.
    “That’s why we integrated the major leagues with Jackie Robinson. He was in his middle twenties. But from a strict baseball viewpoint, Jackie was our second choice.”*
    Rickey had been spending many days with a variety of clerical people. He intended to put Robinson on the Dodger roster by Opening Day 1947. That would attract black fans to Ebbets Field and Rickey was concerned about their behavior. He sought out ministers from Brooklyn’s black churches and told them individually what he thought. “Not only will Jackie Robinson, a lone colored man, be on trial next season. So will the entire black community. I want to urge you to impress that on your parishioners. We welcome colored fans, we surely do, but, please, no drinking in my ballpark, no rowdy behavior, no switchblades. If the colored fans act up, it will work to the disadvantage of them and to my team and to my colored ballplayer.” Rickey spoke to seventeen black ministers. Every one agreed to spread his message from the pulpit.
    In 1946 Robinson had trained with the Montreal Royals in Florida. One day in Daytona Beach an armed sheriff walked on the field during an exhibition game. “Down here,” he said, “we don’t have nigras mixing with whites. Not marrying with whites. Not playing ball with whites. Now, nigra, git!” Robinson had to leave the game.
    Rather than train his athletes in Florida again, Rickey moved both his Montreal and Brooklyn players to Havana for the spring of 1947. The racial climate of Cuba was less charged. He put the Dodgers and the New York sportswriters into the Hotel Nacional, which in those pre-Castro days was enlivened by roulette wheels, dice tables, and prostitutes from several continents. No ballplayer or journalist protested.
    White Montreal players were quartered in cadet barracks at the Havana Military Academy. Campanella and Newcombe had been promoted to the Montreal roster. Along with Robinson, they were sequestered in a drab hotel fifteen miles from the Royals’ practice field. Robinson’s anger flared. “I thought we left Florida so we could get away from Jim Crow. What the hell is this, sticking us all out here, segregating us in the middle of a colored country, Cuba?”
    Neither the Cuban government of Fulgencio Batista nor the Havana hotels demanded segregation. The idea of segregation inside Cuba sprang directly from Branch Rickey. He was concerned that fights might break out between the black players and the white players if the integrated Montreal squad was billeted together. Someone explained that to Robinson.
    “I don’t like it,” Robinson said. “I don’t like it at all. But I’ll go along with Mr. Rickey’s judgment. He’s been right so far.”
    Exported segregation was not Branch Rickey’s only curious idea. Another simply seems ingenuous. Rickey believed that Dodger players, seeing how gifted Robinson was, would clamor, petition, insist, demand that he move Robinson to the big squad. “Ballplayers love money,” Rickey told several votaries. “They love World Series checks. When they see how good this colored boy is, when they realize he can get them into the World Series, they’ll force me to make him a Dodger. After the players do that, one problem — Robinson’s acceptance by his fellows — will solve itself “
    During the seven exhibition games between the Montreal Royals and the Brooklyn Dodgers — most played on a giddy tour through the Canal Zone — Robinson stole seven bases. He batted .625.
    Sartre defined bigotry as passion; and passion is, of course, irrational. That is its nature, like lust and avarice. The core of veteran Dodger players was not roused by Jackie Robinson’s success. The veteran core felt passionate outrage. Bigoted ballplayers would hate Jackie Robinson even if he batted 1.000, which he damn near did. “How dare a colored fella be that