Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, was a turning point for baseball and for America.
As Jackie Robinson prepares to take the field on Opening Day 75 years ago this Friday as the first black player in modern baseball history, an Associated Press reporter asked if he had any butterflies in his stomach.
"Not one," replied Robinson with a grin. "I wish I could say I did because then maybe I'll have an alibi if I don't do that well. But I won't be able to use that as an alibi."
Two years earlier, in 1945, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey signed Robinson to a minor league contract after Robinson played one season in the Negro Leagues. After a stellar year with the team's top minor league team in Montreal, where he led the International League with a .349 batting average, Robinson was promoted to the Dodgers in 1947 as a 28-year-old rookie.
Before his MLB debut on a chilly spring day in Brooklyn, Robinson posed in front of the Dodgers dugout, shaking hands with interim manager Clyde Sukeforth—the scout who had brought him to meet Ricky in 1945. Robinson and Sukeforth are both smiling, but there are Dodgers players and coaches on either side of them with sad faces.
A petition was organized by some of Robinson's teammates opposing playing with him. Ricky immediately dismissed the protest, letting the players know that he would trade someone who was not on board. It was in the pressure-cooker atmosphere in the dugout that Robinson stepped on the diamond on April 15 to break baseball's color barrier.
As the team's first baseman that day, he saw action from the start. Boston Braves hitter Dick Culler led the game with a ground ball to third baseman John "Spider" Jorgensen, who threw Robinson. As soon as the ball hit his glove, fans historically increased their approval for the routine.
In a trying first season, Robinson would face a lot of verbal abuse and worse from fans across the country, but this Tuesday afternoon at Ebbets Field, where half of the 26,000 fans were black, he was given a warm welcome. Among his champions in the small ballpark was his wife, Rachel Robinson.
"The black fans were so tense, and so enthusiastic—their expectations were so high, and their aspirations so high—that they reacted to everything," she recalled in Ken Burns' documentary, "Baseball."
Many fans wore "I'm for Jackie" buttons.
In that morning's New York Times, columnist Arthur Daly wrote that "there must be almost another DiMaggio making Robinson good from the opening whistle," referring to the legendary Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio. "It's not fair to him, but no one can do anything about it but himself. It was never easy for the Pioneers and Robinson, by force, is a pioneer. ... From now on it's his burden and his It has to be raised alone."
Hitting second in the Brooklyn lineup, Robinson came to bat at the bottom of the first inning to more enthusiastic cheers. Fans shouted, "Come on, Jackie," and "we're with you, boy," the Baltimore Afro-American reported.
Facing one of the best pitchers in the game, Johnny Sen, who led 20–14 with a 2.21 ERA in 1946, Robinson finished third. After two innings, he moved to the left field. There was more futility, in the bottom of the fifth, when he landed in a rally-killing double-play.
The Baltimore Afro-American wrote, "With each failure, a groan came through the stands, as if every man, woman, and child were trying as hard."
The dynamic rookie finally got things done in the bottom half of the seventh. With the Dodgers trailing 3–2, he reached an error after executing a well-sacrificial bunt, and eventually scored to advance on the way to a 5–3 Brooklyn victory. But his last match for the day was the opponent - 0-for-3.
"I did a pathetic thing," Robinson wrote in his 1972 autobiography, "I Never Had It Made." If fans "expected a miracle from Robinson, they were sadly disappointed."
Despite the historic day, major newspapers underestimated it. For example, The New York Times and The Washington Post both reported on Robinson's debut inside the paper, with the Times story focusing on the game instead barely mentioning him. A Times column by Daly, entitled "Inauguration Day at Ebbetts Field", did not reach Robinson until the ninth paragraph, describing him as a "muscle negro...
An unknown veteran teammate said in the column, "It's still a little weird to have Jackie on the team, like something else new." "We don't know yet how to work with him. But he will be accepted in time."
Robinson would face abuse that year—including death threats, players intentionally spiking him, and racist adjectives from fans and opponents. But he helped lead the Dodgers to the National League pennant with a .297 batting average and a league-best 29 stolen bases. He also won Rookie of the Year – an award now named for him in both the National and American leagues.
Martin Luther King Jr. said after Robinson's induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, "He was a sit-inner before a sit-in, a liberty rider before a freedom ride."
David McMahon, co-writer and co-director of the PBS documentary "Jackie Robinson," said in an email that Robinson was "really on his own" in his early days. "I don't think he had friends in the mainstream press or on the team. No enemies, but no open support."
“We now think of it as a watershed moment – and it absolutely is – but the nation didn’t stop that day to see how Robinson got off to a start,” he said. "The game didn't sell. There were 6,000 vacant seats. I don't think the coverage in the White Press was overwhelming by design. These were different times."