in a climate the it we need one in arizona, new mexico. tucson arizona is lowered desert albuquerque mexico is high desert. wisconsin, florida, today there are six or eight better getting started. interestingly they have three in texas. there is a lot of variation in the state of texas climatic variation. . .

of 2012. >> you've done forensic anthropology, writing books for almost done with. what's next for you? >> rest. [laughter] >> in the program from the booktv archives, jonathan fellows jackie robinson's first season in major league baseball which marks the integration of the game. jackie robinson signed a contract with the brooklyn dodgers on october 30th, 1945. this is about one hour.

>> i have the pleasure of introducing him to years ago when he was discussing luckiest man the life and death of the lou gahreg and now opening day the story of jack robinson's first season is like a bookend experience and i was thinking about the similarities in the two men that he has chronicled baseball and beyond in some respects other aspects of their lives. both men share these qualities, courage, commitment and that commitment was not just to play excellence bet citizenship, contribution to the larger

society, and then the other quality that both had indeed was character. they both died young, but are remembered as sports icons, and in both cases as spectacular as their baseball statistics were, there was a lot more to each man to read and of course each represented fabled new york teams, and i guess mortal enemies and such is the transition in life that i started out the fan of one man leader made the crossing to the other but have an appreciation for the outstanding players on

both teams. some excerpts that i have read from our authors book on jackie robinson's first season it's not just the usual account of first he did this and then that and so forth on the field. you get a feel for the larger context in which he operated and it's one of the things for old-timers like me, so old that my son once asked me if there was an alphabet when i was a kid. [laughter] i remember so called baseball history which it was just a a geography. these were wonderful people on the field. there's no discussion of off the field of course as there might have been a contradiction. but now to see how the

discipline has matured over the last 30 or so years, and that has been to be evident that not so many years ago there was a discussion or a journal article on jackie robinson's first season in which jackie robinson, all of the accounts came from white newspapers and one of the things the author did so well is to talk about life beyond with the privilege society was like. if you think about, many of you might not think about this when the integrated the baseball field he went back to a small hotel and when the team traveled

in and there were places he could not stay and was still almost completely segregated society. of course jackie's braking the color line made for a considerable change coming and even those people who did not like jackie robinson and felt threatened by jackie robinson certainly by the end of the season respected him as a capable performer and a gentleman. jonathan's book is eminently readable as attested to by his kids, and one of the excerpts i believe it was his son said he liked the book even though in the first one because it was shorter.

i don't know how one could want the book to be shorter because it is totally fascinating, and as my son told me from the first day that he went to the first grade and is a veteran of preschool and kindergarten and so forth he said to me very seriously that first day he said dad, they are not missing around anymore. well, we have an author that isn't messing around, and this is a real pleasure to introduce jonathan eig. [applause] >> thank you very much for coming and thanks for that nice introduction. before we begin i have to correct an error this is the national archives we don't want rickards to slip in the program. the program's as i tried my hand

baseball before earning a degree in journalism. anybody that knows me from my younger days knows i was what they called a four toole plater in little league. unfortunately all flight rules were broken. i had no gloves, no stick. i couldn't run, couldn't throw so i turned to writing at an early age and recognize i was not going to make it on my athletic skills. there's a famous statue some of you have probably seen in brooklyn the 8-foot bronze statue and by his side is. he's putting his arm of around the shoulder and a plaque on the statute reads the statue commemorates a moment in cincinnati may 13th, 1947 and jackie robinson's rookie season on the first road trip when they went to cincinnati he was heckled so brutally by the crowd his teammate who was from kentuckians had a considerable following in the crowd walked

across the diamond and in the gesture of support in the brotherhood brought his arm around jackie robinson and silenced the crowd. it's considered one of the great moments in history there's been children's books written about it, they're have been movies, they're have been poems written to this moment. was this moment that i thought about two years ago when my book came out i received a letter from a reader saying maybe you should consider doing a book about jackie robinson and the friendship between the two brooklyn dodgers, and i love the fact first i was flattered that i received a letter from a fan that wanted me to write another book. that's great. if anybody in the audience has ideas for future books i am all years, but don't shout them out because there are some writers in the room tonight, this afternoon. but when i heard this idea, i thought it's not bad. it's a little sadder and perhaps but i thought it was worth looking into at least to see how much was there to different

shipping 1947? how much did he mean to jackie robinson and how did the friend should take root in this climate of hostility when black and white were so distrustful of each other and win a very few people were willing to welcome jackie robinson into the league. what i felt almost immediately was that the increase did not occur. it didn't happen in 1947. jackie robinson a few years leader said he remembered a similar incident in 1948 or 49. and peery ressa himself said he didn't remember. i went back through the old newspaper accounts black and white from cincinnati and new york looking for any mention of this incident, found no photographs, no mention at all if found that robinson wrote in his column that day a colleague for the pittsburgh courier he would cincinnati fans were among he has encountered and even some of the white newspapers in new york noted that robinson was

treated better in the cincinnati than he had been in other stops along the way and i talked to some eyewitnesses at the game that day they said they certainly don't remember anything like that happening. the stamps were packed with black people that date. the west end of the field was in a largely black neighborhood and black fans in many ways crowd about the white fans and their impression was the white fans had been intimidated the felt like haggling jackie robinson they wouldn't have dared. suddenly there's a problem with my book as best friends. on the other hand, it occurred to me if he wasn't there for jackie robinson, who was? if he didn't have the support of the dodgers' captain, the official captain then who did he get support from? how did he get through this year in which his own teammates threatened to boycott, threatened not to play.

suddenly i thought maybe that's my story. maybe the entire experience of jackie robinson could be crystallized into the season and you can look at how he goes from a ball player just trying to break in to get a chance to prove that he belongs in an environment in which his own teammates not to mention the opposition would desperately like to see him gone to leading the team to the pennant that season and presumably winning their hearts and minds. that's where i began. that is where the idea for the book group. i looked at my calendar that day and realized the 60th anniversary for the robinson first game was coming up and i got to get moving. one of the first things i did is began reading history of the era. growing up as a baseball fan i was more a fan than a plater as i mentioned. i learned a lot about history as a kid and i bet you there are a lot of people in the audience who would say the same.

you know, i just did our counties baseball books, these biographies that were written for the young readers and you would pick up just little glimmers of history and reading them and you wouldn't even know you were getting that history to the you read about babe ruth and prohibition because he was, you know, when of the chief rivals and one of the people who enjoyed the 20's perhaps more than anyone else in the country. reading about jackie robinson of course you learn about jim-crow and segregation, so i began -- i was a baseball historian in my own right as a kid because i would keep my box scores at every game i went to and stick them in my desk drawer and could go back years later and look to the favorite players were and how they did on the days i saw them play and i think we learned to record history at least for me i learned to record history and appreciate it a little bit first through baseball.

so trying to get out 19471 of the first things i had to do is understand the climate, the times we were in and was a time arthur schlesinger wrote a great history. i think this was he wrote this in 48 but he was writing about the same area the ground of our civilization of our service to the breaking of under our feet and familiar ideas and institutions vanish as we reach for them like shadows and the falling dust but this is just after world war ii. the country is on uncertain footing. we are still just beginning to give to the atrocities of the holocaust, beginning to realize we have won this war but what does it mean for our democracy? the black newspapers are calling out for another victor, the vv campaign. we've achieved a victory now we need to fight for victory in our own country so that the black people coming back in particular the black soldiers coming back from the war will have something in this country that what do they fight for if they are going to become and treated like

second-class citizens the same time people are yearning for a sense of normalcy. everything is up in arms. the whole country is in chaos, there's food shortages, truman is ordering a rationing of meat and people get baseball and say it gives a sense of what we used to be as a throwback and that's why we love the game today although it is getting harder and harder to see it as an old-time game with so much money involved but the maggio, two williams, bob feller were coming back after years missed because they were in the service and americans just plain dumb to baseball. in 1946 breaking records in every ball park in the country, and people are coming out and finding that this has offered them some solace. the 1947 jackie robinson comes along and baseball is as chaotic as everything else. suddenly all of the old rules don't apply. everything is out the window. to understand that i began calling all the old-timers as many as a good, ballplayers

still around from 47 and i asked my father and talked to my father lived in queens and my grandfather had season tickets and i asked what do you remember about the 1947 season and he says i have a lot of great memories of that season. unfortunately i don't remember what they are. one of those yogi berra. but fortunately of the people had a bitter memories and now when you talk to them they all tell the stories about how they were so eager to embrace jackie robinson. opening day april 15th he made a point of standing next to jackie robinson during the singing of the national anthem and he said after the game his brother tease to me and said what are you doing standing next to that guy would if he takes a shot at him and gets you instead? they all want to be associated with him now but the truth is

april 15th, 1947 nobody would shake jackie robinson's the highhanded the clubhouse, there was no meeting called by the manager of the team to get them behind this effort. jackie robinson was entirely alone and that is what is intriguing about the season how much could buy explore what he really went through? one of the air and other things i went through is i went through the old newspaper clippings to see how the games were covered only in the black media of the white media l as well. it was interesting especially the first of april 15th, 1947 this is a big day. we are celebrating it now with incredible hope what it feels like a national holiday bill on april 15th, 1947 the white newspapers didn't mention jackie robinson's a rifle. it was barely if mentioned at all in the bottom of the sports stories and not on the front page, not even the front page of the sports section but the bottom of the story that reported that the dodgers beat the braves 53 koza three to lead "the new york times" didn't mention it it was only carried

in one of the columns that free and as a sidebar to the story. the black media of course on the other hand had the story stretched across the top of every paper. every black people in the country this was the banner headline the pittsburgh courier, the new york amsterdam news have pages and pages of photos devoted. one newspaper reporter filed a story just unaware of the set during each inning during the game inning by inning where he sat on the bench because that was important. they recognize who was willing to sit next to jackie robinson said something was it just the rockies, the fellow outcastes or with any of the team leaders make a gesture of support and instruction? sure enough as often happens he was confined to the end of the bench sitting mostly with the other rookies at one point the assistant coaches but he was again forced to pace to be convinced about one his own. in the spring training of the

season it wasn't clear whether robinson would make the team at least six of his teammates came out and said they were willing to begin stand, to go public and refuse to play with him and they would demand a trade or robinson had to go or they had to go. there are mostly summers. some say that. reese was a member of that rebellion. lease always said he wasn't really couldn't find conclusive evidence one way or the other, but the rebellion was quickly put down. the manager at the time what leader be suspended the season but was a manager in the training was unbelievably scary, just pure rage, very violent character. he called a meeting in the middle of the light into hotel room in cuba, showed up, pulled the players all of the rooms in the various states of undress and wearing his bright yellow

bathrobe said to the team i don't care if this guy is black, white, yellow, zebra you could take a petition and stick it up you know what and even wearing for the pajamas they have no question of his authority. the players immediately back down and he flew in the next day and told them much the same if they were not willing to play if you ask each of them will you play or do you want to go and i talked to bobby who was the backup catcher. the injury marshall will hold on the job and yet he was willing to make the protest, willing to risk his career, it was a big deal of time perhaps and now there were only 400 people in the big leagues, but he said i would rather be treated and i asked him about it and he said i was a white supremacist. that doesn't mean -- i believe flights were supreme, they were superior, to blacks in every way

and that jackie robinson were allowed to cross the line of my jaw use would crumble. i couldn't go back to my family. my community would distrust me because this is what we were raised to believe. he said i had a black family in my house all the time they were cleaning the dishes, along, they would entertain with us. the fall of having somebody treated as an equal or someone that might be treated as superior because the starting lineup but i'm not, i couldn't handle it. but he told branch rickey that day that if he had to he would play. he backed down. this is a huge moment for the team because they are essentially choosing the game, choosing their love for the sport of the prejudice. they are at least willing to live with this and see what happens which is all bricky ever hoped for. he is the general manager and president and part-owner of the dodgers i should mention and a fascinating character.

she really wanted to integrate because he believed was the right thing to do. he wanted to integrate because he believed there was money to be made. the team at the drew the smallest crowds and he sensed that there was a possibility here to be more competitive by bringing in black leaders because it was an untapped talent pool. he also knew that he could pay them little because they would have no other options so he was a very complex man doing the right thing and it's a cheap thing almost every step of his career. fortunately, his commitment to bringing in jackie robinson was so great that it helped us overlook some of his parsimonious ways and he decided on jackie robinson we might pause again and ask why jackie robinson. he wasn't the best black player in the negro leagues, not by far. there were many more qualified pleaders. i think that he chose jackie robinson because he was a little bit older, very smart, gone to

ucla, didn't graduate but he was a smart guy and most of all he shows because they were a tough guy. the famous story this it can you turn the other schricker you strong enough to turn the other cheek and they said yes we have this image of robinson as the smarter, as a pacifist and he was not yet all he was a rage filled man angry all of his life and nothing made him angry year than being treated by white people. he's of racism in every glance. he was court-martialed and 84 for refusing to go to the back of a bus when he was in the army and he beat the charge and saved the career but this is a guy that ricky was taking a chance with because he had to know that if robinson was provoked and people were going to provoke him without a doubt and he responded in anger and went in a tirade and threw a fit who knows how

many years it would take to set integration back. the important thing is they want to send the town of strength asking to assimilate to go along and get along and find their way and slip quietly into the game. we are going to send a message black americans are here in our part of baseball now and you've got to deal with them and this is a man you have to deal with. jackie robinson was not someone to be trifled with. so on that opening day, and i mentioned the black newspapers covered and the white newspapers didn't another interesting point is white sands did not show up at the game. three fifths of the crowd at the field was african-american, and the 6,000 seats were empty which suggest the white sands were staying away in huge numbers because they were afraid of what was going to happen. there was a lot of talk about this in the media. people felt like the strategy was going to backfire. he might attract more and they

would stay away and the black newspapers were writing that it sought to african-american baseball fans to be on their best behavior and not do anything to make this harder for jackie robinson than it already is. every ballpark they visited that year there were these warnings from the black press saying remember, don't drink, don't celebrate too much, don't embarrass jackie robinson in any way to be there was a community wide effort. robinson and the first game was over three. he gets on the and scores a rug which turns out to be the winning run and it's funny i talked to the left field that day and he said george washington didn't know when he was making history and abraham lincoln didn't know he was making history when he delivered the gettysburg address and i didn't know what i was to score a run in baseball in the one who drove him and the boy didn't know i was making history but i was coming and i said you've got to go back and look at the box score. you drove in the fifth from that

day. jackie robinson was the fourth. he said abraham lincoln didn't know he was making history and i didn't know i was making history. don't try to get them to change their story. i told you it's brutal. as i begin to, all the stories i realized that these ballplayers tended to embellish their memories a little bit. i quickly recognized there was one source of the story, one key person to the center your story who could open this up to me. i wanted to set jackie robinson in his historical context to show what he meant to america not now with the loss of 60 years but right then and there how she changed lives in a moment, and i wanted to show what his personal journey was like, but he experience and the key to that was his wife, who was 85-years-old and lives in connecticut and still sharp as a tactic probably saw her for the anniversary event.

i called the office and asked for an appointment and i got the brushoff and i called and called and finally i got ten minutes on the phone with her and she answered some questions but is clearly going through the motion. she gives a lot of interviews and i wasn't getting through to her. finally i came to new york and met her. i walked into the office and asked for an hour. i walked into the office with a bouquet of flowers and a box of candy and a copy of my book to give her and she comes in wearing this immaculate suits and sits at the table across from me and says you have 20 minutes, and she just didn't give me an inch and i consider myself a pretty good interviewer i work very hard to get people to warm up and you can't do it in 20 minutes. so i left the interview frustrated feeling like my book was going to have a hole at its heart and soul would be missing. over the next few weeks and months, i began just sending stuff in the mail i would come across in my research i found a

picture of her getting her hair done devotees along in harlem. everything i found was interesting like that. i went to the apartment where they lived to read a litany tiny apartment, 526 mcdonough avenue in brooklyn to read they didn't even have their own apartment. they rented a room about eight by ten and the five month old baby. they don't even have their own bathroom or their own kitchen. they are sharing it with a woman that just happened to hear that they were looking for a place they didn't even know the woman. they said they didn't like her very much she had a boyfriend and was always holding the living room so they couldn't use the living room. these are horrible conditions for our young family. it's not whether you imagine a rookie today would be accustomed to so i went to the apartment and took pictures of the room where they stayed and stuck them in the mail and sent them to hurt. on ebay i bought it and they were selling outside of the ball

park that said claim for jackie robinson. it is printed by the union movement in the communist party or huge forces in fighting for jackie robinson's right to play and i said that pan. i came back for another interview with her for the second time and this time she gave me about 45 minutes one slightly and i got her to agree to a third meeting so this is the last one. i showed up for that third meeting and before i had gone, i'd gone to the new york public library and rachel told the truth of these interviews she couldn't remember the name of the woman she lived with, the woman that had the department. i hid in the public library that morning and i found the name in the reverse telephone directory, and while we were sitting down we were talking and i pulled out a copy of the page from the phone directory of my final and said measle brown does that ring the bell and she said yes for six years and haven't been able

to remember the name of her. i hate that woman. [laughter] we had our first good interview. i got her to remember what the did that night, what kind of card games they play, how jackie struggled some days to control his temper at home and put him but that he would smash his teeth at night and how she but some days she would know to leave him alone and not ask any questions and the authorities she would ask detailed questions about the baseball game because it's the way she got him to open up and talk about his feelings and began to realize as he was expressing his anger on the ball field in a way that was productive and made him stand out from the white plains, too she was proud of him because he was using the base of tactics to make himself so effective in the white major leagues. he was speaking of these leads and the terms are not the bag. even if he didn't do anything he was always a threat to steal the base and that was so unnerving and rattled his opponents and it was his way of getting back to the people he couldn't strike a

punch at or call names with a were calling him names all season long. i remember at one point i said okay he would come home and eat some dinner and go for a walk. we didn't have any friends we didn't go out at night we would take a beebee for a walk in the stroller. when you come back i said where to park a stroller by the way? have you been in the apartment, did you leave it in the hall? finally she snapped out of this great state she had been in and said that's enough. for 60 years i kept people out of this apartment and i'm not letting you back in have now. but by then it was too late. i was in. i had my foot in the door and as i was leaving the today we had a really nice long talk and she came to me at the elevator she came down bohol as i was waiting at the elevator and said there's one more thing i want to tell you. she said people don't realize how religious jackie was and how much his safe bet. we didn't have a church in brooklyn that year but every night he would appeal by the side of the bed and pray.

and i was so touched by this that she first of all wanted to share something extra with me after i had been pulling teeth for the better part of the year but that i yet been given this insight into their apartment and i felt like i had the heart of my book. i had the story i felt nobody had told before. the baseball stuff was fun and i loved researching it and talking to the ballplayers but this was the piece of the puzzle that had been missing in so much of what had been written about jackie robinson. to get back to baseball for a minute i should tell you after a very rough april and may robinson starts to hit a, really hit the ball and this is a degree to dodgers team it is very poor pitching. ralph is their only reliable starter that year. the have no power hitters whatsoever. jackie robinson leads the team with 12 homers at the end of the season and yet beginning in may and june there in first place and they stay there and they are

doing it -- nobody understands how because they're doing all the little things, stealing, moving the runner ahead and these are all the things jackie robinson does best. he is without a doubt the most important player on the team that. even the guys that have protested his arrival in the spring training, dixie walker who always complained he had a hardware store back in alabama he would never be able to set foot customers would never come if they knew he shared a shower with jackie robinson even dixie walker at some point that summer i believe in july is overheard by a reporter giving him tips on hitting and he tells him she's pulling the bar delete global to budget with men on first and second he needed to try to go to right field so the players are coming around and this is a remarkable achievement. this hasn't happened in any institution until the mixture and i think jackie robinson get some of the credit it's not until the next year. truman ordered the desegregation of the military.

government offices are still segregated and 47. jackie robinson comes first and he shows that it can be done well to the court order or armed guards but the old american competition by giving him the chance to prove he can play and he says one day after one of the games all season long they have the story nobody bothers to ask him what he's going through or how he's feeling but will reporter shows up at his apartment one day and asks him and robinson says i know i have a responsibility to my response to have to try to think about it because it is too much restraint to say this year i know it's a test. he knows exactly what's at stake. he's reading the black newspapers the describe him why april 15th 1 called him the most important black american in the history of the country and they go on and on. more important and frederick douglass for this reason, then george washington carver for this reason. he has to read this and still go out and play i used to say and i

still think lugar it when he played a whole season with als as most single accomplishment at jackie robinson playing every day 1947 knowing the burden that is on him, that half of the guys out there on the other teams are opposed to him playing and taunting him sometimes trying to hurt him it is up there and what he does come his ability to recognize a thing else matters if he doesn't continue to play well it is not going to happen for him. all season long he continues. he doesn't skip a day and when the season begins it isn't clear that he's not going to be a regular first baseman their carrying two of the first of the roster but over time he's trying to show jackie robinson's support he starts peeling them off. he trades away some of the opponents of the integration and to the pirates because he had been so outspoken in his belief that blacks should not be in baseball.

he keeps dixie walker because they still want to win. going down the stretch into the end of the season, the dodgers go to st. louis on the last road trip to quench the pennant and the cardinals have been one of the worst antagonists' all year earlier in the season at least a handful of players threatened to boycott the game it isn't clear whether it really amounted to a full-fledged riot in which the team was talking about walking the least a few of them were threatened to walk. back in august and the slaughter had spiked jackie robinson on the first play that robinson believed was intentional and most of the people even the white press corps said it looked like a was intentional. if i can take a little diversion this is an interesting historical site note sitting on the first base that day in the stands was a kid named douglas wilder who had gone to become the governor for agenda. as i mentioned some of these guys in that the stories and say they were there when they

weren't. i can go into detail about how i know that he was actually there but he heard some of the guys at his neighborhood barber shop were going to see jackie robinson play and he was only a kid, they were grown up but he talked himself into the backseat of the car as you can match and he was a good talker even at that age she wanted to see the cardinals and slaughter his favorite players but when she slaughters spike jackie robinson something started to eat at yy fielder ury and he told me the whole right home to virginia in the car something was bothering him and he couldn't figure out what was and he realized that he couldn't read for the cardinals any more, the jackie robinson was pleading for his team now and jackie robinson robert opportunities for kids like him that might not otherwise be available, and it was one of the many activities that occur in

1947 and it's one of my favorite things to do is to slip in those little epiphanies another you'll read about as malcolm x listening to jackie robinson from prison and on the radio in 1947 or a white kid who was interviewed for the paper that day and didn't think trustees single question about race, only asked about the cardinals who were the tough pitchers and what he thought the dog dodgers chances were that. he was shocked to see stamford was all white because his baseball team, his favorite team was integrated, one shouldn't stanford be integrated? she started the first chapter of the naacp and got the school segregated and then spent the rest of his career working as a fund-raiser to read these are the ripples jackie robinson is causing in 1947. to take back into st. louis in the final series against the cardinals i want you to see how

it felt at the end of that season. in the game robinson is expected in the last year on the road the dreaded rivals and he joins the spikes so even now after he's proven he's been named the rookie of the year they used to give the award before the end of the season robinson is still facing these threats and feels like he may have done it on purpose. the next time up when robinson comes up to that he says something over his shoulder he feels like he's been around long enough he can give a little lip the system which himself enough to get with the anchor out and he was also a bit of a hot hid. he gets up and he and jackie robinson our chest to chest until they are pulled out by the umpire and the coaches who rushed out of the dugout. next time he comes up to that jackie robinson hits a home run and then you're going into the

ninth inning and robinson is playing first base in 1947, not second. there is a foul ball with two outs and robinson goes over to try to catch it and leans over to the dugout and catches the ball and starts to fall in and his teammate leaks from his seat and grabs robinson and pushes him onto the field and topples him in the grass, soft landing might otherwise be painful and the team rushes out of the dugout and congratulate robinson on the catch and ralf and the other great catch and robinson says after the game he was so pleased because a few months earlier he didn't know that anybody on the team would bother to break the ball. the team at that point is celebrating. they've locked up, they get on the train and go to brooklyn and back to new york they pull into the station and waiting for them are thousands and thousands of the fans to greet them and

congratulate them with signs that say bring on the yankees, we are the champs. jackie robinson gets off the train and rushes to a phone booth to call his wife to say he's back and a maldon starts following him and trapped in a phone booth and it is probably the first time in american history of black man has been chased by a white mob with the intent on hugging him. he escapes the phone booth and with a police escort and makes his way for the suburb. again the didn't of limousines waiting for them back then. they want to pay the subway fare for them and they just escort him home to read the train car is packed with dodgers fans. i look through that picture, the pictures of that even the daily news the walz of those looking for images of my father or grandfather thinking wouldn't it be nice if the had been there that day and i think just like these guys today who want to be

remembered as a part of the jackie robinson story and want to be connected with this man even though they wouldn't shake his hand at the start of the season is an association we all want to have today and i thought it was wonderful to see so many ballplayers weary the number 42. some people said deutsch to do was overkill or commercialism? i said no this is the guy nobody wanted to touch and he had tuesday in separate hotels from his team, he had to eat on his own, he couldn't travel in certain cities without being afraid of violence and death threats. now 60 years later everybody wants his number and i think it's great, and i think it's because he stands for something so much bigger than baseball. democracy was put to the test after the war. jackie robinson was the leading symbol of the new way of doing things he proved if you give people a chance and give outsiders new ideas it makes your team a better treated made

america better. i like to think that by writing this book i've helped set the story straight and return robinson to his humanity and i like to see it as a real three-dimensional person rather than an ape suit statute in bronze and i found a way of connecting missiles to the story and i am proud to tell the story and happy to be able to share it with you today as i think you for coming. [applause] we have time for questions and i would ask that you come down to the microphone so that the camera will be able to pick up your questions. >> [inaudible]

[inaudible] speed nicu also mentioned -- i am just curious when you were doing your research did you detect that kind of schizophrenic perception on the part of black america to accept a baseball and accept jackie robinson's introduction into white baseball but yet realizing it remains the demise of the black baseball league and the other question i have is i remember leaving about one of the biggest white advocates for the integration of baseball and you mentioned earlier that there was very little discussion during his inaugural and i'm

just curious what is your research regarding the support of jackie robinson during those days? >> those are good questions. first shirley was one of the few white writers of the country who really got it and paid attention to robinson's depue 1947. he also did a terrific job of documenting the way some of the black players that came after robinson were treated which wasn't very well. the st. louis browns this is a little known historical fact the st. louis browns hired to black players and after a month of getting a little chance of opportunity to play and shirley povich was all over that story else will. schizophrenic is a good way to describe the reaction of black america if he did 47. there was an absolute jubilation of the opportunity that robinson had been given and it was so exciting for people to go see him play. there were special train lines established throughout the country to take people to the ballparks and the first time he

played in st. louis the train lines, people from all or a theory of the first time he played in chicago crowds were coming out in huge numbers and there was definitely the sense that this was a new dawn of the new day and that integration was something that the country badly needed. at the same time they did realize as you noted that it would probably mean the demise and the negro leaders, the ballplayers were divided. they felt like if you're good enough you're going to get to go but there's going to be a lot of us left behind and even 1947 attendance was way down at the major-league ballparks so they could see it's not as if this was the first whiff of a foul odor. they knew right away that they would not be -- they wouldn't last long. jackie robinson had a huge impact right away. is there a question on this side? >> one of the reactions was by langston hughes and a famous

passage beginning when i saw jackie robinson hit that home run. my question is was jackie robinson aware of the reaction and did he personally know langston hughes? >> that's a good question. i don't know that there was any contact between robinson and hughes. there was a great song in the first lyrics were in 1947 to to see jackie robinson hit that ball. he was was writing columns all season long in the chicago defender about jackie robinson said he was writing about him often and i sure he must have seen him play but there's no evidence that there was contact. jackie robinson's main man in the press was wendell smith of the career when the was his roommate on the road they actually hired him to travel but none of the white ball players would room with him and in the cities they couldn't find hotels with a white and black leaders couldn't stand together wendell smith and jackie robinson would

go off on their own to find houses to stay or black owned hotels and was up to wendell smith often to arrange black taxi companies to pick them up and find a black restaurants where they could eat so wendell smith was a very important player in the story of jackie robinson's success in 1947. >> i was curious about jackie robinson's salary in 1947 compared to others and also not only 47 but subsequent years of his career. >> 1947 he made the league minimum $5,000, and he probably brought in at least 100 or 200,000 for the dodgers that year because they were attracting fans everywhere they went and they made him a wealthy man and the following season he rewarded him with a very small raise and accepted the first

officer they gave him in 48 that he was making in 48 for less than other players on the cultures who were not nearly as talented but were older as a result had built up. no matter how enlightened he was he wasn't when it came to writing checks and he believed robinson was not entitled until he proved a leader in the league and robinson always i think felch great admiration but his wife in particular was bitter about that issue. yes? >> you said that you start to drop the book with a story about hewey ressa and jackie robinson and did the research find the actual events did not happen the way this sort of mess was created and i remember the children's book. were you able to find out how

this began? ressa and jackie robinson did become great friends in leader years and in 48 of a switch from first place to second so they are double parkers and often together on the field during the pitching changes during the timeouts and i think people got used to seeing them together a and you know how it is they will get together in the middle of the infield and tell jokes and now the startling sight, and i think in 40 d-tn 49 robinson was still getting some heckling probably throughout his career from the racists, and i do think at some point he made a point of going over to silence those hecklers because they both remember the incident they say was an 49 in boston and reese said philadelphia in 49. either of them put it in cincinnati 47 and i think writers over the years felt like the story would be more powerful, a little bit more evocative if you made it in the

first season, 1947. not only is that unfortunate because the accuracy is to be cherished but it's also unfortunate because it sends the message that robinson couldn't have done it without the help of this man and i think that diminishes his accomplishment because he was very much alone that year and nobody on the team invited him out in 1947 were asked his wife to visit with them when they were on the road. they had to prove themselves before anybody was willing to give them a chance, and that's not as easy to capture that is the truth of the matter. yes, another question on the site. >> i enjoyed your speech or your talk free lunch. i've heard that philadelphia was very rough for him and i'm just wondering in the different cities was the extent of the racism and hatred and the

threats a reflection of the geographic makeup of the teammates were the manager with the ownership of the team which is the city in general, and the question is what can you say about larry movie and the kind of person he was? >> i to do was particular in each city to the various environments. in philadelphia it was larger the results of ben chapman of the phillies known as a racist and anti-semite. he'd been in trouble before for some remarks he made during his career with the yankees, and he instructed his team, talked to the dot i's still around who were on the trademark to give him a hard time to bust him as best they could. what's interesting to me is they were not assigned to -- due to drive a wedge between robinson and his wife and this was in the first month of the season when

the was still new and the sense that robinson would go back to the minors they were shouting and not just calling in names to get the teammates that he might read the wives of the other players. things that were really insidious and touched on a mirror of the was a very sensitive at the time when you look a segregation and was some of the issues were, the hot-button issues so i think the new and was especially vicious and varied. in some cities a was southern crops and in others jackie robinson was very well received. the second question was about larry dolby. he came along and i was kind of surprised to realize just 11 weeks after jackie robinson he makes his debut at the cleveland indians and becomes the first african-american player in the american league, but he had a much harder time that first year

one of the great things he did was brought robinson along slowly, gave him a year in the minor leagues to prepare and give spring training to the big-league pitching and get used to the teammates and he's playing for the negro leagues and the next day for the indians in the big leagues. on top of that they didn't have a position for him to place he was relegated to pitch all season long. to somebody that has no experience and ask them to come up to that maybe two or three times a week. he has no chance to acclimate himself and he feared pretty poorly and became a great hitter else you know he made very little impact it's a testament to how much fought ricky had put into this approach because it jackie robinson could come in and just the pitch hitter all year the message that we sent

would be little loud and strong and sold in the anniversary 60 years later. >> jonathan problems with the cardinals and this is going back to his previous question and the story the cardinals were planning on boycotting robinson and not playing him, pleading against the dodgers if they played him as we just do relatively recently there have been suggestions that the pittsburgh pirates were also planning to boycott i wonder if you have any information on that on the 50th anniversary they suggested this was a lead wide strike that dixie walker had been trying to form a strike by writing letters to the players

that he felt with the allies on every team in the league and asking if we would pick a day. it doesn't hold up. nobody has ever seen one of those letters nobody wrote about it at the time there were loudmouths talking trash and i am not saying that because out of pure conjecture, that is what the president of the national league said he believed was the case. he gave an interview many interviews late in life and said he thought the whole thing he had blown up out of the media god forbid they would do such a thing. he believed was exaggerated and i tend to think it certainly never wrote any traction to keep robinson out of the game. i thought for professional

football and not sure about a basketball but can you comment on that i believe was the fall, it might have been just before robinson played his first big-league game after he had been signed to a minor-league contract robinson came first and that he was assigned to the dodgers and the miners and then i think the nfl it would call 48 it was just after it was very little notice of the time because football wasn't on people's radar screen. it wouldn't have made that kind of impact. the only big effect of the deficit integrated earlier and jackie robinson would have tipped football over baseball because he was a much better football player.

[inaudible] they had been a turn-of-the-century, too entel white players essentially force them out and create this artificial color line the timing of the commissioners of baseball is so strongly opposed to any integration we have happy chandler who is a former government of kentucky supported this integration could you comment on that, please? >> he was a strong supporter of integration as far as i can tell. branch rickey went to him and said do i have your support to this and he said absolutely one of the other interesting notes the famous game where ressa and robinson supposedly increase in cincinnati chandler was at that game and had it happened had this fall will let occurred that silenced the crowd and made such a strong impression i can't

believe that chandler who loved to spin yarn and tell stories and claim responsibility for everything good that ever happened from the sun coming up in the morning that he would have let that happen without a comment on it and he talked often about being in the game and congratulating jackie robinson and posing for pictures with him he would never see them peace together with arms of them each other so i think that is further evidence of that particular message. >> you mentioned you had no roommates, white relates in his first year. did he ever have a white roommate in his major-league career? >> that's a great question. i wonder if any of our die-hard fans in the audience have answers. i think that he had a black roommates most of his career.