Murray Polner writes in his biography
of Branch Rickey …
“Rickey was far more than the
one who broke baseball's color bar. As I started exploring Rickey's
roots and life, he came to be, in my eyes, a genuine American hero
and not the instant celebrity we encounter so often now. He was, too,
the son of poor, rural southern Ohio farmers, who taught their three
sons – and by extension all who came after them in succeeding
generations – the worth of an ethical and moral way of life
grounded in religious faith.”
When the Rickey family moved to the
village of Lucasville from their rural farm in the fall of 1892, part
of the reason for the move was the realization that Branch was
extremely intelligent, and Lucasville had a good school with multiple
teachers and a complex curriculum. In addition, the school had a very
resourceful superintendent, James H. Finney, a man who became one of
Rickey's strongest influences and supporters.
Finney's simple technique was to build
self-esteem among the small-town boys and girls and open their eyes
and minds to the great ideas of the past by introducing religious
aphorisms and teaching morality to guide them into more Christian
lives.
Buoyed by his family, his church, and
his school, Branch Rickey grew to be a man of incredible
determination who fought hell and high water to keep his solemn
promises. Two of his most celebrated vows were made to Dr. Charles L.
Thomas and Jackie Robinson – both of these promises dependent upon
Rickey's own faithful conviction.
Charles “Tommy” Thomas from
Zanesville, Ohio, was an excellent athlete on Coach Branch Rickey's
1903 and1904 Ohio Wesleyan baseball teams. He was born in Weston,
West Virginia (the boyhood home of Civil War General Thomas
“Stonewall” Jackson) in 1881,but migrated with his family to
Zanesville, Ohio at the age of three. In school, “Cha” as he was
know at the time, was a high school three-sport star in football,
baseball and track.
When Thomas enrolled at Ohio Wesleyan
University – one of a handful of black students attending the
college at the time – his sport of choice was football (fullback) …
that was, until he met Branch Rickey.
Rickey, a student at OWU who had also
played in the backfield and caught for the school's baseball team the
year before, acquired the coaching position after he had been ruled
ineligible for receiving pay during his summer break while playing
baseball for the Portsmouth (Ohio) Navies. Much to the regret of the
college and Rickey himself, he could no longer play collegiate
sports, but he was well-liked and admired on campus, so retiring
coach, Dan Daub, recommended Rickey for the position of head baseball
coach in the spring of 1903.
OWU President Bashford said he had been
impressed with Rickey's honesty in refusing to lie when confronted by
the Navies' owner's letter. Rickey had admitted he had taken payment.
In fact, Bashford was so impressed that
he had spoken with faculty and all of them were taken by the
prodigious schedule Rickey was able to maintain without damaging his
scholastic record – quite an accomplishment for a twenty-one year
old. After all, Rickey had entered college as a probationary student
with no high school diploma (Lucasville did not offer a diploma until
a few years later.), and he was taking twenty-one credits, working
round-the-clock at an assortment of part-time jobs, and looking
forward to the football and baseball seasons.
When Branch Rickey had first met Thomas
two years earlier on the football squad, they liked each other. Since
Rickey had played catcher on the team, now he needed a replacement,
so he recruited Thomas and moved him to the catching position
(Originally Thomas had played first base and outfield), thus making
him the first of hundreds of players to switch positions under
Rickey's guidance. Thomas became the only black player on the team
and one of the few in the Midwest at the time.
For two seasons Thomas played under
Rickey, who was anguished by the racial slurs endured by his black
player. For example, when Ohio Wesleyan went to Lexington to play the
University of Kentucky in the spring of 1902, some of the Kentucky
players and fans chanted, “Get that nigger off the field!” This
caused Rickey to race across the field and confront the Kentucky
coach in the dugout.
“We won't play without him!” Rickey
declared. Then, many of the Kentucky fans, having come to a game,
sided with the Ohioans and started their own chant, “We want
Thomas! We want Thomas!”
After an hour's delay, the game began
and was played without further incident.
Thomas received similar treatment at
West Virginia University, where he became the first black player ever
to play on the school's diamond.
In yet another account an alumnus wrote
about a game in Athens, Ohio against Ohio University, stating… “the
only unpleasant feature of the game was the coarse slurs cast at Mr.
Thomas, the catcher. But through it all he showed himself far more
the gentleman than his insolent tormentors, though their skin is
white.”
Then, of course, what is known to be a
key factor in Branch Rickey's determination to break baseball's color
ban and sign Jackie Robinson and other black players occurred during
the 1904 season.
In 1903, at South Bend, Indiana, where
Ohio Wesleyan had traveled to play Notre Dame University, an Oliver
Hotel clerk refused to allow Thomas to register with the rest of the
team. At that point, Rickey told the team's student manager to go to
the local YMCA to try to get a room for not only Thomas but also for
the entire team. (Something he later said he had no intention of
actually doing.)
Rickey, determined to keep the squad
together, asked to speak to the hotel manager, and the manager
finally agreed to let Thomas wait in Rickey's room until lodging
could be found for him in South Bend's black neighborhood. When they
arrived at the room, Rickey called the front desk and ordered a cot
for Thomas. The angry hotel manager accused Rickey of breaking his
word. But, Rickey bellowed back: “Under no circumstances will I
leave or allow Thomas to be put out.” And, he didn't.
Once in the room, Thomas broke down
sobbing and scratching at his skin as if he wanted to remove the
color there. “I never felt so helpless in my life,” Rickey later
told Arthur Mann.
Rickey recalled years later:
“We went upstairs. I summoned
the team captain to discuss plans for the game. Tommy stood in the
corner, tense and brooding and in silence. I asked him to sit in a
chair and relax. Instead, he sat on the end of the cot, his huge
shoulders hunched and his large hands clasped between his knees.
Tears welled in his eyes. They spilled down his face. Then his
shoulders heaved convulsively, and he rubbed one great hand over the
other with all the power of his body, muttering, 'Black skin, black
skin. If I could only make 'em white.' He kept rubbing and rubbing as
though he would remove the blackness by sheer friction.”
Rickey realized that but for the color
line, Thomas was good enough to play professional baseball. In that
hotel room, Rickey tried to console Thomas by telling him that a time
would come when there would be equal opportunity for all, regardless
of color. He told Thomas to “buck up” and he promised him they
would “lick this one day,” but added “we can't if you feel
sorry for yourself.”
And, Thomas did “buck up.” He
played in the Notre Dame game and remained on the team throughout the
season. He actually played three years of baseball at Ohio Wesleyan
University, two under Branch Rickey and his final season in 1905
under Ben Davis. During his career, Thomas excelled offensively as
well as defensively. While catching was his primary position, Tommy
also filled in at first base and in the outfield where he was
primarily used in centerfield.
Though records of the day were not as
meticulously kept as today, unofficially Charles Thomas hit above
.300 each season and compiled a combined batting average of .321
(60/187) over his three years of baseball.
In addition, Thomas played baseball on
a number of black teams. He played with the highly regarded Columbus
Black Tourists in the Ohio State Colored League. The Philadelphia
Giants team of 1905, on which Charles Thomas competed part-time, is
considered one of the all-time great teams in the segregated world of
negro baseball. Three of his teammates on that team have since been
inducted into professional baseball’s Hall of Fame. During his
abbreviated stay with the Giants, Thomas registered a .619 batting
average.
Rickey and Thomas remained friends for
the rest of their lives. In 1947, Thomas, who had become a dentist in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, told writer Mark Harris the story of his
visit to his former college coach in St. Louis “about the time when
Dizzy Dean was in his prime.”
For the visit, although Rickey was a
baseball executive, he was unable to seat Thomas among white fans in
the field boxes or grandstand because of Jim Crow rules. Rather than
send him out to watch the game in the segregated section of
Sportsman's Park, Thomas said the Rickey spent the time talking with
him in Rickey's office, saying once again that one day racial
discrimination would not exist in the United States.
In 1958, Thomas recalled his Ohio
Wesleyan college experience:
“From the first day I entered
OWU, Rickey took a special interest in my welfare. I think I was the
first Negro player o its teams, and some fellows didn't welcome me
any too kindly, but there was no open opposition.
“I always felt that Branch set
them straight. During the three years that I was at OW, no man could
have treated me better. When we went on our trips, Rickey was first
one to see if I was welcome in the hotel where we were to stop. On
several occasions, he talked the manager into letting me occupy a
double room with him and his roommate, Barney Russell.”
Dr. Thomas lived a successful, full
life and passed away in 1971 at the age of 90.
And, the promises?
Shortly after he signed Jackie Robinson
to a contract, Branch Rickey was quoted by the Associated Press as
follows:
“It has been on my mind for
years, ever since I coached baseball at my alma mater. The West
Virginia team at first refused to play us if our catching star,
Charlie Thomas, was in the line-up. Later, we went to South Bend for
a game with Notre Dame and Charlie was refused a room in a hotel. I
finally prevailed upon the manager to put a cot in my room.”
We all know how Jackie Robinson, with
the help of Branch Rickey, broke Major League Baseball's color
barrier in 1947. It was Branch and Jackie who brought about the
long-awaited fruition of that promise when Robinson stepped onto the
field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. However, it is very conceivable that
Jackie's promise may have not even taken place had it not been for a
much earlier vow made by Rickey – a vow he made to himself and to
Charles Thomas.
Sources
Mark Harris. “Branch Rickey Keeps His Forty Year Promise.” Negro Digest. September, 1947.
Lee Lowenfish. Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman. 2007.
John J. Monteleone, Editor. Branch Rickey's Little Blue Book. 1995.
Murray Polner. Branch Rickey: A Biography. 1982.
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