Remembering Jackie Robinson: Author Profile: Jonathan Eig

The Jews and Jackie Robinson

At a time when unenlightened baseball fans and players hurled epithets and <a onclick=”window.open(this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=400,height=602,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false” href=”http://baseballbookshelf.mlblogs.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/joneigspt.jpg”><img title=”Joneigspt” height=”225″ alt=”Joneigspt” src=”http://baseballbookshelf.mlblogs.com/my_weblog/images/joneigspt.jpg” width=”150″ border=”0″ style=”FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 5px 5px” /></a> brickbats to protest an African American playing in the major leagues, the Jewish community embraced Jackie Robinson as a “kindred spirit,” according to a new book that marks the 60th anniversary of his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Jonathan Eig, author of Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season (Simon and Schuster), said a sense of compassion and fairness made Robinson a cause celebre for Jews in New York and across the country.

“I didn’t get into it as much as I wanted to…, but Robinson really recognized that and he really embraced the Jewish community,” he said in a telephone interview during his 10-city book tour. “The only friends in [Brooklyn] that year were Jewish people.”

“The Jewish community clearly recognized a kindred spirit here, someone who had to prove themselves. The war had just ended, [and] anti-Semitism was running high. Blacks and Jews both, after the war, felt they had some work to do to establish more respect,” said Eig, a writer for the Wall Street Journal. In his book, he described an incident between Robinson and Hank Greenberg, baseball’s first Jewish superstar, to illustrate his concept of Jewish empathy.

Greenberg — a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1947 — also faced bigotry, enduring taunts of “****” “sheeney,” and worse from opposing players and fans. Eig said it was not surprising that he was one of the first ballplayers to befriend Robinson.

Robinson, as a batter, collided with Greenberg, who was playing first base. “Later in the game,” Eig writes, “when Robinson reached first on another single, Greenberg expressed his concern and admiration for the rookie.”

“Greenberg offered Robinson a few encouraging words, and Robinson sang the first baseman’s praises after the game. ‘He sure is a swell guy. He helped me a lot by saying the things he did.’”

The author spent more than a year working on <ei></ei>Opening Day, but had to scramble to get it done in time to commemorate the anniversary of Robinson’s April 15 debut, which was scheduled to feted throughout baseball on Sunday. Eig, who was on the New Jersey leg of his book tour, said he had planned on attending game between the New York Mets and the Washington Nationals at Shea Stadium (which was subsequently rained out). Asked if he would have the honor of throwing out the ceremonial first pitch in recognition of his new book, Eig laughed. “I’ll be eating the first hot dog.”

Eig’s first book, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, has similar qualities to his latest project. “I liked both of them because they were complex heroes,” he said. “They’re important in ways that go beyond the ballfield. For Gehrig, it was because he died young and had to face such a horrible illness; for Jackie, it was that he faced such a difficult trial by fire. And you could certainly argue that his death [at the age of 53] was hastened by the stress he had to deal with.”

“There were a lot of things that I learned about Robinson that I never knew before,” he said, using the opportunity to debunk some long-held beliefs about the ballplayer.

“One that stands out in my mind the most was that I thought that Pee Wee Reese was [Robinson’s] patron saint.” The Kentucky-born had long been praised for embracing Robinson in a game in Cincinnati as a show of solidarity, but after extensive research, Eig questioned whether such a moment actually took place. “He was a really good friend of Jackie, but not so much in 1947. He was still feeling him out, waiting to see what would happen. What surprised me was how profoundly alone Jackie was that year.”

Eig rooted for the Yankees while growing up in Rockland County, NY. A member of the Society for American Baseball Research, he now lives in Chicago, where he follows the fates of the Cubs.

More than 40 books about Robinson preceded Opening Day, so why another one? “As I got older I realized how great the stories were and had to be told again for a new generation,” said the 42-year-old Eig.

(A version of this story appears in the April 19 issue of the New Jersey Jewish News.)

* Eig joined the ranks of fellow authors who have appeared on NPR. He was featured in a <a href=”http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9585147″>segment on Jackie Robinson on the April 15 Weekend Edition Sunday</a>.