"Almost blissful" -- Jackie Robinson's year in Montreal before he integrated Major League Baseball
He died 50 years ago this week. Remembering his 1946 season with the minor league Montreal Royals and the warm reception he got in that city.
It was the 15th of October, 1972, a Sunday afternoon. The Oakland Athletics were about to take on the Cincinnati Reds in the second game of the World Series at the Reds' ball park, Riverfront Stadium. But first, there was a ceremony to take place.
It had been 25 years since Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier yet the sport had never held any kind of special commemoration of that historic event. On this day, he would finally be honored by major league baseball.
Baseball's commissioner Bowie Kuhn spoke briefly, then read a lengthy message of congratulations from President Nixon. Then, Robinson spoke. With characteristic humility, he said he had "really just been a spoke" in the wheel of the Dodgers' success in 1947, as if that team, not himself, was the honoree on this occasion.
Robinson talked about how happy he was that his family -- his wife and two of his children (another son, Jack Jr. had died in a car crash months earlier) and his old teammate Pee Wee Reese were there. He said he wished Branch Rickey could have been. Rickey, who was Brooklyn Dodgers' general manager when he signed Robinson to be the first Black player in baseball, had died a few years earlier,
Then, as was his wont, Jackie Robinson said what was really on his mind.
"I'm extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon," he said, "but I must admit, I am going to be tremendously more pleased when I look at the third base coaching line and see a Black face managing in baseball. Thank you."
For years, Robinson had been critical of baseball for not promoting non-whites to managerial, coaching or front office positions -- complaints that had strained his relationship with the men who ran the sport.
Robinson, gray-haired and much fuller of body than in his playing days, spoke for just a little more than one minute. Later, he would throw out the ceremonial first pitch. He may have recalled this was the same city where, when the Dodgers had come to town to play in 1951, Robinson had received a death threat: "Robinson, We Are Going To Kill You If You Attempt To Enter The Ball Game At Crosley Field."
Photo credit: Getty Images
It would be his last public appearance. Robinson had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and heart disease. He was losing his eyesight due to a series of mini strokes. Nine days later, on October 24th, he was at his home in Stamford, Connecticut when he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was just 53 years old.
"His appearance at the World Series provided Robinson, for the last time, with a platform to remind one last time baseball and America what he had accomplished, and what he had spent most of his life championing," wrote Richard Puerzer in the book collection of stories about Robinson, Jackie: Perspectives on 42.
October 23, 1945. Robinson signs contract with Royals. Photo credit: Getty Images
That was 50 years ago this month.
It was another October day, the 23rd, in 1945 when 15 sports reporters in Montreal, Canada were summoned to Delorimier Stadium by the management of the minor league Montreal Royals for a surprise announcement. The reporters were baffled. There were rumors that the Royals were going to hire the all-time baseball great, Babe Ruth, as the team's manager.
"That would've been one helluva story," recalled one of the reporters, Dink Carroll of the Montreal Gazette. "What awaited us was one helluva different story."
Into the room walked Hector Racine, Royals club president and an unfamiliar Black man who he introduced to the puzzled journalists as Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League. Racine said he had just signed a contract with the Royals, the top minor league affiliate of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
"Here is the newest member of the Brooklyn Dodgers organization," said Racine. "He will be given every opportunity to make the Royals for the upcoming season."
Robinson spoke. "I can't begin to tell you how happy I am that I am the first member of my race in organized baseball," he said. "I can only say that I'll do my best to come through in every manner."
The reaction? "A stunned silence, then the reporters surged to the phones to call in the headline to their papers and radio station," wrote Jack Anderson in Jackie, Perspectives on 42.
Jackie Robinson, 1946, Photo Credit: Getty Images
This is a story about the 1946 season Jackie Robinson spent in Montreal, which has always been eclipsed by the bigger story of Robinson's integrating major league baseball the following year. This is a story about a city and its people who eagerly embraced Jackie Robinson at a time when he faced the vilest backlash and ugliest racial discrimination in his own country. It was a city that provided Robinson and his wife, Rachel, a desperately needed psychological sanctuary as he came under unimaginably intense stress and pressure.
"I remember Montreal as the city that enabled me to go into the Major Leagues," Robinson told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in an interview in 1964, as quoted in an article by Keegan Matheson in MLB.com. "The fans there were fantastic, and my wife and I had nothing but the greatest memories."
First, though, there was the ostensibly simple matter of finding housing in Montreal. The Robinsons married in February 1946 and would need to rent an apartment. They were understandably wary. What would happen if they tried to rent in a white neighborhood? In much of 1946 America -- in the North, as well as the South -- that could be a problem. Lots of white Americans would not rent to them. Lots of white residents would not want them in their neighborhood.
Robinsons' apartment in Montreal. Notice the plaque marking it. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne
In Montreal, they had no problems.
“Although Rachel Robinson feared they would have difficulty renting an apartment in the city, she was warmly greeted by her prospective landlady, who offered her an apartment at 8232 Avenue De Gaspé and invited her for tea,” according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. “When it became clear that the couple were expecting their first child, the neighboring children carried Rachel’s groceries for her, while the women helped her make maternity clothes and gave her rationing cards, admonishing her to ‘eat more meat.’”
Rachel and Jackie Robinson, 1955. Photo credit: Getty Images
When they went out, people in the mostly French-speaking neighborhood would stare at them, but out of friendly curiosity, not hostility.
Years later, in 1987, Rachel Robinson wrote, “Montreal and then Brooklyn became special havens where we could eventually regain our sense of ourselves and our dignity.” She once described their time in Canada as "almost blissful."
It is not that there wasn't racism and bigotry in Canada. Black people faced discrimination in employment and housing. But there were few Black Canadians then and Canada did not have the dark history of slavery, violence and racism that America had. There was not and had never been anything like the American system of legal strictures and customs of segregation and degradation.
"Racism (in Canada) is a problem and has always been a problem, as it has across the planet and across North America." Jack Jedwab, president of the Association of Canadian Studies and author of the 1996 book, Jackie Robinson's Unforgettable Summer of Baseball in Montreal, told me this week. "(But) we didn't have an organized racist system. We didn't have Jim Crow laws. So it was easier in terms of the Robinsons making that adjustment."
Together, the Robinsons headed south to Florida for spring training. The couple's first problem occurred enroute.
"Their troubles began almost as soon as their plane landed in New Orleans, where they were informed they had been bumped from the next leg of the flight and that there were no more flights that night," Anderson wrote. "After a night in a seedy hotel, they flew on to Pensacola, Florida, where they were bumped once more. Forced to continue in a segregated bus, they finally arrived 16 hours later, days late."
Robinson and two other Black players on the team, of course, could not stay with teammates at hotels in Dayton Beach, where their home field was. They stayed in the homes of local Black families. They could not eat at segregated restaurants. And then there was the torrent of verbal abuse and threats that Robinson had to endure from fans and opposing players.
The Royals opened the season on the road, playing their game in Jersey City, New Jersey against the Jersey City Little Giants. Robinson went 4 for 5 and hit a three-run home run. Unprecedented numbers of throngs of Black fans turned out to cheer him. But he also got an earful of more racist taunts. Playing in Syracuse, an opposing player pushed a black cat onto the field when Robinson was in the on-deck circle "Hey, Jackie," the Syracuse player said, "here's your cousin."
In Baltimore, the owner of the franchise warned there would be a riot if a Black player entered the game. Robinson played and there was no riot, but it got pretty nasty as white fans showered him with angry epithets. Rachel Robinson sat in the stands, seething.
The Royals finally played their first home game on May 1st.
"By the time I arrived in Montreal, I had received a classic education in how it felt to be the object of bitter hatred," Robinson would write in I Never Had It Made.
In Montreal, everything was different. When he walked onto the field, he was greeted with an ovation from the crowd of 16,000. He had a single, a walk, and scored a run as the Royals won.
"The fans mobbed him after the game, and he had to be escorted out of the baseball park by two policemen through a side door," wrote Anderson in Jackie: Perspectives on 42. "Rachel Robinson returned the affection by sitting at a table and signing autographs in front of the main gate."
In I Never Had It Made, Robinson said, "After Jersey City and Baltimore, the Royals moved to Montreal. It was a fantastic experience. After the rejections, unpleasantness, and uncertainties, it was encouraging to find an atmosphere of complete acceptance and something approaching adulation. The people of Montreal were warm and wonderful to us."
The Royals won 16 of their first 20 games. Robinson played well, winning over the fans, who would chant in French, "Glad to have you with us!"
On the road, in America, Robinson got decidedly mixed receptions from the crowds at games -- cheered by some, reviled by many -- while suffering the indignities of segregation in many cities.
Exhibit at new Jackie Robinson Museum in Manhattan. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne
"The toll (these) incidents took was greater than I realized," Robinson wrote in I Never Had it Made. "I was overestimating my stamina and underestimating the beating I was taking. I couldn't sleep and often I couldn't eat. Rachel was worried, and we sought the advice of a doctor who was afraid I was going to have a nervous breakdown."
The pressure may have weighed on him, but it didn't affect his performance on the field. Robinson was having a great season. He finished the season with a .349 batting average, with 25 doubles, eight triples and three home runs. He also stole 40 bases, as the Royals won the International League pennant, advancing to the Junior World Series to play the Louisville Colonels..
It would be a best-of-seven series playoff with the first three games in Louisville before a segregated crowd. The Colonels won two of the first three games as Robinson was subjected to some of the worst abuse he had yet encountered.
"I had been booed pretty soundly before," Robinson would later recall.* but nothing like this. A torrent of mass hatred burst from the stands with virtually every move I made."
The series moved to Montreal, where Royals fans were so incensed by how Robinson had been treated in Louisville, they rained boos on them. To Robinson, they chanted, "Il a gagne ses épaulettes!" He has won his epaulettes.
"I'll never forget playing in Louisville, in my own country, and hearing boos, and then going to Montreal and hearing the warm, friendly reception I had," Robinson would remember.
The Royals swept the next three games to clinch the title. Delorimier Stadium exploded.
After the game, delirious fans screamed for him to come out. He did and was soon hoisted onto their shoulders and carried around the infeld. Later, when he tried to leave the stadium, Robinson found his way blocked by a huge throng of ecstatic fans. He was able to push his way through, then started running down the street, chased by hundreds of them. Finally, someone in a car pulled alongside and he escaped from the frenzy.
A Montreal sportswriter famously wrote, "It was probably the only day in history that a Black man ran away from a white mob with love instead of lynching in mind."
The next day, Robinson flew to Detroit to begin a barnstorming tour.
"As my plane roared skyward and the lights of Montreal twinkled and winkled in the distance, I took one last look at the great city where I had found so much happiness," Robinson remembered many years later. "'I don't care if I make the Major,' I told myself. 'This is the city for me. This is paradise.'"
The next year, Jackie Robinson was called up to the major leagues and history was made. He never forgot the city and people of Montreal.
Mural near where the Robinsons lived in 1946. Photo credit: Ron Claiborne
WHERE TO FIND SITES ASSOCIATED WITH JACKIE ROBINSON IN MONTREAL
There are two great murals: one at the corner of Avenue Saint-Laurent and Rue Napoleon, the other at 171 Jarry Street East, at the corner of Ruelle De Gaspé.
Delorimier Stadium where the Royals played no longer exists. It's now a high school. But there is a plaque marking the spot and honoring Robinson at the location where it stood, at 2101 Ontario Street East and Avenue DeLorimier.
There is a statue of Robinson with two boys at the entrance to Olympic Stadium, where the former MLB team, Montreal Expos, once played.
The apartment building where the Robinsons lived is located at 8232 Avenue De Gaspé.
You can sign up at secondacts.bulletin.com/subscribe to get free posts delivered to your inbox each week and read past articles. You also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Cover photo credit: Getty Images