Read Online Everything They Had by David Halberstam - Free Book Online Page A

football were still quite embryonic in the West, he played with semi-pro teams in both.
    He brought with him a rare on-field and off-field intelligence, and exceptional mental discipline and toughness of mind, an ability to restrain himself despite extreme provocation (and control his hair-trigger temper). He resisted, as he promised he would, the temptation to lash back for a long time despite the constant taunts of fans and opposing players. “Mr. Rickey, what do you want?” he had asked the Brooklyn Dodger boss at their fateful first meeting. “Do you want a player with guts enough to fight back?” “I want a player,” Rickey had answered memorably, “with guts enough not to fight back.” He might rage inside, but he remained true to the challenge offered him by Rickey. Throughout his career, Robinson remained aware that the spotlight was always on him, and that the challenge to excel on field and behave with dignity off it was singular in his case. Few Americans were ever subjected to such relentless scrutiny in so public a manner; it is doubtful if any of his fellow citizens ever endured such relentless pressure with such sustained excellence.
    If American society, in the oddly pious-but-shrewd incarnation of Branch Rickey, was looking for the perfect candidate to undergo so withering a test as being the first black to play in the major leagues, then it could not have done better than Jackie Robinson. He was intelligent, purposeful, resourceful, modern; he played at a brilliant level, and he did not back down when taunted racially. He was fast and strong: clothed in his loose-fitting baseball uniform, he did not look particularly powerful, but there is one photo from those days of him alongside Joe Louis, both men stripped to the waist, where Robinson looks every bit as muscled and powerful as the heavyweight champion. Above all, Robinson was nothing if not a man. Everything about him demanded respect. He had played in endless integrated games as a collegian, and he had no illusion, as many blacks less privileged might have, that white athletes were either smarter or had more natural talent than blacks. White people to him were not people you were supposed to shuffle around who had superior abilities; they were just people, people who because of their skin had gotten a better deal than blacks.
    It was a great experiment, and it took place in 1947, seven years before Brown v. Board of Education . In a way, what Jackie Robinson did, performing in the most public arena in America, was every bit as important as that Supreme Court decision in 1954. His arrival in the big leagues had been the ultimate test of something that most Americans prided themselves on—the fairness of their country, that in this country the playing field was somehow supposed to be fair. In a way it was an experiment which put America itself at a crossroads between two powerful competing national impulses, one impulse reflecting the special darkness of racial prejudice and historic meanness of spirit which had begun with slavery, the other the impulse of idealism and optimism, that a true democracy offered the children of all American citizens a chance to exhibit their full talents and rise to their rightful place. What he was contesting was the worst myths of the past, for in the particular cruelty of the time, America had not merely barred blacks from its professional leagues, it had said it was barring them because they were unworthy. Yes, the rationale went in those days, they could run fast, but they lacked guts and heart, and they would fold in the late innings in big games, and, of course, by the way, they were lazy—everybody knew that.
    By midseason the argument was over. Robinson was a great player—clearly on his way to becoming rookie of the year. He had brought life and speed and intensity to an otherwise more passive Dodger team. He was an American samurai, the baseball player as warrior, and the