Today, with major league baseball poised to finally start it seems appropriate to share an exert from The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson by Kostya Kennedy as printed in Sports Illustrated.
Game 6, 1956 World Series, Brooklyn
I T WAS THE BOTTOM of the 10th inning, two outs, scoreless, and the Dodgers had Jim Gilliam on second base and Duke Snider on first, Jackie Robinson was coming up to face the Yankees’ Bob Turley for the fifth time in the game.
He stepped across home plate in front of Yogi Berra, rolled his shoulders, and gently wagged his bat before finding his place in the batter’s box. The Yankees outfielders played Robinson deep and swung over toward the left side. Mickey Mantle in center, Hank Bauer in right, Enos Slaughter in left. The shortstop, Gil McDougald, was playing well over into the hole. The second baseman; Billy Martin, kept dodging over to try to lure Gilliam back to the bag.
So very much would happen in Robinson’s life over the weeks and months to come. Japan. The job at Chock Full. His trade, authorized by Walter O’Malley, to the New York Giants. Retirement from the game. Meetings with the NAACP. Letters to Martin Luther King Jr.
But right now, there was only this.
Robinson fouled off the first pitch, and the second came in outside. One and one. Turley caught the ball back from Berra. Gilliam kept his hands on his hips as he edged off second base, Then he got up on the balls of his feet, ready to run. Turley looked in toward the plate, stepped forward, and threw the ball, and Robinson swung.
You could tell it had a chance by the sound of it—clock!—a high line drive out toward the gap in left-center field. Slaughter moved sharply toward the ball and leaped with his glove outstretched. But the ball got over him and landed on the cinder path and took a hop off the ad for Schaefer Beer. Gilliam gathered speed as he rounded third, and when he touched home plate, his fellow Dodgers streamed out of the dugout and some fans spilled out of the seats. The big Brooklyn crowd thundered and roared, and the old stadium shook and shook and shook in the autumn air. The Dodgers had won. There would be a Game 7.
This was in the late afternoon on Oct. 9, 1956: 10 years and 175 days since Robinson had played his first game as a Montreal Royal, nine years and 172 days since he officially broke in at Ebbets Field. It was the 314th day of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.—another 74 days would pass before it would end in success. This was the day on which the Dodgers beat the Yankees in a World Series game for the final time, and it was the day that Jackie Robinson stroked that game-winning single, the 1,550th—and final—hit of his Dodgers career.
THERE WAS STILL Game 7 to be played, the next afternoon at Ebbets Field, with Don Newcombe pitching for the Dodgers. Newcombe had won 27 games in 1956 and was voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player. But in Game 7, he did not pitch at that level. The Yankees would go on to win 9-0.
Robinson was the last World Series batter, swinging and missing at strike three and then, when the ball bounced away from Berra, racing to first base, in full flight, squeezing the last life out of the game and the Series. But Berra got to the ball and threw to first base for the out
He would be back at Ebbets Field after that afternoon, to collect his things and say goodbye to the staff—he always tipped the clubhouse guys well, home and away—but he would not be back on the diamond. And even then, he knew that this might be true.
You could see Jackie Robinson pausing thereafter the final out on that October afternoon, and looking out over the ballpark, at the fan of the infield and the white bases and the green outfield grass and the bleachers beyond. His office. The ground where he had plied his craft and defined his mission, established himself, and asserted himself again and again. You can see him there, still and thoughtful at a standing rest, solemn as a lion in a tender moment, and then turning his body—the big shoulders and powerful arms, the sturdy trunk, legs thick as the thickest mattress springs, the body that had done its part to change the world—away from the field and beginning to move in his aching gait toward the dugout and on through the tunnel to the locker room, where he would talk to the newspapermen and feel the fresh disappointment of the World Series loss and then peel off his flannels, his Dodger blues, his uniform, for the last time in his life.
The Jackie Robinson story is baseball’s finest legacy. I hope you enjoyed Autumn in New York. Now it’s time to PLAY BALL!
