Why Jackie Robinson was an even better baseball player than you realize

The meeting that took place in Branch Rickey's office on Montague Street in Brooklyn in late August of 1945 has obtained an almost apocryphal status. Dodgers scout Clyde Sukeforth had met up with Jackie Robinson in Toledo, and the two traveled together to New York to meet the Dodgers' general manager. Sukeforth ushered Robinson into Rickey's office and warned his boss that he had not had a chance to see Robinson throw from the shortstop hole, as Rickey had requested, because Robinson had been nursing a sore shoulder.

Rickey and Robinson sized each other up. A long minute of silence passed. "When Rickey met somebody he was interested in, he studied them in the most profound way," Sukeforth would say. "He just sat and stared. And that's what he did with Robinson -- stared at him as if he were trying to get inside the man."

Robinson stared right back.

At some point during the meeting Rickey would get in Robinson's face, tossing insults like those he would face on the field. He told Robinson he would have beanballs thrown his way, he would be physically attacked, he would be spiked and spat on, that he would have to control his temper. Robinson wrote in his autobiography:

"Mr. Rickey," I asked, "are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?"

I will never forget the way he exploded.

"Robinson," he said, "I'm looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back."

That's when Robinson agreed to sign a contract to play for Montreal, Brooklyn's affiliate in the International League, for 1946.

Still, there was no guarantee that Robinson was going to be the first Black player in the majors. To that point, there wasn't much experience on Robinson's baseball résumé to presume he was going to be great -- and, as the first Black player, Robinson had to be great as opposed to merely good.

On the 75th anniversary of Robinson's debut with the Dodgers, Robinson's skill as a player is sometimes overlooked -- rightfully -- when honoring his cultural and historical impact. All these years later, we learn and remember what Robinson went through, the abuses he suffered, the pressures he endured.

That meeting in Brooklyn was just the beginning. After the deal was signed, it was time for Robinson to play. And, oh, could Jackie Robinson play baseball.

Robinson himself always expressed surprise that Rickey had selected him. The biggest Negro Leagues stars of the time included future Hall of Famers Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and Monte Irvin, who was regarded as the best young player. It seemed one of the three would be first, but Gibson and Paige were too old by 1945 and Irvin, after serving in World War II, did not believe himself to be in the right frame of mind to return immediately to baseball.

Robinson, meanwhile, might not have even made it to the Monarchs tryout had it not paid more than his job at the time.

Robinson had starred in baseball at Pasadena City College, but in two years at UCLA he was much better known as a star halfback for the football team and also a letter winner in basketball and track. He played just one season of baseball, one that doesn't even get a mention in his autobiography -- maybe with good reason, because, according to the UCLA website, Robinson hit .097 for the Bruins, a figure apparently drawn from Arnold Rampersad's biography of Robinson (although Rampersad's sourcing is not exactly clear).

It's clear that, at the time, baseball was hardly the young man's best sport. Robinson also won the Pacific Coast intercollegiate golf championship and reached the semifinals of the national tennis tournament for Black players. He also won swimming events for UCLA. So if he really did hit .097, baseball was perhaps his seventh-best sport.

After receiving an honorable discharge from the army in 1944, Robinson played pro football for the Los Angeles Bulldogs. He then got a job at Samuel Huston College in Austin, Texas, teaching physical education and coaching basketball at the all-Black school.

In his autobiography, Robinson explains how he found his way to a tryout in March with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues: He had heard the Monarchs paid $400 per month, and that was more than he was making coaching basketball.

He must have made a quick impression with the Monarchs. In a preseason article in the April edition of Negro Baseball magazine, legendary sportswriter Sam Lacy named Robinson on his list of prospective players who could integrate the majors, calling him the "ideal man to pace the experiment."

Robinson was clearly one of the best players in the league that season. In the 34 league games for which researchers have found stats, Robinson hit .375/.449/.600 with four home runs. Maybe he didn't have the arm to play shortstop, but he had all the other tools Rickey and Sukeforth were looking for: speed, hitting ability and, most obvious of all, as Rickey sensed in his office, an intense competitive drive.

After leading the International League in batting average (.349) and runs (113) and finishing second in stolen bases (40) for Montreal in 1946, Robinson joined Brooklyn in 1947 and won the Rookie of the Year Award and finished fifth in the MVP voting.

He won National League MVP honors in 1949, leading the league with a .342 average and 37 steals while scoring 122 runs and driving in 124. Over his first seven seasons, he scored 773 runs, more than any player in baseball except Stan Musial. Only Musial had more hits. Only Musial, Ted Williams and George Kell hit for a higher average than Robinson's .319. Nobody stole more bases. Only Musial had more WAR, and there was a bigger gap from Robinson to the No. 3 player than from Musial to Robinson.

What made Robinson such a great player? It's almost too easy to attribute his success just to an overwhelming conviction that failure was not an option. No doubt, that was an important part of his career with the Dodgers, but it also undersells his ability.

As a hitter

Although his swing isn't necessarily one you would teach or see today, Robinson adapted quickly to major league pitching (despite Bob Feller's declaration that Robinson "couldn't hit an inside pitch to save his neck"). He had a little hitch as he brought his bat back to begin his swing, his bat starting almost parallel to the ground, a style seen more often back then. Still, you can sense why some might have thought Robinson would have trouble pulling his hands in to handle anything inside. Clearly, however, Robinson had the bat speed and hand-eye coordination to do damage on those pitches.

In highlights, you also see Robinson hitting off his front foot a lot, another style that was more popular in those days, when most players weren't selling out for power on every swing. (Roberto Clemente was another famous front-foot hitter.) As his .311 career average with the Dodgers attests, Robinson was a line-drive hitter. He topped out at 19 home runs in one season, although he reached double digits in nine of his 10 seasons with Brooklyn.