Pee Wee Reese Herbert - NYT Web Journal Sept

The New York Times Baseball's Finest Moment: Pee Wee Reese Herbert - NYT Web Journal Sept. 23, 2005 In the spring of 1947, when it became widely known that the Brooklyn Dodgers were about to bring Jackie Robinson up from their Montreal farm club, a group of players on the Dodgers began circulating a petition. One of the players who was asked to sign was Pee Wee Reese. The writer Roger Kahn, who would later become close to Reese, told me a few years ago that the petition said, in essence, “If you bring up the nigger, trade us. We won’t play.” Reese, the team’s shortstop had grown up in the Jim Crow atmosphere of Louisville, Ky., and had never so much as shaken hands with a black person. He was considered a lock to sign. But he wouldn’t. He didn’t make a big deal out of it. He just refused to sign. The petition died. When the Dodgers brought Robinson up a short time later, they put him at first base. (Eventually he would play second.) As is now well known, the abuse he took as the first black player in the modern era of the major leagues was grotesque. Pitchers ignored the strike zone and threw directly at his head. Base runners tried to gouge him with their metal spikes. People spat at him, threw garbage at him, and shouted every disgusting epithet imaginable. In his book, “The Boys of Summer,” Kahn noted that the sportswriter Jimmy Cannon spent a day with the Dodgers in 1947 and concluded that “Robinson is the loneliest man I have ever seen in sports.” One day, in Cincinnati, when the abuse had reached a fever pitch, Reese decided he had had enough. The Dodgers were on the field and the players in the Reds’ dugout were shouting obscenities at Robinson. Fans were booing and cursing Robinson, who was standing at first and trying, amid the chaos and the rising heat of his own anger, to concentrate on the game. Reese called time. And in a gesture that is deservedly famous, he walked across the infield to Robinson, placed a hand on his shoulder in a very public display of friendship, and offered him a few words of encouragement. “It gets my vote,” said Kahn, “as baseball’s finest moment.” Reese and Robinson eventually became very close. So close, in fact, that Reese could needle the high-strung Robinson in ways that others didn’t dare try. Robinson was often difficult to get along with, and Reese once told him, “You know, Jack, some of these guys are throwing at you because you’re black. But others are doing it because they just don’t like you.” Kahn remembered another time when someone had threatened to shoot Robinson if he played in an exhibition game at Atlanta. Reese sidled over, in the midst of tremendous tension, and said, “Do me a favor, Jack.” Robinson said, “Yeah, what?” Reese said, “Don’t stand too close to me. We don’t know what kind of shot this guy is.” When Jackie Robinson died in 1972, he was just 53 years old. Pee Wee Reese, teammate and friend, was one of the pallbearers at his funeral. Reese died of lung cancer in 1999. He was 81. (Photo credit: The photo was taken by The Associated Press of Pee Wee Reese, left, and Jackie Robinson in the clubhouse after the Dodgers beat the Yankees, 5-3, in the third game of the 1952 World Series.) .

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