CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS
Originally Published AUGUST 25, 1999

They buried the captain last week, the good one, the great one, the leader, the boys of summer, the greatest Dodger of them all. The Southern man who crossed over and put his arm around Jackie Robinson when the hate poured onto the field from the dugouts and bleachers of America. The great American game, another place where America's racism was manifest; with that simple gesture he madeAmerica look itself in the mirror and finally, finally, see that the faces of its greatest citizens were not always white.

We knew none of this, of course, growing up in Queens in the 50's, in a small ethnic state of mind if not place. This is what I knew about Pee Wee Reese: that he was the Dodgers' captain, that he was probably short, that he was not a Catholic. That he was a great clutch hitter, great shortstop, and a good man, although I was not exactly sure about the details. He wore number 1 on the back of his Brooklyn Dodger jersey, probably to make him seem taller, I thought. In his time, the Dodgers won 7 Pennants and the one great World Series, when the boys of summer struck down the Mighty, the New York Yankees. He was, to us, the greatest. But there was much more.

Rewind, April 1947. Members of the Dodger team, to their eternal shame, signed a petition refusing to take the field if Jackie Robinson played. Reese refused to sign it. He was the one, the leader, the man who had the power to do great good or wrong, who stood his ground, who said, simply, no. I just treated him the way I would want to be treated, he explained.

Fast Forward, April, 1947. The St. Louis Cardinals are talking boycott. The Dodgers are thrown out of a segregated Philadelphia hotel. They take the field to warm up in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati manager, leading the crowd and the team, taunts Robinson with every horrible racial epithet known or unknown. Robinson, standing alone at second base, eyes down, kicking the dirt. Reese, grown up in nearby Louisville. Reese stops the practice. He walks up to Robinson. Says nothing. Just puts his arm around him. Robinson said, after that, I never felt alone on a baseball field.

At the captain's funeral, a picture of Rachel Robinson and Dorothy Reese, clasping hands. How far we have come. Yet juxtaposed with this picture, there was also this item in the newspaper: a survey, that young people would find a separate but equal society acceptable. 50% of whites, 40% of blacks. How far we have to go.

A half century after Pee Wee Reese stood with Jackie Robinson in the middle of that Cincinnati field, what has happened to us? How have we gone so very wrong that we no longer wish to be with each other? Maybe you don't think it's wrong, but I do.

Maybe I am just old fashioned now, that I think that a color irrelevant society is the best thing, the greatest thing, the most fun, interesting, successful, humanizing, blessed thing. I believe that Harold Henry Reese thought so too. He was on a navy ship in the Pacific when he learned from a short wave radio operator that the Dodgers were bringing up a black man to play his position. He was a Southern man who knew better than anyone the power of white privilege, yet, he said, "If he's man enough to take my job, I'm not going to like it, but damn it, black or white, he deserves it." Amen.

Captain Courageous. We need more like you.
©1999 Adrienne Larkin