Integration+of+Baseball+Notes

**Interview subject** - Bill Topitzes (Grandfather)
 * Topic** - The Integration of Baseball

"I was the club house boy for the old Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association. I took care of the homes and the visitors club houses by myself. I was 13 years old. I used to work on what they called Still Dates when the teams were out of town and then different baseball teams would come and play and that would be like the Negro League teams, as they were referred to them. The house of David teams came as well which were all beareded players. The girls baseball league would come and play on Still Dates as well. The girls started playing baseball during the war years. We had a few a teams in Wisconsin."
 * -What was your life like during the integration of baseball?**

It gave me the oppurtunity to witness the Negro League games and at that time, the major leagues were not integrated and they would come and play in various cities as exhibition games. Usually only african americans would attend but there were some great ball players in the Negro Leagues. I also got the oppurtunity to get to know some of them as well. I would talk to them and discuss different baseball things and we'd talk about lifes and what it was like for them to travel and go from town to town. The negro leagues had to go all over the country whereas the white players only had to go to a few cities.
 * -What effects did the integration of baseball have on you?**

They were very resentful when the baseball leagues were integrated. Especially the white players who were from the south. They did all kinds of things to intimidate and harrass the African American ball players. They would call them names and throw black cats on the field. The African Americans couldn't stay in the same hotels as the white players and eat in the same resturants as their white teamates especially in the southern cities. There were some ball players that were nice to the African Americans but you only ever hear about the ones that were mean to them. There was a lot of trouble with integration at the begining."
 * - What effect did it have on the white players of baseball who were on the teams with the African Americans?**

There was a lot of racism that existed in the country and wherever the African Americans came in contact with white people. They were considered back then second class citizens. If an African American came up to bat, they would boo and call them names. They would throw things at them and make their lives miserable. When baseball was first integrated, they would have special sections for the African Americans. They couldn't sit wherever they wanted, Jim Crow still existed so that meant that the African Americans had to be in different sections than the white people.
 * - How did the people of America react? What was their initial reaction to the integration of baseball?**

There were rebellions on the side of the white ball players, especially those from the south. They would play a lot of mean jokes on them and try to embarrass them and everything. They would put book matches in the African Americans shoes. They would put the red head of the matches on the baseball shoe and then they would light the other end. When it hit the red stuff,it would light that and cause pain and cause the person to jump up.
 * - What did the African American players on the white teams have to go through? What were the hardships?**

They realized that there were a lot of great ball players in the Negro leagues and so Branch Rickey who was president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, decided to integrate baseball for his team. He had a lot of opposition from the other owners though. in 1946 he signed Jackie Robinson. He went through a lot of players trying to find out the right one who would integrate baseball because it had to be somebody who was educated and who would be able to withstand the abuse that he would face from the racist.
 * - How did the integration of baseball actually start? What was it that lead up to the integration of baseball?**

The media was the same as the other white people. There were mixed reactions on all of them. Some were for it and some were against it. What Rickey did was he signed Jackie Robinson to a contract with the Montreal Royals of the international league in 1946. Baseball had different classifications. The major leagues there were only 2 leagues, the American league and the national league. Each league had eight teams so it was very difficult to get to the big leagues. Under the big leagues, there were lower classifications. Class D, Class C, Class B, Class A, Class AA, and Class AAA which was right under the major leagues. Players would start at the lower leagues and would eventually make their way up. Thats how I got to meet all the big leaguers because they would play in the AAA's. Up until the time that they integrated baseball, the Washington senators had some Cuban ball players. These Cuban ball players were of the white variety. They weren't actually classified as African Americans so they passed as Whites.
 * - What did the media say about this whole integration of baseball?**

How I was fascinated by the fact that there were so many good black ball players that I got to know and they never got a chance to play in the major leagues until integration. Baseball was very competitve and what happens was when a player signed with one team, he would become the property of that team forever. He could never go to another team or anything. Because of that a lot of players that would have been good enough to go to the major leagues never got the oppurutnity because if the guy was a good second base men, he'd never get a chance if the team already had a good second base man. I remember when Jackie Robinson came in and all the abuse that he took- what helped him was his self control for not losing his temper and he was amazing at baseball. His brother was in the olympics and Jackie was a great ball player. Eventually because he was such a good ball player, he paved the way for other African American players to come into the major leagues. When I would talk to Jackie Robinson, we would talk about baseball and everything. I was 18 years old in 1953 and you wouldn't talk about race problems with him, I would talk to him about baseball.
 * - What do you most rememeber about the intergration of baseball?**

There were mixed feelings. Some thought it was good and supported it, whereas others thought it was bad. The south differed from the North in these aspects of how they felt about the integration of baseball.
 * -What would the average white person think about the integration of baseball?**