THE YOUNG JACKIE ROBINSON

How far is it from Narrows, Georgia, where Ty Cobb was born, to the birthplace of Jackie Robinson in downstate Cairo? And how many years separated the birth of one from the other? Don't bother to look it up or do the math. We are talking cosmic differences here. Cobb lived to see Robinson play, but he never accepted the legitimacy of the younger man's place in major league baseball. Most people today believe that he and others of his race should never have been denied because of their color.

Twelve dollars a month. That's what Jerry Robinson got from Jim Sasser, working the land of the Velvet Corridor in southern Georgia. It is called share cropping. Some share. When Jerry and Mallie's fifth child, Jack Roosevelt Robinson, was born, his mother told his dad $12 wasn't enough, working as hard as Jerry had to.

"Ask the man for more money," she said. "He just pays you in chits anyhow. Only place we can spend them is in his store.''

Even Sasser saw the truth of the matter. Jerry graduated from a share cropper to a half-cropper, meaning that he got to keep half of what he produced and sell it on the open market.

One wonders how long it took working at this exhalted level to save enough for the life-changing trip that Jerry was planning. Shortly after Jackie was born, he took off for Florida and was never heard from again.

Mallie must have saved up some herself working as a domestic. Soon after Jerry disappeared, she shook the red dust of south Georgia from her shoes, gathered her brood about her and climbed aboard a Jim Crow train. Mallie, her five kids, her sister and brother-in-law with their two youngsters and three friends who were not part of the family did not get off until they reached Pasadena, California.

Two decades before Jackie made history as the first black man to break the color barrier, he was to get a lesson in barrier breaking right here in Pasadena. Mallie and her children, her sister Cora Wade and her husband Sam plus the two Wade children were a family and they all shared a small home on Gloriena Street. When they got a chance to purchase a larger place on Pepper Street, they took it. One problem: They were the only black family in the neighborhood. The vandalism and verbal abuse the Robinson-Wade clan to had put up with during their initial weeks in their new home must have served Jackie well in 1947.

It would be difficult to overstate the extent to which Mallie was the rock to which the rest of the family clung during those years in the '20s and '30s. Up before dawn six days a week, she spent a full day cleaning other people's houses. She would come home tired but with enough energy to pull her own family together, helping them to face not only the day-to-day business of survival in an austere economy, but also the hostility of a community that was about as receptive to ethnic diversity as Dixie Walker was when he first confronted the black rookie in the spring of '47.

When Jackie was of Little League age there was no Little League. Kids growing up between the two World Wars did not experience much in the way of organized sports. Activities like dodge ball dominated the school yard. At Cleveland Elementary no one could play that game like the youngest member of the school's only black family. Picture the most fearsome baserunner of his era taunting opposing pitchers like Robin Roberts and Warren Spahn, dancing off third base and stealing home. That is the picture twenty years later of the brash little black kid in the hand-me-down clothes caning a few steps this way, feinting that way---the one nobody could hit with the ball.

There is a temptation to sanitize an icon's image, but to do so in Robinson's case would be to leave out an important aspect of his growing up. The Pepper Street gang, of which Jackie was the acknowledged leader, was not a gang of drug-selling hoods. There were no AK-47s in their arsenal. They did even have an arsenal, unless you want to count the rocks they threw at passing motorists or the firecrackers that Jackie liked to hurl at any convenient target. If they could somehow be found, there would be enough facsimiles of his autograph on the Pasadena police blotter to bring six figures at a sports memorabilia show. But the Pepper Street gang was absolutely the most integrated social structure the future Hall of Famer encountered during what can charitably be called a troubled youth. Jackie was no Boy Scout, and neither were any of the Japanese, Hispanic, black and white kids that made up the gang. But this motley bunch formed a bond of inter-ethnic acceptance that their elders would have done well to emulate.

This story would not be compete without mention of Mack Robinson - Jackie's older brother and a great athlete in his own right. Their sister, Willa Mae, has said. "If there was one person Jack idolized growing up it was Mack." It boggles the mind to ponder the athletic genes in the Robinson gene pool. Mack might have been a better athlete than little brother, Jackie's legendary exploits not withstanding. A heart murmur detected in Mack at Washington Junior High caused school officials to ban him from sports. Realizing how little else her boys had going for them. Mack's mother gave in to his pleading and asked the school to let him play. She had to sign a waiver, and contact sports were barred. The "other" Robinson went on to be an Olympic sprint medalist but has had to live out his life wondering what might have been if he had been able to display the full range of his athletic talents.

As this is being written, those who know and care are waiting out the final days of the octogenarian stroke victim whose once magnificent body is confined to a bed and a wheelchair. Several years ago, I suggested in a letter to the mayor of Pasadena that he would be a fitting Grand Marshall of the Rose Parade. I have since learned that Mack had lost favor even among friends and admirers because he had returned from the 1936 Berlin Olympics a literally changed man, embittered that his highest achievement at the Games was a silver medal in thc 200 meters, getting nipped at the tape by Jesse Owens, he of the four Golds. With Jackie's climb to the heights of celebrity and heroics, the passage of time cast Mack in the role of perennial second place finisher. Getting fired by the city for poor job performance (he had been a street sweeper) did nothing for his self esteem. Maybe the mayor was right in passing on the Grand Marshall suggestion. Several of Jackie's grand nieces and nephews rode in the most recent parade on a float depicting their famous uncle in one of his patented thefts of home.

Jackie excelled at every game he ever tried. There is probably not a game invented that he could have mastered.

One of the Pepper Street Gang's activities was to sneak onto local golf courses to steal balls and sell them back to the golfers. One duffer, wise to the racket, challenged Jackie to finish out the hole with him. "Look, punk, I know you are trying to sell me back my own ball. Here, take this club and ball. You give me my ball. If you can get down if fewer strokes than me, you can keep the ball and I'll give you an extra buck. If I beat you, I get my ball back." He handed Jackie a putter and selected a seven iron for himself. Jackie, swinging a golf club for the first time in his life, nearly holed out and ended up winning the wager.

At Muir Technical High School, the mediocre football, basketball, baseball and track teams on which he played became outstanding simply because he was on them. He made the All-California Interscholastic Federation team as a catcher. A catcher setting base stealing records? Only Jackie could have done it.

My favorite Jackie story is of the time he won a track meet and a baseball game for Pasadena Jr. College on the same day. The track meet was in Pomona, the baseball games 40 miles away in Glendale. Jackie had some friends drive him to Pomona in an old Studebaker. On the way they blew a tire. Along came the Dean of Students. Jackie and friends, with no spare, needed some luck and they got it when the dean produced his and it fit the Studebaker. But the delay had cost Jackie his warm up time. Plunging right into the long jump competition, he got off a leap of 25' 6 1/2", enough to win and set a school record.

Next came a Clark Kent act, with Jackie changing into his baseball uniform in the back seat while the old Studebaker lumbered down the highway to Glendale. The game was already in progress, but the man who was later to alter the course of baseball history--make that the course of history, period-got to contribute two hits and a stolen base to seal the victory and a conference championship. The stolen base was vintage Jackie. On a windblown field he danced off of first base. Between pitches he picked up handfuls of dirt, which the wind carried from first to third, right into the pitcher's eyes. Then, as later, it was hard enough to hold Jackie on base under the best of conditions. With the dust on the runner's side, the pitcher was truly overmatched. As Dodger opponents were to learn later, Robinson would invariably find a way to beat you.

In the summer of 1939 the gifted athlete and less-than-committed student made the transition from Pasadena JC to UCLA. The recruiting wars had been intense. Mack encouraged the University of Oregon, where he was going, to bring his younger brother to Eugene, but there was little interest on the part of either the university or the athlete. Frank, the oldest of the Robinson siblings, had by this time supplanted Mack as Jackie's closest advisor. UCLA was so determined to keep Jackie out of the clutches of other four year schools in California that they were willing to pay his way to an out-of-state college if they could not get him. Bill Spaulding, the director of athletics at UCLA, had only one reservation: Jackie was so good at all sports that the Bruin coaches might end up fighting over his services. Not to worry. He played all four of the so called major sports and was the star in each one. Each, that is, except baseball. Ironically, baseball was the sport that was to make him immortal, but at UCLA it had to share him with track, basketball and football.

His decision to become a Bruin ultimately depended upon a family tragedy. Frank had been killed in a motorcycle accident. Jackie wanted to stay as close to his mother and Frank's widow and two small children as he could.

UCLA, perhaps as much as any other American university, perpetuates the campus-as-melting-pot illusion. There was an undergraduate student body of several thousand when Jackie arrived. He was one of about 30 black students, many of them athletes. The fans saw black athletes in the school's blue and gold uniforms and assumed there was a corresponding representation of African American on the campus. It wasn't true then, and is not true today.

I have several personal recollections of Jackie as a Bruin star. As a 12-year-old in 1939, I remember my dad taking me to UCLA football and basketball games. When UCLA and USC had their annual encounter in the Coliseum, the place would be packed with 100,000 fans. Robinson played wing back in a single wing formation with the great Kenny Washington at tail back. Robinson on a reverse was a play that kept the defense honest, making Washington's strong side runs off tackle and around end more effective. The SC defensive end on the weak side had apparently been told to "stay home" and rack Jackie every time he came his way whether he had the ball or not. After perhaps the third fake reverse Jackie held up his open palms for the Trojan to see, as if to say, "Hey man, I don't have the ball." A fan said "Look at that Robinson! What a chicken!" I remember my father admonishing the person who made the chicken statement to watch what he said because there were many black spectators seated all around us.

Another recollection of Robinson the football hero is of a night game against Southern Methodist. Jackie dropped back to receive a punt, but the ball had good hang time and he chose to let it bounce. As it was coming to rest several SMU players gathered around it. Jackie, never at rest, swooped in like a second baseman charging a slow roller. In a flash he was downfield with the ball, leaving the dumbfounded Mustangs wondering what had happened.

The Bruin basketball teams played their home games at the old Pan Pacific Auditorium in West L.A. One night Dad and I went to see them play Cal Berkeley. I can say I once saw Jackie Robinson play basketball. I still play the tape in my mind, a one-of-a-kind athlete who was all over the floor, making his adversaries, all good college players, look foolish.

I never saw him play college baseball, but I do remember a Pacific Coast Conference track meet in 1940 in which he won the long jump. Track and field was big at that time, and the PCC meet, which did not fill the Coliseum like the football games, drew about 40,000. I fancied myself a long jumper in those days, setting the record at my school. Most of my attention at the PCC meet was focused on the long jump pit. I left the meet vowing to emulate the conference champion, the multi-sport phenom from Pasadena, Jackie Robinson. Surprise, I had neither the style nor the distance.

When Jackie arrived at UCLA, he had to share the spotlight with Kenny Washington, also an athlete for all seasons. As a single wing tailback Washington carried the total burden of the Bruin passing attack and most of the running. He was a senior when Jackie arrived for his junior season. Kenny was well liked and highly respected. Jackie was seen as the problem child from the mean streets.

A Rip Van Winkle who had attended UCLA during the Robinson-Washington era, knowing nothing of Jackie's unique contribution to American culture, would be amazed to awaken today and see Robinson's statue in front of the campus baseball stadium that bears his name. "Why didn't they honor Kenny?" he would ask.

Ironically, there are those who say that Washington would have been a very logical choice for the man to break baseball's color barrier. He hit .454 on the Bruin baseball team. But the NFL beat baseball to it. He signed with the L.A. Rams upon mustering out of the service in 1946.

Even with all the reservations that have been expressed about the moody kid from Pasadena, no observer has ever passed up the opportunity to point out that here was an athlete totally focused on winning. Individual achievement meant nothing to him except as it contributed to team victory. This has been repeated about him over and ever since his canonization as MLB's first black player. As one reads about the less-than-popular-super jock who put UCLA on the sports map just before WWII, it is important to remember that key element of his personality never changed.

Interracial dating is not that big a deal today, although it will still turn some heads. During Jackie's collegiate days it was a big deal. Rumor had it that he had an eye for the white ladies. Rumor, as often is the case, was wrong. For all his hell-raising as the leader of the Pepper Street gang, Jackie was shy and diffident with the opposite sex. Although pursued by both black and white women at UCLA, he confined himself to an occasional black coed.

With two years of junior college behind him, Jackie's second year at UCLA was also his last. He was but one of many stars on the 1939 team, but in 1940 he was the only star. They were 1-10 compared to the undefeated squad of the previous year. But several of the 10 losses were close simply because Jackie made them so. He took over the departed Washington's passing chores, played great defense and led the nation in punt returns.

Basketball was more of the same. Robinson and a cast of guys named Joe. As in football, Jackie's brilliance kept the Bruins in games they would have otherwise lost by large margins. And sometimes he even gave them a victory.

His greatest win was not on an athletic field, however. During the 1940-41 academic year he met Rachel Isum, a freshman at UCLA. She was to become Mrs. Jackie Robinson, the mother of his three children and today the keeper of the flame. If you are looking for some kind of a saint in this story, don't look to Jackie. He would be the first to nominate Rachel.

When basketball season ended, so did training table meals. Spring sports athletes did not get this perk. For Jackie the one good meal a day had been important. Never a serious student, he saw little point in sticking out the remaining weeks until graduation. Another baseball season? What was the point? It was his weakest sport. Against his mother's wishes, he decided to quit school and look for a job.

In today's market he would have been a Deion Sanders. In 1941 he felt lucky to land a job with the National Youth Administration, one of many New Deal programs of the day. For the first time in his life he left home. He was assigned to a camp in Atascadero, about 200 miles north of L.A. His job there was to play on the camp baseball team, which played against other agency semipro teams of the area for the entertainment of the campers. Between games he would work with youth groups.

It turned out the NYA was on its last legs. Jackie, who had looked forward to a steady if modest paycheck soon found there were no paychecks at all. When he quit UCLA, he was referred to in the newspapers as "one of the greatest athletes ever." Now he was unemployed. But even in those pre-megabuck days, exceptional athletic talent could be a meal ticket. He was invited to play in the College All Star Game against the Chicago Bears. A good showing got him a contract not in the NFL, which was as segregated as baseball at the time, but with the L.A. Bulldogs, a pro team a notch below the NFL.

Several months ago I interviewed Mickey Colmer, generally regarded as the athlete of the century in the South Bay area of Los Angeles. "Did you ever play with Jackie Robinson?" I asked him. He told me that he not only played with him on that L.A. Bulldog team, he and Jackie became close friends, "He used to come down to the beach and we would surf together." Jackie Robinson surfing? "Hey, he was good!" Of course he was. Should we have expected otherwise? Not bad timing, either. The Bulldog franchise was soon moved to Honolulu.

The team, now known as the Bears, ended its season in early December, and by December fifth Jackie was on the SS Lurline bound for the mainland. Two days out of Honolulu the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Pro basketball, then in its infancy, had a number of barnstorming teams, and Robinson signed with one called the Los Angeles Red Devils. By now the country was at war, and his draft status was in question. He was his mother's primary, if not sole, support, and an old ankle injury from football cast a shadow on his ability to pass an army physical. But he did not want to bear the stigma of the super athlete too physically impaired to serve his country. He determined that if the draft called, he would answer.

In March, 1942 it did. On April 3 he was inducted into the army. What he didn't know was that his biggest battle was five years away.