'Rickey & Robinson': A familiar story well told

Rickey & Robinson

The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball

By Roger Kahn

Rodale. 320 pp. $25.99

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Reviewed by

Glen Macnow

No sports-and-society story has been retold more times than that of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey, the odd couple who worked together to integrate Major League Baseball. Of course, no such story deserves to be retold as often.

At least 20 Robinson biographies are listed on Amazon. In recent years, not one, but two one-man plays portrayed Rickey's life as a pious and penurious human-rights zealot. And the movie 42 showed it all, right down to the shameful heckling Robinson received in Philadelphia from Phillies officials and hotel managers.

What's left to say?

Not much. But if you appreciate history and sharp storytelling, you'll enjoy Roger Kahn's insider's view of this great American moment in Rickey & Robinson: The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball.

Kahn is among the elite baseball writers of the last 50 years, along with Thomas Boswell and Roger Angell. His landmark The Boys of Summer, published in 1972, remains the hallmark for sports retrospectives.  

And now, at 86, Kahn offers what he vows will be his final book. As noted, it's familiar territory, but Kahn takes you through the notebooks and memories of a chronicler who was there from the start. Well, almost the start. Kahn began covering the Brooklyn Dodgers for the New York Herald-Tribune a few years after the Noble Experiment went down, but his insights and insider stories may be the best of anyone still alive.

One here actually predates Robinson: In 1940, an unnamed millionaire (presumably Bill Veeck) offered to buy the stumbling Phillies and fill the roster with Negro League players. Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis quashed the plan. Imagine if.

Today's reader may be stunned by the avarice of baseball's establishment and players, the media corruption, the everyday bigotry that fought the tearing down of the "Cotton Curtain." As Robinson headed to Florida for his first spring training, he and his wife, Rachel, got thrown off the plane for being black.

White owners claimed that more black fans at the ballpark would scare away white patrons. If that sounds ridiculous, reflect on the last six months' racial tensions in sports.

Rickey & Robinson works as one more tribute to two men who accomplished as much for the equal rights movement as anyone in American history. It's an entertaining, casual read from a narrator unpacking a lifetime of tales.