The Unspoken Spirit of Change

I have long surmised that had the Dodgers never left Brooklyn, I would not have become a fan of the New York Yankees. Growing up in Northern New Jersey, the fact that both of my parents had grown up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn made it more than likely that they would have pointed me towards “Them Bums” during my formative years in the 1970s. But with the team of their youth now 3,000 miles away and the supermarket check-out lines fully stocked with “Reggie!” bars, the skids were greased for me to end up with the Bronx Bombers. Even if my seven-year old brain was infinitely more familiar with chocolate covered caramel than with the importance of batting averages and World Series appearances.


Maybe that is why I would not learn about the importance of Dodger’s General Manager Branch Rickey in both the history of baseball as well as the history of civil rights until I was much older. Of course, stories of Jackie Robinson’s heroics in breaking the color barrier have been—rightly—passed down through the decades. But not as much has been talked about the one who helped clear the path within Major League Baseball for Robinson to be given the opportunity in the first pace. After all, the color barrier was never even in existence... officially.


There was no official rule in Major League Baseball that specifically stated that African-Americans and other minorities were banned from playing in the league. It was more of a “gentleman’s agreement” among the owners. Unspoken, but understood by all. And as anyone who has ever sought change can tell you, those unspoken but understood rules are the most formidable obstacles of all because they form the underpinning of our assumptions of how the world should work. The ethereal nature of the unspoken makes for a moving target that can be adjusted, transformed, and even denied. So upon reflection, it is not surprising that it took a man of faith to make a leap of faith.


Long before he ever arrived in Brooklyn, Branch Rickey had earned the nickname “The Mahatma,” which is translated as “The Good Soul.” Known not only for his baseball expertise but for his religious devotion, Rickey described a situation from his younger days when he was managing the baseball team for Ohio Wesleyan University. One of the players on his team, a black player, was denied lodging because of his race while the team was on the road. The expression of mental and emotional anguish the player expressed later seared Ricky on not just an emotional level, but on a spiritual level. Rickey would later remark that “I cannot face my God much longer knowing that his black creatures are held separate and distinct from his white creatures in the game that has given me all that I can call my own.”


That aspect of Branch Rickey has been something I have been reflecting on a lot over the past few weeks. While we as a society have made many, many strides forward since Jackie Robinson first took his position in Ebbets Field in 1947, we are now being reminded—if we had not realized it before—that with George Floyd’s death we still have many rivers to cross in creating a more perfect union. And while so many of us have had an emotional response to the injustices in our society that his death has made more visible, in order to truly move forward I can’t help but wonder if our response is going to need to be grounded on a spiritual level as well.


It took Branch Rickey decades to go from team manager of the Ohio Wesleyan University baseball team to General manger of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Decades in which I am sure his own emotions ebbed and flowed, but spiritual commitment and disciple kept forcing him to challenge the unspoken yet understood assumptions that people carried within their hearts. So I would like to suggest that like Branch Rickey, we will all need to be grounded in a faith in something beyond ourselves in order to confront this moment. Because whatever decade we are talking about, it is that same faith that allowed an eight-year old kid discovering baseball in the 1970s to enjoy his first “Reggie!” Bar. - Tom Gibbons, Paulist Productions