Wendell Smith and the Integration of Baseball

I had two comments on Tuesday’s post about my potential future thesis. Both (extremely lovely, natch) commenters expressed interest in hearing more about the topic. In my world, where I get to make all of the rules, that constitutes a mandate.

My full proposal was about 6 pages long and it also included a 4 page bibliography. Which means that I will be condensing it ever so slightly for internet-friendly consumption. If anyone wants to read the full text and offer me some constructive feedback, I’d be happy to send you a copy. I’m not sure when my actual proposal is due, but this will probably become a living document between now and then.

As of right now, the plan is to write my thesis about Wendell Smith, a baseball writer for the Pittsburgh Courier and, later, the Chicago American. Most people have absolutely no idea who he was, but he was a central figure in the integration of baseball. Not only did Branch Rickey give Jackie Robinson a tryout as a result of Wendell Smith’s recommendation, Smith traveled with Robinson that whole first season and ghost wrote a column for him. Which means that Smith had a hand in picking a player to integrate baseball, helping to guide and support him through that difficult first season and, maybe most importantly, shaping the narrative of a story that has become an integral part of American sports history.

Branch Rickey wanted a player who would show the world that black people belonged in Major League Baseball. He wanted a gifted athlete, yes, but he also wanted someone who could hold up under intense scrutiny and pressure. Smith, as someone who had covered both MLB and the Negro Leagues, was in an excellent position to make the recommendation. I imagine that things would have been quite different if he had chosen a player like Satchel Paige.

Whenever the Dodgers went out on the road, there was a good chance that they would be staying in towns where no hotel or restaurant would accept a black man at their establishment. One of Smith’s most important jobs was to find places where he and Robinson could stay and places where they could eat. Sometimes this meant staying in the homes of local black community members and eating dinner with them. Robinson was also left out of a lot of Dodger social events, so Smith became someone that he could pass the time with. When you stop to think about it, the whole story is pretty amazing.

Another thing that pretty much boggles my mind is that the Dodgers were paying Smith to travel around with Robinson and act as Robinson’s manager. At the same time that Smith was reporting on the Dodgers for the Pittsburgh Courier. Can you imagine if a modern day sports writer was on the payroll of a team that he was supposed to be covering? It’s hard to imagine, because it could pretty much never happen. It goes against pretty much every code of ethics in modern journalism. It’s a complete conflict of interest. Professional journalism organizations were really at their infancy at this time (1947) and a lot of them didn’t have their ethics and standards completely fleshed out. Leaving aside all of the other amazing aspects of this story, there’s a good chunk of a thesis just in how ethics in journalism have changed over time.

I find Smith to be an incredibly compelling figure. He worked tirelessly to integrate baseball. And, even after he succeeded, he never stopped fighting. He worked on  behalf of black journalists like himself, agitating for equal treatment and access as their white counterparts. He was so proud when he finally gained membership in the Baseball Writer’s Association of America. His last fight, in the late 1960s, was to integrate spring training. He died of cancer not too much later.

There’s this mythology in America that has built up around Jackie Robinson. I think that Wendell Smith played a large part in building up Robinson’s persona. The columns that he ghost-wrote for Robinson made Robinson sound stoic, compassionate and forgiving. Some of the treatment that Robinson faced that first season is downright appalling. Smith ensured that Robinson didn’t come across as embattled or bitter. I have to imagine that this is a reason that we can all look at baseball integration with fondness and pride. He made sure that everyone knew that, no matter what got tossed his way, Jackie Robinson could take it. Even when Robinson was a lot angrier than Smith’s columns let on.

I really hope that I can make this thesis happen, because it’s the perfect intersection of my love of baseball history and my love of journalism history. Plus, it would be downright amazing to do this research. Wendell Smith’s papers are archived in the library at the Baseball Hall of Fame. And Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson’s papers are at the Library of Congress. Words cannot describe how much I want to make this all happen.