I Never Had It Made

“They hadn’t changed because they liked me any better; they had changed because I could help fill their wallets.” 

In this passage, Robinson is referring to some teammates who were dead set against him joining the Dodgers. They finally warmed up to him when they realized how good he was. As pennant-winning and World Series-winning teams receive bonus pay, his Dodgers teammates stood to make more money if the team was a winner. 

“When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.” 

Robinson discusses his lone season in the Negro leagues by pointing out how grueling the travel was and how lackluster the organization of clubs and leagues were. The fact that, regardless of talent, those players continued on because they had no other option to play baseball professionally is a testament to their desire.  

“Because of his nature and his passion for justice, he had to do what he was doing.” 

Robinson is referring to Rickey’s commitment to ending Major League Baseball’s unwritten rule barring blacks from playing. Although the backlash that would come to Robinson from those opposed to integrating the game was well known, the backlash that Rickey faced was not. Rickey’s came from fans and opposing players as well, but also from other owners. 

“A baseball box score is a democratic thing. It doesn’t tell how big you are, what church you attend, what color you are, or how your father voted in the last election. It just tells what kind of baseball player you were on that particular day.” 

In their initial meeting, Rickey is explaining to Robinson that his experiment will only work if Robinson is able to turn the other cheek to the abuse that will come his way. Although baseball itself should be democratic like a box score is, that will not be the case with Robinson’s entry into Major League Baseball. 

“I’m looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back.” 

In that initial meeting with Rickey, Robinson asked him if he was looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back. Rickey’s response was to insinuate that it would take far more guts to not fight back and that it was a requirement for the experiment to work.

“Clay Hopper began to come around only after I demonstrated that I was a valuable property for the club.” 

When Robinson signed to play for the Dodgers in 1946, he was to spend his first season with its minor league club, the Montreal Royals. Hopper, a Mississippian, was the manager of the Royals, and he went as far as to beg Rickey not to send Robinson to play for him. The Royals won the 1946 International League title, thanks in large part to Robinson. 

“Color didn’t matter to fans if the black man was winner.” 

During his lone minor league season, both Robinson and the fans very quickly learned that he was good enough. In hearing the roar of the crowd during one of his first games and realizing that it was for him, Robinson began to believe Rickey's prediction from this passage was accurate. 

“The Dodgers were a championship team because all of us had learned something. I had learned how to exercise self-control—to answer insults, violence, and injustice with silence—and I had learned how to earn the respect of my teammates. They had learned that it’s not skin color but talent and ability that counts. Maybe even the bigots had learned that, too.” 

In Robinson’s first season with the Dodgers, the club had won the National League pennant, but lost in the World Series to the New York Yankees. Robinson’s turn the other cheek policy was something that he had to learn, and in doing so, his teammates began to understand and sympathize with him. The combination of Robinson’s ability to control his emotions and his teammate’s acceptance of him led the team to its championship. 

“I’m grateful for all the breaks and honors and opportunities I’ve had, but I always believe I won’t have it made until the humblest black kid in the most remote backwoods of America has it made.”

During his early career in the majors, some people had commented to Robinson that they did not understand his bitterness because he “had it made.” His response is one that requires an understanding of social responsibility—he personally may have it made despite his blackness, but others do not, and his success is irrelevant to them because they still face the racial discrimination that he once did. 

“When I couldn’t defend my country for the injustice I suffered, I was still proud to have been in uniform. I felt that there were two wars raging at once—one against foreign enemies and one against domestics foes—and the black man was forced to fight both.” 

Robinson is referencing his HUAAC testimony, in which he was asked to refute Paul Robeson’s statement that blacks would not fight for America against Russia. In this passage, he references the fact that blacks were asked to fight against Hitler’s discrimination but faced a similar discrimination based on race in America. Despite this hypocrisy, Robinson proudly served in the United States Army. 

“Every Negro worth his salt hated racial discrimination, and if it happened that it was a Communist who denounced discrimination, that didn’t change the truth of his charges.” 

On the same topic, Robinson is pointing out that Robeson’s alleged sympathy or ties to Communism did not mean that his criticisms of racism in America were not valid. While Robinson did refute Robeson’s statement that blacks would not fight for America, his quarrel with him was not about his alleged Communism—that was Robeson's right. 

“Dick and I have had, for a number of years, a strange relationship. I used to think he was a nice guy personally, and I knew he was a good sportswriter. As time went by, Young became, in my book, a racial bigot.” 

Dick Young, a sportswriter for the New York Daily News, was a controversial figure and antagonistic toward countless ballplayers over the years. Robinson was one of his first targets, and once Robinson began to defend himself against on and off-field injustice, Young’s criticisms of him often had to do with race. 

“If I had a room jammed with trophies, awards, and citations, and a child of mine came to me into that room and asked what I had done in defense of black people and decent whites fighting for freedom—and I had to tell that child I had kept quiet, that I had been timid, I would have to mark myself a total failure in the whole business of living.” 

In the early 1950s, several churches and synagogues were bombed in the South to protest the Supreme Court ruling on school desegregation. A reporter asked Robinson about his thoughts on the matter and, at the same time, claimed that Roy Campanella had responded that blacks should stop “pressing to get too far too fast.” Robinson’s response in this passage took direct aim at Campanella’s opinion. 

“I am glad to say that I never had a personal quarrel with Campy. I have always respected him, and I regard him as a guy worthy of great admiration.” 

Because Robinson and Campanella did not see eye-to-eye on matters of race relations and racial discrimination, the New York press frequently claimed that there was a feud between the two players. They did have several disagreements about these matters that became known in the press, but their relationship was never an antagonistic one, and both respected the other as a player and person. 

“I am not a fanatical integrationist. I don’t think there is any particular magic in a white kid sitting next to a black kid in a classroom.” 

One of Robinson’s primary arguments concerning racial discrimination was that the black separatists were just as bad as the white segregationists. His point here is that he simply believes in freedom and that parents should have the ability to choose, and their children should not be barred from any school based on race. 

“My motives were both selfish and unselfish. I wanted—and still desire—a better world, a bigger break, a fairer chance for my family. I have been very fortunate personally, but my children might not be as fortunate as their father.” 

Concerning his support of, and campaigning for, Nixon in 1960, Robinson admits that he became disillusioned when Nixon refused to help in Dr. King’s arrest and jailing in Georgia. Rachel and others around him also urged him to reconsider his support, but he continued in his support, giving this argument as his reason for doing so. 

“This award is to the baseball player what the Pulitzer is to a writer or other creative artist; what being named to the Supreme Court bench is to a lawyer.” 

On being notified that he had been voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York in 1962, Robinson is attempting to recognize the importance of this honor. The honor is widely considered to be the ultimate judgement on a player’s career. Among thousands of players over more than a century, only 270 players (as of 2020) have been so honored. 

“When the roof caved in, when Jackie got into deep trouble, I realized that I had been so busy trying to help other youngsters that I had neglected my own son.” 

and rapport existed with Jackie Jr, but his problems never seemed to be serious ones as a child. His problems developed into more serious ones as a teen, eventually leading to drug abuse. In the years after his retirement from baseball, Robinson was frequently involved with political travel, business ventures, and ironically, charitable organizations that helped kids. 

“I believed blacks ought to become producers, manufacturers, developers, and creators of businesses, providers of jobs. For too long we had been spending too much money on liquor while we owned too few liquor stores and were not even manufacturing it.”

Robinson provides some reasoning as to why he became involved in politics. In 1964, Robinson became a deputy nation director of Rockefeller’s presidential campaign, and in 1966, he began working in the then-administration of Governor Rockefeller.

“I am solidly committed to the peaceful, non-violent mass-action of the Negro people in pursuit of long-overdue justice. But I am just as much opposed to the extremism of Negro rioters and Negro hoodlums as I am to the sheeted Klan, to the sinister Birchers, to the insidious citizens’ councils.” 

When Barry Goldwater learned of Robinson’s disapproval of him in winning the 1964 GOP nomination, he wrote Robinson a letter asking him to visit so the two could speak with one another. Robinson rejected the offer but responded with his own letter laying out some of his thoughts, comparing Negro rioters that so many conservatives spoke about to the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society, and so-called white citizens’ councils. 

“Somehow it seems that those from below the Mason Dixon Line who come over to the liberal cause bring with them a firmness and sincerity that Northern liberals don’t have. Harry Truman displayed some of this and President Johnson even more.” 

Although Robinson supported Nixon for president in 1960, Goldwater in 1964, and was leery of Lyndon Johnson when he assumed the presidency after Kennedy's assassination, he came to have great respect for him. Johnson, a Southerner, had not shown much for the cause of racial equality in his long congressional career, but as president, he became a true ally and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

“In the face of being written off by Mr. Nixon’s party and being taken for granted by the Democrats, we must develop an effective strategy and learn how to become enlightenedly selfish to protect black people when white people seem consolidated to destroy us.” 

Robinson had supported Richard Nixon in the 1960 Presidential Election, but he came to regret it because he felt that Nixon was not sincere in his commitment to civil rights. He supported another republican, Nelson Rockefeller, in 1964, but became disillusioned when the party’s nomination went to Barry Goldwater, a segregationist senator. Robinson likewise felt that it was not good for blacks to monolithically support democrats because they were at risk of being taken for granted.

“There’s only one reason a Negro has never been a manager—his color,” he said. “The reason there hasn’t been a Negro manager is that no one has ever given a Negro a chance to be one” 

Future baseball Hall of Famer Frank Robinson in referencing why it is that no black man has become a Major League Baseball manager. In 1975, a little more than two years after I Never Had It Made was published, the Cleveland Indians hired Robinson as the first black manager in the big leagues.