04/15/2022
THANK YOU JACKIE! 75 years ago, today, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier when he appeared in his first regular season game for the Brooklyn Dodgers and became the first African American player to play in what had been the “white Major Leagues” since the 1880s. The prejudice, harassment, and discrimination he faced is legendary as is his ability, style of play, and most of all, his fortitude, class, courage, restraint, and perseverance as he placed his entire race on his shoulders and not only demonstrated that black players could compete along side white players but that they could also excel and often times completely dominate.
Jackie opened the door for his people to cross the color line into the National and American Leagues, and fans across America were blessed by the likes of Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Monte Irvin, and Don Newcombe, and later by Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, and many, many more incredible baseball heroes.
Unfortunately, the success of blacks in the National and American Leagues led to the decline of the teams of the Negro Leagues and eventually the end of this black enterprise as the ball clubs’ talent and their fans left by the hundreds to follow their heroes to their new teams. The Newark Eagles had won the Negro World Series in 1946. In 1947, Jackie broke the barrier, and by 1948, the Eagles had been stripped of its core of star players. The team was sold, and the new ownership moved the team right here to Houston, Texas, where they played as the Houston Eagles from 1949-1950 before moving to New Orleans and then folding part way through the 1951 season. By 1955, the Negro Leagues were all but gone with just a few teams hanging on.
The Kansas City Monarchs were one of those teams, and the 1955 Monarchs produced one of the most important, yet often forgotten players in Houston history. Young J.C. Hartman played on that club alongside Satchel Paige and under the management of Buck O’Neill and was an East-West All Star that year. After the season, the Monarchs sold their remaining players to MLB clubs and their minor league counterparts, and Hartman ended up in the Cubs organization. By 1961, the local Houston Buffs were a Cubs affiliate, and Hartman found himself here. The Buffs had just been purchased by the Houston Sports Association (HSA) in order to gain territorial rights for the National League to be able to grant them a new, expansion franchise the following season. When the HSA established the C**t .45s for the 1962 season, the Buffs were moved to Oklahoma City where they became the 89ers, and some players’ contracts like Hartman’s and Pidge Brown’s were purchased by the HSA for their new team.
Hartman made it to the Majors as a C**t .45, but he new he wouldn’t be in baseball forever. He went to barber school to plan for a career after baseball, and he cut other players’ hair on the side including many of the C**t .45s and even the great Willie Mays! Hartman was right, and he wasn’t in baseball for very long. When he retired from playing, though, instead of pursuing barbering, Hartman joined the Houston Police Department where he broke his own color barrier by becoming the first black supervisor in HPD after his historic promotion to sergeant. J.C. Hartman is one of the few players in history to have played for both the Houston Buffs and Houston C**t .45s/Astros, and along with Walt Bond, he is one of two players in C**t .45s/Astros history to have played in the Negro Leagues.
Going back to Jackie, here are a couple more things you may not have known about his relationship to Houston. First, upon his discharge from the United States Army where he had been stationed in central Texas, Jackie stayed in Austin where he coached basketball for a university. A friend on the Kansas City Monarchs arranged a spring training tryout for Robinson who got in his car and drove to meet the team. As was common in those days, the Monarchs so happened to be utilizing Houston’s West End Park as their spring training home in 1945, and as legend has it, Jackie tried out for and signed his first professional baseball contract with the Monarchs right here in Houston before he was scouted by the Dodgers later that year and signed to a minor league contract for the 1946 season.
The second item relates to his impact on our community. By breaking the color barrier, he opened the door for blacks to play in the National League, and with the addition of the C**t .45s to the National League in 1962, that meant that immortal players such as Aaron, Mays, and Banks would be coming through Houston routinely to play against the C**ts. The only problem was that Houston was still segregated under the era’s Jim Crow laws which meant that every time Willie Mays and others came to town, they would have to sleep at separate hotels, eat in separate restaurants, and ride in separate taxis from their white teammates. The HSA believed that not only was this unjust but that it would surely make the news giving the city and its new ball club a bad reputation in the eyes of America and baseball fans. The HSA also knew that it needed the votes of Houston’s African American community to achieve the county bonds it needed for its domed stadium project which would become the Astrodome. Using its incredible leverage and power the HSA decided to hold private negotiations with the area’s hospitality businesses and was able to persuade them to desegregate their facilities. Just like that, without even being covered in the newspapers, Houston began its road to integration, when on April 1, 1962, nine days before the first MLB Opening Day in the city, Houston’s hotels and restaurants officially integrated. The 1960s saw a lot of violence and turmoil across the country as the civil rights movement worked for racial equality in America, but here in Houston, the impact was nowhere near as violent or catastrophic as even some places in the North such as Detroit had been; this was due to the baseball team and, ultimately, it was due to Jackie Robinson who endured so much for so many. Had he not bore the burdens that he did, these great players may not have been in the National League in 1962, and the HSA would not have had a platform from which to preach the integration of the city. Ultimately, the Astrodome opened as a completely integrated facility in 1965, a year that saw the complete integration of the city of Houston, and Jackie Robinson was eventually inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. His iconic number 42 was retired across all of Major League Baseball 25 years ago today, on the 50th anniversary of his first Dodgers game, and now the number is worn by every MLB player on April 15 in Jackie’s honor. But it is not only what he did for baseball that we remember and honor Jackie Robinson; it is for what he did for cities like Houston, which, if not for Jackie could have seen a much different fate.
One more little nugget for those of you still reading: you may or may not know that Astros Hall of Famer Bob Aspromonte was the last active Brooklyn Dodgers player in the Majors having begun his career with that team after being discovered playing as a kid on the sandlots of Brooklyn, New York. At just 18 years old, Aspromonte was summoned to Ebbets Field by legendary Dodgers manager Walt Alston and told to grab his glove and take infield practice at third base. An eager and nervous Aspromonte took his glove and ran out of the dugout to his position while scattered across the diamond were the heroes whose baseball cards he collected and whom he had just been worshiping from the other side of the fence: P*e Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, and yes, the great Jackie Robinson. Imagine that! That would be like a high school kid right here in Houston getting called up to take infield at shortstop with Altuve, Yuli, and Bregman; unbelievable! So, you can imagine how nervous Aspro had to have been, and not only that: his glove, the glove he had used on those sandlots, really wasn’t an infielders’ glove. It was much too big, and poor Bob was making a mess of his debut in practice in front of his heroes. Alas, the veterans paused the practice, and an incredibly humble and caring Jackie Robinson explained to young Aspromonte that his glove was too big. Upon learning that it was Bob’s only glove, Jackie’s response was “here, take mine.” Aspromonte’s performance improved significantly with Robinson’s glove, and afterwards Jackie let Bob keep it. Bob Aspromonte cherished that glove the rest of his life only recently passing it to a family member for safe keeping as he is beginning to “get up there in age”.
Thank you Jackie for being the man, the baseball player, and the human being that you were and for what you did for this country. ⚾️🇺🇸💙
