[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 22 (Wednesday, March 2, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E333-E335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    ``JACKIE ROBINSON'S TRYOUT WITH THE BOSTON RED SOX, APRIL 1945''

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 2, 2005

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, this week the U.S. Congress 
is honoring one of the true giants of sports history, Jackie Robinson.
  There is a little-known chapter in Mr. Robinson's career that is 
chronicled in the attached narrative. That chapter details an act of 
courage and creativity in the political life of Boston by Isadore 
Muchnick, a Boston City Councillor who served in the 1940s in the city. 
He deserves recognition for his achievement in obtaining a tryout for 
Jackie Robinson with the Boston Red Sox.
  It also puts in context the courage and determination that Jackie 
Robinson displayed throughout his long and illustrious career in 
baseball.
  It is a privilege for me to place this excerpted chapter, from the 
book ``Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston'' by Howard 
Bryant, into the Record.

Jackie Robinson's Tryout With the Boston Red Sox, April 1945, Excerpted 
 From ``Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston,'' by Howard 
                                 Bryant

       Virtually everything about Boston baseball is conditional. 
     What would have happened if. . .
       So who knew that on April 16, 1945, the Red Sox would once 
     more approach history's intersection? With FDR on his 
     deathbed and World War II winding down, fate and the last 
     vestige of a city's social conscience conspired and put the 
     Red Sox in a historic position.
       At the end of World War II, the question of black rights in 
     America was again relevant. Asking black soldiers to fight 
     and die for the liberty denied them at home created renewed 
     dialogue.
       Now, baseball found itself at the center of the argument. 
     Black soldiers could not die on the battlefield and still be 
     prohibited from playing center field in the major leagues.
       Segregation was an unbreakable rule. That blacks played in 
     separate leagues was a practice that went largely 
     unquestioned. When debate was stirred, either from a 
     relentless black press or from the few mainstream white 
     reporters who made integration a cause, there was always a 
     reason why the time was not prudent for the majors to open 
     their doors to blacks. The only groups that were truly 
     vociferous in their appeals stood on the fringes of the 
     mainstream.
       But during the latter half of 1944 and in the early months 
     of 1945, Eddie Collins was uncomfortable. He was the vice 
     president and general manager of the Red Sox and was now 
     being pressured by Isadore Muchnick, a liberal Jewish city 
     councilor, who demanded the Red Sox begin offering some form 
     of talent evaluation of black players.
       It was a threatening concept. Baseball prohibited black 
     players from the major leagues in 1884, and no serious 
     challenges to that authority had arisen. The desire to keep 
     blacks out of the major leagues existed in great degree from 
     the players all the way to the commissioner's office.
       Shunned, blacks created their own leagues, and the races 
     played the same game on patently uneven tracks. To some, the 
     very existence of the Negro leagues was proof that blacks 
     didn't care to play in the big leagues.
       Yet here was an emboldened Muchnick, potentially unsettling 
     the balance. For emphasis, he approached Collins with a 
     hammer. In those days in Boston, a permit was required to 
     play baseball on Sundays. The city council required a 
     unanimous vote for the permit to be granted. Muchnick told 
     Collins he would withhold his vote unless the Red Sox agreed 
     to sponsor a tryout for black players, a potentially 
     crippling financial blow.
       This was a new pressure. Led by Muchnick's threat and with 
     consistent commentary in the black press (and to a lesser 
     degree the mainstream), integration advocates pushed baseball 
     as they hadn't before the war.
       Dave Egan from the Boston Record pushed in his column for 
     the Red Sox or the Braves to be consistent with the Boston 
     pedigree and lead the major leagues into a new, integrated 
     era.
       Wendell Smith, columnist from the black weekly Pittsburgh 
     Courier, joined Egan in challenging Collins as well as other 
     general managers across the league to offer tryouts to black 
     players. Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American had vainly 
     tried to push for integration in 1939. In 1945, Lacy and 
     Collins began corresponding about integration.
       It was, however, Muchnick's voice and clout that turned a 
     cadre of disparate voices into something of a movement. 
     Mabray ``Doc'' Kountze, perhaps the preeminent black reporter 
     in Boston, referred to Muchnick as a ``white modern 
     abolitionist.''
       Muchnick was the first person in the modern era to pressure 
     baseball's power structure and come away with a tangible 
     result. The Boston Red Sox would be the first team in the 
     twentieth century to hold a tryout for black players.
       ``I cannot understand,'' Muchnick wrote to Collins in late 
     1944, ``how baseball, which claims to be the national sport 
     and which . . . receives special favors and dispensation from 
     the Federal Government because of alleged moral value can 
     continue a pre-Civil War attitude toward American citizens 
     because of the color of their skins.'' What Collins did next 
     was a clear reflection of both the unassailable mindset of 
     baseball as well as the arrogance of the Red Sox.
       ``As I wrote to one of your fellow councilors last April,'' 
     Collins replied to Muchnick in a letter, ``I have been 
     connected with the Red Sox for twelve years and during that 
     time we have never had a single request for a tryout by a 
     colored applicant. It is beyond my understanding how anyone 
     could insinuate or believe that all ball players, 
     regardless of race, color or creed have not been treated 
     in the American way so far as having an equal opportunity 
     to play for the Red Sox.''
       Collins' cordial inaction insulted Muchnick, who pressed 
     further. Collins had no intention of even granting the 
     tryout, but he had badly underestimated Muchnick's tenacity. 
     Collins was used to being in a position of strength when he 
     dealt with baseball issues, but it was clear that he couldn't 
     say a few positive, encouraging words to rid himself of 
     Isadore Muchnick, a man who was determined to see tangible 
     progress. When he received no satisfaction from their written 
     correspondence in 1944, Muchnick alerted Collins to his 
     intention to block the Red Sox from playing baseball on 
     Sundays. It was a potentially crippling blow. In the 1940s, 
     baseball clubs were almost completely dependent upon gate 
     receipts as a revenue source. To infringe on that would 
     surely get the attention of any baseball owner.
       Jackie Robinson was fatalistic about the tryout. He didn't 
     believe the Red Sox were serious about integration and wasn't 
     especially thrilled about his own situation. He had only 
     played for the Negro League's Kansas City Monarchs for a few 
     weeks and was already disappointed by the league's air of 
     gambling and disorganization.
       When Robinson arrived in Boston, the tryout was delayed for 
     two more days in the wake of Franklin Roosevelt's death.
       [It] finally took place at Fenway Park at eleven on the 
     morning of April 16, 1945. Two above-average Negro leaguers, 
     Sam Jethroe and Marvin Williams, joined Jackie Robinson. The 
     players fielded, threw, and took batting practice. [Manager 
     Joe] Cronin sat, according to one account, ``stone-faced.'' 
     Another depicted Cronin barely watching at all. Muchnick 
     marveled at the hitting ability of Robinson, whose mood 
     apparently darkened. Joe Cashman of the Boston Record sat 
     with Cronin that day and reported that the manager was 
     impressed with Robinson. He wrote cryptically, with virtually 
     little comprehension, that he could have been witnessing a 
     historic moment. ``Before departing, Joe and his coaches 
     spent some 90 minutes in the stands at Fenway surveying three 
     Negro candidates. Why they came from such distant spots to 
     work out for the Red Sox was not learned.''
       Robinson himself was satisfied with his performance, 
     although by the time he left Fenway he was smoldering about 
     what he felt to be a humiliating charade. As the three 
     players departed, Eddie Collins told them they would hear 
     from the Red Sox in the near future. None of them ever 
     heard from the Red Sox again.
       Eighteen months later, the Dodgers signed Robinson, who 
     would begin a legendary career a year and half later. 
     Jethroe, at age thirty-three, integrated Boston pro baseball 
     with the Braves in 1950 and would become the National League 
     Rookie of the Year. Williams would stay in the Negro leagues, 
     never again coming so close to the majors.
       The remaining details of that morning are completely 
     speculative. Robinson never spoke in real detail about the 
     tryout. Joe Cronin never offered a complete account about the 
     tryout except to say that he remembered that it occurred, 
     although he and Robinson would never speak.

[[Page E334]]

       Thirty-four years later, Cronin explained the Red Sox 
     position as well as the game's:
       ``I remember the tryout very well. But after it, we told 
     them our only farm club available was in Louisville, 
     Kentucky, and we didn't think they'd be interested in going 
     there because of the racial feelings at the time. Besides, 
     this was after the season had started and we didn't sign 
     players off tryouts in those days to play in the big leagues. 
     I was in no position to offer them a job. The general manager 
     did the hiring and there was an unwritten rule at that time 
     against hiring black players. I was just the manager.
       ``It was a great mistake by us. He [Robinson] turned out to 
     be a great player. But no feeling existed about it. We just 
     accepted things the way they were. I recall talking to some 
     players and they felt that they didn't want us to break up 
     their league. We all thought because of the times, it was 
     good to have separate leagues.''

       Clif Keane would give the day its historical significance. 
     A reporter for the Globe, Keane said he heard a person yell 
     from the stands during the tryout. The words--``Get those 
     niggers off the field''--were never attributed to one person, 
     but they have haunted the Red Sox . . . Numerous Red Sox 
     officials have been credited with the taunt, if it was ever 
     said at all.
       What cannot be disputed about the events of that April day 
     are the final results and the consequences that followed. It 
     was an episode from which the reputation and perception of 
     the franchise have never recovered.
       ``I still remember how I hit the ball that day, good to all 
     fields,'' Robinson later said. ``What happened? Nothing!''
       Thus the tryout ended bitterly for Jackie Robinson. But 
     that evening, he accepted a dinner invitation at 9 Powelton 
     Road in Dorchester. It was the home of Ann and Isadore 
     Muchnick, the city councilor who pressured Eddie Collins and 
     arranged the Boston tryout. Why young Robinson, who was 26 at 
     the time, would be invited to dinner made perfect sense to 
     Ann Muchnick. Fifty years later, she would recall the reason 
     with a warm smile. ``Because no one else asked him.''
       Isadore Harry Yaver Muchnick was born on January 11, 1908, 
     in Boston's West End, on a residential neighborhood that no 
     longer exists. There existed among the four children of 
     Joseph and Fannie Muchnick strong beliefs in justice, 
     fairness, competition, accomplishment, and the power of 
     education. All four children of these Russian Jewish 
     immigrants would attend college. Izzy received the first 
     double promotion at the renowned Boston Latin School since 
     Benjamin Franklin. He played goal in college hockey and 
     lacrosse, lettering in lacrosse for Harvard in 1928.
       Activism was a trademark for Izzy Muchnick from almost the 
     very beginning. [H]e and his wife Ann were active in HIAS, 
     the Hebrew Immigrants in America Society, and Hadassah, the 
     women's Zionist organization, as well as numerous other 
     Jewish organizations in Boston.
       Izzy Muchnick commanded a principled, homespun rhetoric and 
     possessed a natural political sense that would serve him well 
     throughout his life. He taught his children lessons laced 
     with humor, always containing morals of family and simple 
     decency.
       Being Jewish in 1940s America carried a considerable weight 
     of prejudice, but Muchnick possessed a skill and integrity 
     that led him to be respected by both the Irish, who 
     controlled city government, and the entrenched Yankees, who 
     dominated Boston's cultural, legal, and financial world. He 
     did this without becoming an outcast from his own community, 
     and such a balance required real political skill.
       Muchnick graduated from Harvard College in 1928 and from 
     Harvard Law in 1932. The Yankee law firms that wanted [to 
     hire] him also wanted something else in return for their 
     lucrative offers: A name change. ``Muchnick'' was too ethnic, 
     too Jewish. It wasn't a request that Muchnick was asked to 
     think over. That was a condition of employment. Muchnick 
     responded by opening up his own law firm.
       If there existed in Isadore Muchnick the indignant streak 
     of a person straddling two entrenched worlds, it was in the 
     political realm where he felt he could best remedy 
     injustices. [A]fter being elected to the city council in 
     1941, Muchnick found himself in constant opposition to the 
     majority. He fought for equal pay for women in the city's 
     patronage jobs and supported a redistricting of the city's 
     schools that would have created some integration of public 
     schools long before the eruptions of the 1970s. He was a 
     classic East Coast liberal.
       There was something about Muchnick, something both 
     admirable and self-destructive about his unfailing adherence 
     to his principles. Both of his children would marvel at the 
     number of times their father would align with the underdog. 
     In her personal papers, his wife Ann would note how much her 
     husband gave of himself, often at the expense of more 
     lucrative prospects. He consistently found himself on the 
     minority side of issues.
       Perhaps even had he wanted to opt for safer ground, his 
     personal convictions wouldn't allow it. In this regard he 
     found kinship with the uncompromising Robinson.
       The duplicity of baseball angered Izzy Muchnick. He was a 
     Red Sox fan, but the game's contradictions conflicted with 
     his worldview. If it was the game that was supposed to 
     represent the goodness of America, the ultimate arena of 
     fairness, how could it be staunchly segregated? How, he 
     wondered, could this impregnable line of segregation--which 
     baseball maintained did not exist--go unchallenged for so 
     long? Blacks were relegated to the inferior Negro leagues, 
     went the baseball rhetoric, because they liked it there.
       Perhaps even more than the game's obvious contradictions, 
     it offended Muchnick that its government-endowed protection 
     against competition and uncontested national standing 
     produced in team owners a certain kind of arrogance. Their 
     dance around integration was especially off-putting to a man 
     of his credentials. No law prohibiting black players 
     existed in the league's charter, although no team had 
     fielded a black player since 1884.
       For a man for whom standing on the right side of an issue 
     was an absolute must, history would not be kind to Isadore 
     Muchnick.
       [H]is reputation, in fact, would be destroyed by one [myth] 
     that would be repeated so often that it became fact. Instead 
     of being known as the first politician to use his clout 
     courageously and confront a resistant power structure, 
     Muchnick emerged as something worse than forgotten, as the 
     opportunistic, oily politician who sought to exploit both 
     Robinson and the black struggle for civil rights.
       Al Hirshberg, one of the first Jewish sportswriters in 
     Boston, wrote in his 1973 book What's the Matter with the Red 
     Sox? that Wendell Smith was the architect behind the tryout 
     and that Muchnick saw a solution to a precarious political 
     future:
       ``Wendell Smith, a television news announcer in Chicago 
     before his death, had been fighting the color line for years 
     as sports editor of a Negro newspaper in Pittsburgh. Because 
     of a quirk in Boston's Sunday baseball law, he saw a chance 
     to force one of the Boston clubs to give black players a 
     tryout in the spring of 1945.
       ``At the time, although Boston had had Sunday baseball for 
     some years, the law Smith found was that it had to be voted 
     on unanimously for renewal every year by the Boston City 
     Council. One of the council members, Isadore H.Y. Muchnick, 
     represented Roxbury, originally a Jewish stronghold but 
     becoming predominately black. Smith suggested to Muchnick 
     that he could insure a big black vote in his district by 
     withholding his vote for Sunday baseball until one of the two 
     ball clubs tried out a few black players.''
       In Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His 
     Legacy, Jules Tygiel wrote that in Boston, ``The Red Sox and 
     Braves found themselves in a curious position as they 
     prepared to start the new season. The city council, under the 
     leadership of Isadore Muchnick, a white politician 
     representing a predominately black district, was 
     pressuring the two teams to employ blacks.''
       Arnold Rampersad's thorough Jackie Robinson: A Biography 
     stated, ``behind the tryout was the action of a Boston city 
     councilman and Harvard College graduate Isadore H.Y. 
     Muchnick. In 1944, seeing his constituency change steadily 
     from mainly Jewish to mainly black, Muchnick joined the 
     ragtag band of critics fighting Jim Crow in baseball.''
       These historical accounts were not only inaccurate but were 
     also a reflection of the crudity of the conventional 
     thinking. The only reason Muchnick would become involved, so 
     went the thinking, was to win a political prize. In the eyes 
     of his children, it was not an innocent journalistic mistake 
     that snowballed. Rather, the result, thought Fran Goldstein, 
     was the permanent besmirching of her father's name. Muchnick 
     was accused of acting to ingratiate himself to a new black 
     constituency, but in 1940, Izzy Muchnick's Mattapan district 
     was 99.69 percent white. In 1950, it was 99 percent white. 
     During that year, 439 nonwhites lived among the district's 
     51,170 residents. In two of his elections, Muchnick ran 
     unopposed. In short, there was no black vote for Muchnick to 
     exploit, nor was there during the 1940s any difficult 
     election year for him. It wasn't until the middle to late 
     1960s, after Muchnick was dead, that his old district turned 
     from Jewish to black, which occurred long after Muchnick 
     traded bitter letters with Eddie Collins. Hirshberg once 
     apologized to Muchnick's son David for the error.
       Outside of his personal commitment to fairness, Izzy 
     Muchnick had no political motive to act on behalf of blacks. 
     There weren't yet many blacks to work for in the first place.
       How Muchnick's name was not only omitted from the Robinson 
     tryout but was also subsequently brutalized in the retellings 
     of the event is open to troubling interpretations.
       The truth, however, is that the first American politician 
     to disrupt the idea of segregated baseball and emerge with a 
     result was Isadore Muchnick, the former Hebrew School teacher 
     who could have made a fortune in a Yankee law firm had he 
     only changed his name.
       Muchnick pressured the Red Sox to integrate because he was 
     the rare person who--like Robinson--often placed principle in 
     front of political or personal pragmatism.
       Glenn Stout, who along with Dick Johnson would write the 
     most complete book ever on the history of the Red Sox 
     franchise, never believed that Muchnick approached the Red 
     Sox with the intention of receiving anything.

[[Page E335]]

       ``It's much more the opposite. Looking at what he did I'm 
     sure was not very popular. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been 
     the only one hanging out there. You could say that what he 
     did was political suicide.''
       What did emerge after the failed tryout of 1945 was a 
     legitimate friendship between Jackie Robinson and the 
     Muchnick family. When Robinson was signed by the Dodgers, 
     Muchnick wrote him a letter that read in part, ``My 
     congratulations and best wishes to you on your well-deserved 
     promotion to the Brooklyn Dodgers! Since the day when you 
     first came here with Wendell Smith of The Pittsburgh Courier 
     and I arranged for you and two other boys to get a tryout 
     with the Boston Red Sox, I have naturally followed your 
     career with great interest. I have every confidence you will 
     make the grade.''
       The Muchnick house became a regular stop for Robinson when 
     the Dodgers came to town to play the Boston Braves. After 
     Robinson retired, he sent Muchnick a copy of his 
     autobiography with journalist Carl Rowan with the 
     inscription, ``To my friend Isadore Muchnick with sincere 
     appreciation for all you meant to my baseball career. I hope 
     you enjoy `Wait Til Next Year.' Much of it was inspired by 
     your attitudes and beliefs.''
       Izzy and Jackie remained in frequent contact over the 
     years. Robinson and one of his sons came to Boston at 
     Muchnick's invitation to speak at a father-and-son breakfast 
     at Muchnick's synagogue. The two men engaged in heated debate 
     about the 1960 presidential election. Muchnick was a lifelong 
     Democrat, and Robinson, in a move he would later regret, 
     backed Nixon.
       There was a clear spiritual connection between Robinson and 
     Muchnick. Robinson, battered and weary from the fight, died 
     too young of a heart attack in 1972. He was only fifty-three 
     years old. Isadore Muchnick died nine years earlier, in 1963, 
     but he was just as young, fifty-five at the time. His will to 
     live, David Muchnick believed, was enormous. Over his final 
     five years, Muchnick suffered seven heart attacks. On a rainy 
     night in 1957, Muchnick received a frantic call at 5 A.M. 
     from a former city councilor's wife. Her husband had gone 
     out drinking and had not come home that night. Muchnick 
     crawled out of bed and went out into the drizzly Boston 
     night to look for his old colleague. At 9 A.M., Ann 
     Muchnick received a phone call of her own. Izzy had 
     suffered a major heart attack and had been rushed to 
     Massachusetts General Hospital, which sits in Boston's old 
     West End near Izzy Muchnick's boyhood home.
       It was Muchnick who used his influence to push the door 
     open, to force the Red Sox and baseball to publicly face 
     itself. Even if Joe Cronin and Eddie Collins weren't paying 
     attention, Branch Rickey most certainly was. Slowly, the 
     landscape began to change.
       In 1998, Ann Muchnick died. She was eighty-nine. In prior 
     years, the daughter asked for family information and the 
     mother obliged with poignant recollections. She wrote that 
     her husband ``was a wonderful man . . . helped so many, so 
     many abused his help, took advantage of him. I could name 
     dozens, but better forgotten.'' They also spoke of Jackie 
     Robinson not as the man spurned by the Red Sox, but as their 
     friend.
       ``It was the Red Sox's loss,'' Ann Muchnick said of the 
     whole tryout affair. ``It wasn't his loss. Look at the career 
     he had. He lost nothing. It was the Red Sox who lost 
     everything.''
       In Robinson's autobiography with Carl Rowan lay another 
     tribute to Muchnick. ``Without the pushers and the crusaders, 
     the waiters wait in vain; without people like Damon Runyon, 
     and Branch Rickey, Wendell Smith and Isadore Muchnick, Jackie 
     and the Negro might still be waiting for their hour in 
     organized baseball.''
       In the end, the Robinson tryout failed because the Boston 
     Red Sox were reticent from the outset. Led by Eddie Collins, 
     the club had no real intention of acting beyond that April 
     morning or as history would show for more than a decade 
     thereafter. Within the organization, there was no guiding 
     force, no catalyst with the vision to make integration a 
     reality, and in years to come this would become the critical 
     characteristic of the Boston Red Sox regarding race. Had 
     there been a central figure in Boston, a Branch Rickey or 
     even a Gussie Busch, who provided some form of vision, the 
     Red Sox script would indeed have been different. It is more 
     than a little damning that the months before the tryout and 
     even after, it was Collins who represented the club and not 
     Tom Yawkey, who stood invisible. At a time when the Red Sox 
     stood at the precipice of baseball history, the team's owner 
     lay deep in the background. Tom Yawkey was the only figure in 
     the organization with the power to act boldly, and whether or 
     not he harbored a personal dislike for blacks is secondary to 
     his silence. That silence, in effect, would become a closing 
     indictment. No different than the curved maze of streets in 
     its city, the Red Sox lacked a clear-cut moral direction on 
     race; against this, the combined pioneering spirit of Isadore 
     Muchnick and Jackie Robinson never stood a chance.

                          ____________________