I was in fifth grade in 1957. Northern New Jersey, having just moved from California. "Racism" was a word, not to mention concept, I had never heard. It wasn't as though I ignored it, I was entirely unconscious that such a thing existed (something that would change a few years later when my family went to visit a Great Uncle in Florida.)
1957 was a time before pee-wee or Pop Warner football, at least in my town, and even predated most NFL broadcasts on television. Baseball was the national pastime, my pastime, and the subject of all my classmates' sports adoration of the era. And living in Jersey I had three teams from which to choose: Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants (at least for a couple years.) I chose the Yankees, home to Mickey Mantle, Phil Rizutto, Yogi Berra and others. I had all their baseball cards and many more.
I played Little League; my team was "Local 207", which I now understand was sponsored by "a union", although at the time I had no idea what that meant. I was All-Star Second Baseman one year, saved the final game of the year for my team by catching a hard-hit line-drive in the bottom of the ninth, and I was a hero for the next two months. The following year I made 16 errors, and did not try out for the team, or any baseball team again after that.
There is one other memory, burned into my brain so deeply I can remember the color of the sky and the exact location of the milk truck my teammates and I were sitting in; it belonged to one of the fathers and he used it to deliver to the neighborhood every morning at 4AM. It was a box truck, white with a rear door that slid out of the way, and on afternoon it was lousy with fifth graders, all jabbering about nothing as fifth graders often do, voices rising, rising again to be heard above the din. I sat in the back doorway next to two teammates. One of them was black, the only minority on the team, and one of the only ones I knew, our entire school having had only three that I recall, none of whom were in any of my classes.
Something out the back, and this part eludes me now, caused me to focus, then count aloud "Eenie, meenie, miney, moe, catch a n!gger by the toe." I instantly understood that I had made a terrible gaffe, but was too shell shocked to do anything but let my head fall and shut up. My black teammate got up, walked to the front of the truck, and we were never friends again.
I have never told that anecdote except once, this afternoon, to my wife as we left the showing of "42", the story of Jackie Robinson. She was aghast, I suppose it goes without saying. My tale only amplified the film, a revelation to her, for not only did she not know the Jackie Robinson story, she did not understand the pervasiveness of racism that existed throughout America at the time, in so many levels of society.
The bravery of Robinson, as well as Dodgers' owner Branch Rickey and others came as news, and for only the second time that I remember, she enjoyed "a baseball picture" ("Moneyball" was the first.)
Harrison Ford turns in a surprisingly good performance (to my surprise), and the rest of the cast is marvelous, including, of course, Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and Nicole Beharie as his wife. But it is the story which has such power, brought low only by the swelling trumpets at the end and the cliché ending which I will not spoil except to say, well, you know, baseball and a man at bat and...
If the "n" word bothers you, you will not enjoy the film, as it is used nearly as much as "Django", but if you, like me, ever had occasion to seek forgiveness for having used it, perhaps the film will help set you free. It was part of the landscape and we were all unconscious then.
Well, not all of us. Not Branch Rickey, and certainly not Jackie Robinson. Two heroes of America, who might just have changed the world.
