Beyond The Point Of No Return

Bostic experienced difficulty in gathering recruits for the expedition to Bear Mountain. "You'd be surprised at the number of players who were actually afraid to buck the establishment," says Bostic, who canvassed 10 or 12 players before settling on McDuffie and Thomas. "McDuffie had all the guts in the world. Nothing scared him." A standout pitcher in the Negro leagues since 1930, at 32 he seemed an unlikely candidate for the major leagues. Thomas, a veteran of more than 20 seasons of Negro league ball, was five years older. "I'd settled on Thomas," says Bostic, "because he was the best fielding first baseman I knew of, bar none. I knew Thomas would dazzle them, and he had a good bat," recalls the black reporter.

According to Bostic, when he, McDuffie and Thomas arrived at Bear Mountain, "Rickey almost went berserk with fury. We went into the dining room at the Bear Mountain Inn, and he told me that he didn't appreciate what I'd done." Rickey told Bostic that he'd been put on a spot. If he allowed the tryout to proceed, Bostic would get "the sports story of the century." On the other hand, if Bostic was turned down, Rickey would open himself to embarrassing criticism. Confronted by this dilemma and enraged for reasons unknown to the others at that time, Rickey gave McDuffie and Thomas a tryout the next day. They each performed for 45 minutes before Rickey dismissed them.

"I'm more for your cause than anybody else you know," Rickey had told Bostic before the tryout. "but you're making a mistake using force. You're defeating your own aims." Rickey never forgave Bostic for his actions. "He never spoke to me from that day until the day he died," says Bostic. And as he left the tryout, Bostic considered Rickey the least likely person to leap baseball's color barrier.

Less than a month later Rickey assembled a press conference to address the issue of blacks in baseball. Before an audience of reporters from the black and white media Rickey quickly dashed any hopes that the Dodgers planned to sign a black player. Agitation like the imposed tryout, he charged, was Communist inspired and harmful to the cause. Rickey then turned his attention to the Negro leagues, which he decried as "rackets." To remedy this situation, Rickey announced the establishment of the United States League, a new circuit for black players. Unlike the existing Negro leagues, the U.S. League would utilize standard contracts and regular schedules and give superior treatment to its players. The possibility existed, hinted Rickey, that the best performers in the U.S. League might be recruited by major league teams.

The response to Rickey's announcement ranged from puzzlement to disappointment. The institution of a new Negro league hardly seemed the answer to baseball's racial dilemma. Some commentators accused him of aspiring to the "dictatorship" of black baseball. Others saw this as a subterfuge to evade New York State's Ives-Quinn antidiscrimination act. Black columnist Ludlow W. Werner later wrote, "When I left that meeting...I had formed the opinion that it would be a hot day in December before Rickey would ever have a Negro wear the uniform of Organized (white) Baseball."

The U.S. League was indeed a subterfuge, though not of the kind Rickey's detractors suspected. Behind the facade of looking for talent for this strange new league, Rickey, in reality, was seeking black athletes to play for the Dodger organization.

The need for absolute secrecy obsessed the conspiratorial Mahatma. Premature revelation, he feared, would undermine the entire enterprise. He informed only those for whom he deemed foreknowledge essential. Primary among his select circle were the Dodger owners. The real authority in the organization ultimately rested with the Brooklyn Trust Company, which had kept the ball club afloat with generous loans. In 1943, Rickey discussed with George V. McLaughlin, the bank's president and a local civic leader, the possibility of recruiting black players. McLaughlin responded favorably, but added a caveat: "If you find the man who is better than the others, you will beat it; and if you don't, you're sunk." With McLaughlin's support Rickey broached the issue to the Dodger board of directors. All of its members endorsed Rickey's plan.

Rickey assigned his top Dodger scouts—George Sisler, Wid Matthews, Tom Greenwade and Clyde Sukeforth—to search for black players. He told them that they were looking for talent for a new team alternately called the Brown Dodgers or the Brown Bombers, which would play in Ebbets Field when the Dodgers were on the road. None of them suspected Rickey's true intentions. He instructed them to maintain a low profile so as not to attract attention. "We'd buy our ticket and we'd sit back and we never identified ourselves at all," says Sukeforth. "If we saw a good looking ballplayer we made a report on him, just like a white boy." Rickey also employed Oscar Charleston, a former Negro league star, to assist in scouting and to provide necessary background information on the prospects.

Rickey reviewed the reports accumulated by his scouts and weighed the merits of the candidates. The initial black player would probably spend several years in the minor leagues, making anyone over 30 a risky proposition. Many of the top stars in the Negro leagues, like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, were thereby eliminated due to age. On the other hand, many of the younger Negro league stars lacked the maturity necessary for the role. Others, like Monte Irvin, whom many observers deemed the best prospect for major league stardom, were in the Army. Catcher Roy Campanella of the Baltimore Elite Giants and Pitcher Don Newcombe of the Newark Eagles were both judged potential major-leaguers, but Rickey felt that neither matched his stringent requirements for the pivotal role.

Increasingly, Rickey's attention became focused on Robinson, then the Monarchs' shortstop. In May, following the U.S. League press conference, he quizzed Smith about potential players for his new team. Smith unhesitatingly mentioned Robinson, whom he had accompanied, with two other black players, to a recent tryout in Boston. Reports from three scouts all spoke highly of him, too.