The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [7]
EK: Talk a little bit about National League President (and later Commissioner) Ford Frick.
LR: We asked Ford Frick in 1936 if there was a ban, when we began our daily sports section. Frick also said there was no written ban, and that each owner was free to do as he pleased. So, I suppose he was in on the conspiracy.
EK: There had to be some owners that wanted to win badly enough to shake up the system. Did you run across any owners in the 1930s that you thought might be strong enough to sign a black player to a Major League team?
LR: I would periodically ask managers, whenever they came into New York, and players to shoot down the conventional wisdom that players and managers wouldn’t stand for integration. There was one owner that I asked, “Would you be willing to hire a qualified black player?” that answered favorably. Pittsburgh Pirates owner Bill Benswanger told me, “If the question of admitting colored baseball players came into issue, then I would be in favor of it.” That was in 1939. Later, he agreed to try out—which my newspaper endorsed—a young catcher named Roy Campanella. The tryout never happened. I have no hard evidence, but to me it is obvious that pressure was put on Benswanger then. If you don’t believe me, the late sportswriter Dick Young wrote about the proposed tryout in his 1951 book on Campanella.
EK: This might be a silly question, but how did you gain access to the players and press boxes? Knowing, for instance, the anti-Communist stance that Branch Rickey took.
LR: Rickey, had he wanted to, couldn’t [have kept] me from the Brooklyn press box. I was credentialed and a member of the Baseball Writers of America . . . so I was accredited in all ballparks across America. By the way, Rickey acted properly to me. He just asked me not to be political with Jackie Robinson, at least for the first year.
EK: Were the other newspapers—New York had eleven major dailies at the time—in on the conspiracy before 1947?
LR: In the 1930s, when we began our campaign, check all the major newspapers, including the New York Times, the paper of record. There was not a word about their being a ban on blacks, not one editorial. There were no queries put to Judge Landis.
Shirley Povich wrote some things (in the Washington Post), but that would came later. Around 1942, there was a shift. It happened because World War II was taking place, and blacks were asked to die for their country. It was absurd that they couldn’t participate in the Major Leagues.
EK: You covered the great Negro League players, and the Negro League owners of the 1930s. Did any of them want the white Major League owners to continue their Jim Crow policy?
LR: Effa Manley, owner of the Newark Black Eagles, told me bitterly, “You know what you people are doing, you’re going to put out of business one of the most successful black-run business in the country.” Only later did she agree that you had to open the game to all black players. She was very bitter about it, but I can understand that. All the owners of Negro League teams were concerned with the bottom line.
EK: I found a significant news story in July of 1942, when you may have been in the service to this country, but your paper was still fighting this conspiracy. The headline I found was this: Landis CLARIFIES COLOR Line issue. And the article said, “There is no rule in organized ball banning Negroes.” Judge Landis made his statement after a story in the Daily Worker had been brought to his attention. The story attributed to Leo Durocher, manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, a remark to the effect that “a grapevine