The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [31]
Occasionally lighter-skinned players passed by claiming to be Latin or Indian, but they would be discovered and forced out. In 1916, Jimmy Claxton played two games for the Oakland Oaks as an American Indian. When it was revealed that he had some African blood, he was fired. The somewhat darker skin of such players as Alex Carrasquel from Venezuela, Hiram Bithorn from Puerto Rico, and several Cubans did not pass without comments from press and fans, but they did manage to play in major-league games, though never for long or illustrious careers. Some signed forms certifying the Spanishness of their background. In the 1920s, two Cubans, outfielder Jacinto “Jack” Calvo and pitcher José Acosta, pulled off the feat of playing for both major-league teams and Negro League teams.
For two decades there was no permanent organization for African-American professional baseball until 1920, when Rube Foster, a black former pitcher—not to be confused with the white Red Sox pitcher of the same name—founded the Negro National League. The Negro League was a separate major-league-quality baseball system. In addition to their U.S. season they played in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, and Venezuela. African-American players became part of the Latino world.
In 1920, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was appointed the first commissioner of baseball. Theodore Roosevelt had appointed him judge to the Northern District of Illinois, where he distinguished himself by his trials against unionists, leftists, opponents of World War I, and black people. Many of his rulings were overturned on appeal. He was the judge who managed to get the first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, banned from the sport; backed by bigoted white players and club owners, he managed to maintain segregation in baseball.
But race relations were changing in the 1940s. The military was becoming integrated, there was a nascent civil rights movement, and there was a wealth of talent in the Negro League—some of the best players in baseball, waiting for the team with the courage to tap them. Landis died in 1944, and the new commissioner, Happy Chandler, a Kentucky politician nicknamed for his comportment, was willing to allow integration. In 1945, Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ general manager, held tryouts for black players. He said he was thinking of forming a black Brooklyn team. That same year he signed Jackie Robinson, an all-around athlete and talented infielder, sending him to the minor leagues with the stated intention of bringing him up to the Dodgers.
Rumors had been floating around for some time about giving Negro League players tryouts in the majors. It was widely thought that Satchel Paige would be given one of the first tryouts. Paige had grumbled about the idea of a tryout, but he was bitter for years that he did not get to be first. However, he probably would not have agreed to starting in the minor leagues because he was considered one of the best pitchers of his day.
There is some evidence that Rickey was considering a Cuban for the first black. A Latino might have seemed more acceptable to fans because, oddly, Americans were more willing to accept blacks if they were foreign. He was looking at Silvio García, a famous Cuban infielder who was also famous for his alcoholism and for his menacing statements about what he might do to white people who dared to bother him.
Robinson, though talented, was a rookie and not the best the Negro League had to offer. But he was good and he had something else Rickey was looking for. When he signed Robinson, Rickey told him that he wanted him to accept abuse stoically.