April 15, 1947
Jackie Robinson walked onto Ebbets Field as the Brooklyn Dodgers' first baseman and broke a barrier that had held for more than sixty years. The game itself was almost beside the point.
Branch Rickey had been planning this for three years. The president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers did not stumble into integrating baseball. He chose to do it, he chose when, and he chose who. The search was deliberate, the criteria specific, and the stakes impossible to overstate. Rickey needed a player who could hit major league pitching, run the bases, field his position, and absorb the worst abuse white America could deliver without fighting back.
He found Jackie Robinson.
Rickey's Plan
Rickey's motivations have been debated for decades. He was a devout Methodist who believed racial segregation was morally wrong. He was also a shrewd businessman who saw an untapped talent pool in the Negro Leagues and understood that integrating baseball would fill seats in Brooklyn. These motivations were not contradictory. Rickey could hold moral conviction and financial self-interest in the same hand without either one cancelling the other.
The plan had multiple stages. Rickey scouted Black players through the mid-1940s under the cover story that he was forming a new Negro League franchise called the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers. His scouts evaluated dozens of candidates. The list narrowed to Robinson, a 26-year-old infielder from the Kansas City Monarchs who had played one season in the Negro American League after serving as a lieutenant in the United States Army.
Robinson's background was unusual for a Negro League player. He had attended UCLA, where he lettered in four sports, the only Bruin to do so at the time. He was articulate, educated, and fierce. He had been court-martialed during his Army service for refusing to move to the back of a military bus at Fort Hood, Texas, and was acquitted. The court-martial revealed both his courage and his temper, and Rickey had to weigh both.
Their meeting took place in Rickey's office at 215 Montague Street in Brooklyn on August 28, 1945. It lasted three hours. Rickey acted out every scenario Robinson would face. He played the racist fan, the hostile opponent, the biased umpire. He shouted slurs. He described the threats that would come. Then he asked Robinson if he could take it without retaliating.
Robinson's response, according to Rickey's account, was direct. "Mr. Rickey, do you want a ballplayer who's afraid to fight back?"
"I want a player with guts enough not to fight back," Rickey said.
Robinson agreed. He signed with the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers' top minor league affiliate, on October 23, 1945.
Montreal
Robinson's 1946 season in Montreal was both proving ground and dress rehearsal. He led the International League in batting average at .349 and helped the Royals win the Little World Series. Fans in Montreal embraced him. On the road, the reception was hostile. In Baltimore and Syracuse, the abuse was constant. Robinson endured it and hit through it.
The season demonstrated two things. Robinson could play at a level that made his promotion to the majors a matter of performance rather than charity. And the social experiment, a Black man competing against white players in organized baseball, would not destroy the sport's commercial viability. Attendance at Royals games, home and away, was high.
Rickey watched the season unfold and made his decision. Robinson would be promoted to the Brooklyn Dodgers for the 1947 season.
The Resistance
The resistance came from inside and outside the organization. During spring training in 1947, several Dodgers players, led by Dixie Walker, circulated a petition saying they would refuse to play with Robinson. Manager Leo Durocher shut it down in a team meeting. "I don't care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin' zebra," Durocher reportedly said. "I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays."
Durocher was suspended by Commissioner Happy Chandler for the entire 1947 season over an unrelated matter involving associations with gamblers. Burt Shotton replaced him as manager. The petition died, but the resentment did not disappear. Walker eventually requested a trade and was sent to Pittsburgh after the season.
Other teams were worse. The Philadelphia Phillies, managed by Ben Chapman, subjected Robinson to sustained racial abuse from the dugout during a three-game series in late April. Chapman and his players screamed slurs, told Robinson to go back to the cotton fields, and made crude remarks about his wife. The abuse was so extreme that it backfired. Eddie Stanky, a Dodgers infielder who had been cool toward Robinson, confronted the Phillies dugout and told them to pick on someone who could fight back. The incident unified the Dodgers roster in Robinson's defense more effectively than any speech could have.
The St. Louis Cardinals reportedly discussed a plan to strike rather than play against Robinson. National League president Ford Frick threatened to suspend any player who refused to take the field. "I do not care if half the league strikes," Frick said. "This is the United States of America, and one citizen has as much right to play as another." The strike threat collapsed.
April 15
Opening Day at Ebbets Field. The Dodgers hosted the Boston Braves. Robinson was in the lineup at first base, batting second. The crowd was 26,623, above average for Ebbets Field but not a sellout. Roughly 14,000 of the fans were Black, many of them attending a major league game for the first time.
Robinson went 0-for-3 at the plate with a sacrifice bunt. He grounded out to third base in his first at-bat. He reached base once on an error in the seventh inning and scored a run. The Dodgers won 5-3. Johnny Sain took the loss for the Braves. The game was unremarkable in its details.
The significance was everything that surrounded the box score. Robinson had played. No one had struck. No riot had broken out. The world had not ended. A Black man had competed on the same field as white men in a major league game for the first time since Moses Fleetwood Walker played for the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884, sixty-three years earlier. The next morning's newspapers covered it as history, which it was, and as sports, which it also was.
The First Season
Robinson's 1947 season was a test of endurance as much as athletic ability. He received death threats through the mail, some targeting his wife Rachel and their infant son Jackie Jr. Hotels in St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia refused to house him, forcing him to stay at separate accommodations from the team. Runners spiked him at first base. Pitchers threw at his head.
He hit .297 with 12 home runs, 48 RBIs, and 29 stolen bases, leading the National League in the last category. He scored 125 runs. He was named the inaugural Rookie of the Year, an award that would later be renamed in his honor. The Dodgers won the pennant and lost the World Series to the Yankees in seven games.
The toll was physical and psychological. Robinson lost weight during the season, and the psychological toll was severe. Rachel Robinson was his primary support, and their partnership during 1947 was as much a part of the integration story as anything that happened on the field. She traveled with him when she could, endured the same threats, and provided the stability that allowed him to keep playing.
By late summer, the worst of the overt hostility had diminished, not because attitudes had changed but because Robinson's performance and conduct had made opposition look foolish. He was too good to ignore and too composed to provoke. The players who had resisted his presence found it increasingly difficult to maintain their objections when he was helping them win.
What Followed
Robinson's arrival did not integrate baseball overnight. Larry Doby joined the Cleveland Indians on July 5, 1947, becoming the first Black player in the American League. Hank Thompson and Willard Brown played briefly for the St. Louis Browns that same summer. But progress was slow. By the end of 1953, only about half of the sixteen major league teams had Black players on their rosters. The Boston Red Sox held out until Pumpsie Green debuted in 1959.
Robinson played ten seasons for the Dodgers. He was named MVP in 1949, when he hit .342 and stole 37 bases. He played second base, third base, first base, and the outfield, adapting his position to the team's needs as he aged. He retired after the 1956 season at age 37, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1962, and died on October 24, 1972, at 53. Diabetes and heart disease had aged him prematurely.
Major League Baseball retired Robinson's number 42 across all teams on April 15, 1997, the fiftieth anniversary of his first game. It was the first time any professional sport had retired a number league-wide. Every April 15 since 2009, every player, coach, and umpire in baseball wears 42 in his honor.
The game on April 15, 1947, was a 5-3 win over the Braves. Robinson went 0-for-3 with a sacrifice and a run scored. The box score tells you almost nothing about what happened that day.