Lacy's legacy

Scribe's influence in integrating baseball is immeasurable

It was on my to-do list, a story idea to pursue soon, maybe next week, or the week after that for sure. Go to Baltimore, track down Sam Lacy and ask him to sit for an interview. Talking to Lacy would be like opening a history book or, better yet, like finding an original artifact, his stories and recollections more valuable than any piece of memorabilia.

But time passes and chances slip away, sometimes forever, which is what happened to my opportunity to talk with Lacy, a sports columnist for the Baltimore Afro-American who died last week at the age of 99. While we were focused on the weaknesses of lesser men such as Mike Price and Larry Eustachy, we lost a man whose strength quietly helped change the course not only of sports history, but also American history.

You have heard of Jackie Robinson and you have heard of Branch Rickey, but chances are you have never heard of Sam Lacy. That's because when a wall comes crashing down, the people who are remembered are those who take the final swings of the hammer, not the ones who chipped away at the bricks until they were ready to tumble. Lacy was one of those anonymous men who was hammering away at segregation in the major leagues long before Rickey chose Robinson to break the color line in 1947.

In the early 1930s, Lacy implored influential white sportswriters to write about Negro League players, with relatively little success. In 1936, he suggested to Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith that black ballplayers might help his floundering ballclub. Griffith considered Lacy's suggestion, but was too afraid of negative reaction from white fans to follow through. In 1940, Lacy tried unsuccessfully to meet with baseball's first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, about integrating the major leagues and later suggested to owners that the Negro Leagues be included as an official minor league, to no avail. Even though Lacy was being rebuffed, he kept writing about the Negro Leagues and the injustice of baseball segregation. His efforts were chipping away at the wall of racism that kept black players out of the majors.

Soon after joining the Afro-American in 1944, Lacy was appointed to a committee to explore the possibility of integration. The committee never met, but Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was also a member of the group, and he sought Lacy's opinion of several black players he was interested in, including a young man named Jackie Robinson. Lacy told Rickey what he and another black sportswriter, Wendell Smith, had been writing for months -- that Robinson was by far the best candidate to break the color line. On Oct. 23, 1945, Rickey signed Robinson to a minor league contract with the Dodgers' Montreal farm club, and for the next three years Lacy traveled with Robinson, chronicling his attempt to gain acceptance in the "white" league.

At the same time, Lacy suffered most of the same racial abuse and indignities that Robinson did. He was denied entry to some press boxes and had to sit in the "Negro section" of the bleachers to cover the games. He was snubbed by many white writers and athletes, and had obscenities and worse hurled at him by white fans, none of which kept him from showing up at every ballpark where Robinson played, and reporting on the games for his readers back in Baltimore. Lacy stayed in the same hotels and boarding houses that Robinson did, and in the process became his friend and confidant. In later years Robinson often gave Lacy credit for helping him maintain the emotional strength to survive his first years with the Dodgers' organization.

But Lacy, who was inducted into the writers wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998, didn't consider his work done once the sport was integrated. Incredibly, he continued to write a column for the Afro-American until the week before he died, tackling everything from interleague play to the designated hitter rule. He was part journalist, part activist, and the world of sports is a better place because he passed through it. I should have made my way to Baltimore, if only to thank him for paving the way for writers like me, and you should have been told about him long before now. Sam Lacy was one of those heroes who was never treated as one, and if we didn't recognize him while he was with us, at least we can recognize what we have lost.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button topic every Monday on SI.com.

 

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