[Dialogue] We have made some progress!!

[jim rippey]

 It's nice, now and then, to reflect that amidst all the backsliding, we have made some real progress.

Jim Rippey in Bellevue, NE


October 1, 2005
The Diamond's Cutting Edge 
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
One of the more graphic moments in the history of racial integration occurred on a baseball field in Cincinnati in 1947 and was never photographed. During batting practice, crowds of racist fans were loudly taunting Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodger who had just broken the sport's ban on black ballplayers. He stood alone, taking the jeers passively as part of the deal he had made with the Dodgers. 

It was the club's first road stop after baseball integration's bombshell effect on my white Brooklyn neighborhood - and the nation beyond - where "civil rights" was a term a few decades short of common understanding. But from his first at-bats, Robinson was a mesmerizing figure in the parallel world of Brooklyn's street stickball players. Some of us even mimicked his pigeon-toed walk to the plate when we stepped up to the local sewer cover.

Robinson had to suffer Klan death threats and rebuffs at the mainline hotels where his teammates stayed. One Southern-born Dodger, appropriately named Dixie Walker, passionately joined in shunning him. But another, the Kentucky-born Pee Wee Reese, the team captain, declined. As Robinson fielded practice grounders in a vile din in Cincinnati, Reese purposefully strolled across the infield. 

He engaged Jackie in a chat. He placed his arm across his teammate's shoulder casually, triumphantly sending a message to fans, players and sportswriters.

No photographer captured that moment. Robinson and Reese went on to lead Brooklyn to its first World Series victory 50 years ago. But the far more important history had occurred eight years earlier, and it is only now that William Behrends, a sculptor, has conjured a bronze memorial of that long-ago moment.

"It's not really a baseball story," said Mr. Behrends, who has been studying every image available of the two players. "I think I got their game face right," he added, speaking of Reese's withering stare of authority and Robinson's noble glare at the slow pace of progress. 

The 8-foot-tall statue, first proposed by Jack Newfield and Stan Isaacs, both newspaper writers who long savored the moment, is being cast with help from City Hall. Brooklynites can be proud that it will stand at the Coney Island stadium of the Mets' Cyclones farm team. Then again, the two men would stand just as tall in Cincinnati.



  a.. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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