Harvey Frommer - Jackie Robinson

Frommer, Harvey. New York City Baseball: 1947-1957. New York: Macmillan, 1980.

Recaptures the golden decade when the Giants, the Yankees, and the Dodgers were all home-based in New York City.

Begins with Jackie Robinson joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 and ends with the Dodgers and the Giants leaving the city for California at the end of the 1957 baseball season.

_____ . Rickey and Robinson. New York: Macmillan, 1982.

A double biography of the men who together broke baseball's color barrier. The book focuses on the lives of both men, their disparate beginnings, and the cause that bonded them in their adult lives.

Kahn, Roger. The Boys of Summer. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

An evocation of the Brooklyn Dodger years and the lives and fortunes of some of the players in their after-baseball careers. One chapter, The Lion at Dusk, centers on Jackie Robinson.

Robinson, Jackie. I Never Had It Made. New York: Putnam, 1972.

Jackie Robinson's autobiography. His childhood in California, his army years, his baseball career, and the later period of his life when he was a spokesperson for the civil rights movement.

An imprint of Globe Pequot

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 1984 by Harvey Frommer

First Lyons Press paperback edition 2017

Photographs courtesy of:
UPI: pp. 15, 31, 46, 63, 70, 77, 82, 87, 92, 93, 99
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc.: p. 96

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 978-1-63076-157-8 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-63076-158-5 (e-book)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

FOR MY FAMILY

When school was out, I sometimes went with my father in his taxi. One summer morning we were driving in East Flatbush down Snyder Avenue when he pointed out a dark red brick house with a high porch.

I think Jackie Robinson lives there, he said. He parked across the street and we got out of the cab, stood on the sidewalk, and looked at it.

Suddenly the front door opened. A black man in a short-sleeved shirt stepped out. I didnt believe it. Here we were on a quiet street on a summer morning. No one else was around. This man was not wearing the baggy, ice-cream-white uniform of the Brooklyn Dodgers that contrasted against his dark skin. He was dressed in regular clothes, coming out of a regular house in a regular Brooklyn neighborhood, a guy like anyone else, going out for a newspaper and a bottle of milk.

Then incredibly, he crossed the street and came right towards me. Seeing that unmistakable pigeon-toed walk, the rock of the shoulders and hips I had seen so many times on the baseball field, I had no doubt who it was.

Hi Jackie, Im one of your biggest fans, I said self-consciously. Do you think the Dodgers are gonna win the pennant this year?

His handsome face looked sternly down at me. Well try our best, he said.

Good luck, I said.

Thanks. He put his big hand out, and I took it. We shook hands, and I felt the strength and firmness of his grip.

I was a nervy kid, but I didnt ask for an autograph or think to prolong the conversation. I just watched as he walked away down the street.

From that long ago moment and from so many times seeing Jackie Robinson magnificently ply his trade at Ebbets Field, he was always my favorite baseball player. Driven, multi-talented, daring, he was the engine who powered the great Brooklyn Dodger team. This book, written many long years ago, was and will always be a tribute to him.

Harvey Frommer,
Lyme, N.H.
2017