New film explores the breaking of baseball's color barrier

WHY DID Branch Rickey do it? Why did that Bible-quoting, cigar-chomping, bushy-browed president of the Brooklyn Dodgers sign Jackie Robinson to a major-league contract in 1947, knowing that Robinson would need armadillo skin and saintly patience to endure the venomous treatment he'd get from baseball's bigots?

Why did Rickey do it? The question gets asked three times in "42," the new, patchwork yet well-intentioned film about Rickey and Robinson and the breaking of baseball's color barrier.

The first time, Rickey answers by talking about attracting black fans to his ballpark because money is a universal color - green.

The second time, Rickey talks about signing more black ballplayers from a mother lode of untapped talent, players who could help the Dodgers win championships.

The third time, bathed in a spiritual light, Rickey tells about coaching a college team at Ohio Wesleyan. He talks sadly about Charlie Thomas, his African-American first baseman: about a road trip and a hotel that wouldn't accept Thomas and how Rickey ordered management to put a cot in his room where Thomas could sleep under "servant" status. And how he found Thomas crying there, clawing at his arms, as if he could scrape away the color of his skin.

A movie as a multiple choice quiz? What if the answer is all of the above: money, winning, doing the right thing? Rickey defied the critics and changed the history of baseball. Robinson became a hero in the civil-rights struggle, the first African-American player in the big leagues, dazzling everyone with his fearless play, with his courage, with his turn-the-other-cheek humility in that first harsh year.

The Phillies, who waited 10 years to sign an African-American player (John Kennedy), come off badly in the film. General manager Herb Pennock is shown making a hostile phone call to Rickey, warning against bringing that "nigger" to town, threatening a forfeit.

And there's an interminable scene showing manager Ben Chapman, standing eight feet in front of the Phillies dugout, screaming vicious taunts at Robinson until Brooklyn's Eddie Stanky confronts him and calls him a "red-necked piece of bleep."

That really happened, with Chapman and others screeching racial slurs from the safety of the dugout, not eight feet in front of it. (The Dodgers being turned away from the Ben Franklin Hotel, that happened, too.)

That spring, a petition signed by many of the Dodgers, refusing to play with Robinson - that was real. Manager Leo Durocher calling a middle-of-the-night meeting and telling the players to shove the petition where the sun don't shine - that is authentic.

The movie says it is "based on a true story," so why must the screenwriter twist the truth so often? The Dodgers trained in Havana, Cuba the spring of '47, not in Panama City, as the movie proclaims.

Shortstop Peewee Reese may have wrapped his arm around Robinson in pre-game warm-ups before a game in Cincinnati, but not during the game.

Durocher was not in bed with a blonde bimbo, answering one of those late-night phone calls from Rickey, when he growled, "Nice guys finish last." Perhaps he never said it, although there's a myth that he was talking pre-game about Giants' manager Mel Ott, a really nice guy.

Commissioner Happy Chandler gets cruel treatment. Chandler is shown getting a manicure when he calls Rickey with the news that he is suspending Durocher for a year for bad morals (Durocher was seeing a married woman). Chandler rests his hand on the manicurist's knee while relaying the news.

Let the record show that Durocher later married the woman in question, actress Laraine Day. Nowhere is it mentioned that Chandler squelched a move by the other 15 team owners, protesting Rickey's signing of Robinson.

It is comforting that an African-American sportswriter, Wendell Smith, gets the credit he deserves in keeping Robinson safe from the threat of a lynch mob in Florida and shepherding the player through those first painful months.

At the risk of reinforcing my curmudgeon image, the scenes that bothered me most featured a gaggle of old, rumpled New York writers badgering Robinson with cynical questions, with the loudest writer screeching his questions in a thick, Jewish accent.

The truth is, sportswriter Lester Rodney waged a long and eloquent campaign to break down baseball's color barrier. He was Jewish and wrote for the Daily Worker. Just thought you'd like to know.