One of the best things about the new movie, 42, is that it has exposed a new generation to Wendell Smith.
The movie actually understated Smith’s role in bringing Jackie Robinson to the big leagues. In fact, without Smith, it is possible the world never hears about Robinson, or at least in the context we know of him today.
It was Smith, an African-American sportswriter, who pushed for the integration of baseball in the late 30s and 40s. It was Smith who recommended Robinson ahead of other Negro League stars to Branch Rickey.
Go ahead and name another sportswriter who had a greater impact on sports and society than Wendell Smith. You can’t.
I wrote a column about Smith’s legacy for Indiana University’s National Sports Journalism Center site. It contains Smith’s own words from a first-person chapter in Jerome Holtzman’s classic book, No Cheering in the Press Box. He said:
“When I think back, it was absolutely fantastic; all the things we went through,” he said in Holtzman’s book. “I still think about it; it’s hard to conceive. Going into a town and finding a decent place to stay was not easy in those days. Eating in the places we ate, second and third rate. Always having this stigma hanging over your head.
“But I knew Jackie would make it. And I knew if he made it, things had to open up.”
The movie also prompted others to write about Smith this week. Bill Plaschke in the Los Angeles Times talked to Don Newcombe:
Smith would become angry only when Robinson refused his help, at which point Smith would remind the star that he was enduring the same racial slights, only without the stardom.
“We would see Wendell sitting up there in the black bleachers typing his story. They wouldn’t even let him in the press box, it was worse than you could ever imagine,” Newcombe said. “Everything we went through, Wendell went through the same thing.”
Eric Deegans, also writing in the National Sports Journalism Center site, had this passage:
But activists like Smith knew the best strategy for winning over white people involved presenting seminal figures like Robinson as average, middle class guys just trying to earn an honest living. So coverage in the Courier encouraged black fans to conduct themselves well at games and Smith’s work downplayed the ugly impact of incidents such as Chapman’s taunts.
“It was Smith more than anyone who created the impression that Robinson was untroubled by the victimization, that he was letting the insults roll off his back when, in fact, he was absorbing them like blows to the gut,” wrote (Jonathan Eig in his book, Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season). “Robinson was never going to be baseball’s Ghandi, but Smith helped create the illusion of serenity, at least for one season.”
“I always tried to keep it from becoming a flamboyant, highly militant thing,” said Smith in quotes published in Eig’s book (the sportswriter, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of fame in 1994, died in 1972). “And I think that’s why it succeeded.”
Dave Hoekstra of the Chicago Sun-Times had recollections from Smith’s wife:
“What Jackie Robinson did was for all of us,” she said. ‘We were concerned about segregation because we all suffered it. It was terrible. White people said ‘git’ and Wendell left. What else could they do?”
Wyonella’s voice trailed off through the fog across the lake and she whispered again, “What else could they do?”
Bryant Gumbel recalled Smith’s impact on him in his closing commentary for HBO’s Real Sports. Smith eventually became a broadcaster for WGN in Chicago.
More importantly to me, it was Smith, who in 1964 became a local sports anchor with WGN-TV in Chicago – the first person of color in a position of authority ever seen on television by yours truly, who at the time was an impressionable sports-minded teenager on the south side of the city. Given my limited skill set, I knew back then that while I couldn’t be a Jackie Robinson, I could become a Wendell Smith. Of such small occasions are big dream born, and memories made, some of which still linger.
And one more. Last year, Ben Strauss in the New York Times wrote a terrific piece about the friendship between the widows of Smith and Bill Veeck.
Both men are honored in the Hall of Fame. Both are long dead. But the bond between the two women is still strong, and as they proceed together in the 10th decade of their lives, they remain a charming and enduring symbol of their husbands’ efforts to push the sport forward.
They can, it should be noted, also banter like ballplayers.
“That is just lovely,” Mrs. Veeck said to Mrs. Smith as she pointed to a dress that a young woman nearby was wearing. “I think that’s something I’d like to do — work in a ladies’ department store and help dress the girls of today.”
Mrs. Smith said, “I think you’d be good at it.”
