Baseball Way Back: Jackie Robinson's first visit to Wrigley was a box-office smash

The Cubs celebrated Jackie Robinson's legacy with great fanfare Thursday, as they started a series with Robinson's team, the Dodgers, at Wrigley Field.

The Black national anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," by James Weldon Johnson, was played, flags with Robinson's number, 42, were flown around the ballpark, and the team sold special Robinson merchandise to benefit 100 Black Men of Chicago, a local organization that provides programming for Black youth.

More than three-quarters of a century have passed since Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier, first visited Wrigley Field, on Sunday, May 18, 1947.

The game was a box-office smash, with Chicago Tribune sportswriter Edward Burns noting, "The largest National League crowd that ever paid to see a game in Wrigley field - 46,572 cash guests - yesterday jammed all available spaces to see Jackie Robinson, his fellow Dodgers and the Cubs."

Fans who couldn't be at the game that afternoon could listen to the radio broadcast on WIND. The privileged folks who owned a television set in 1947 could watch on WBKB - the call letters stood for Balaban and Katz, owners of the Chicago Theater and other movie palaces.

For Burns, the reason behind the attendance spike was obvious.

"There was no doubt that the new paid record was set because Robinson, the much discussed Negro athlete, was making his first baseball appearance in Chicago, as a big leaguer," he said.

The Cubs lost the game 4-2, but both teams left the contest tied at 14-12, although the Brooklyn Dodgers were headed for a pennant, while the Cubs, NL champions only two seasons earlier, were destined to finish 6th in an eight-team league under manager Charley Grimm.

Robinson entered the contest with a 14-game hitting streak, but Robinson, batting second in the order behind future White Sox manager Eddie Stanky, would leave the game without a hit and would strike out looking twice against Cubs hurler Johnny Schmitz, once with the bases loaded and no outs.

But the outcome was secondary. With each appearance, Robinson and the Dodgers were helping transform a country that was very different from the one we know today.

Scanning the front page of a Black weekly newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier, published on May 17, the day before the Cubs series opener against the Dodgers, the headlines included, "State Demands Death Penalty in Mob Case." In Greenville, South Carolina, a crowded courtroom, "with balcony reserved for Negroes," heard defense attorneys seeking to have the various counts quashed in the bill of indictment against 31 whites accused of lynching 24-year-old Willie Earle.

Moving down the page, a bulletin from Sacramento reported that backers of a measure to establish a political and racial equality commission in California was tabled in committee, a move "considered to be the death sentence of the measure."

And there was a report from Austin, Texas about the case of Heman M. Sweatt v. the State of Texas attacking the "separate but equal" theory in segregation laws. Sweatt, a student, was attempting to force the University of Texas to open its doors to him. His legal team was headed by future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. A blurb at the bottom of the page teased to a column by Black sportswriter and future WGN television sportscaster Wendell Smith about how baseball's official leaders rallied behind Robinson when the St. Louis Cardinals threatened to strike against him.

Smith wrote on May 31 in the Courier that Robinson stayed in St. Louis with friends rather than join the team at the Chase Hotel.

"Although he was not personally refused by the management of the hotel, he learned that they were not anxious to have him," Smith wrote.

But there was also progress, as in the series preceding the one in Chicago, when the Pirates' Hank Greenberg, who, as a Jew, had faced anti-Semitism, reached out to encourage Robinson.

"How are things going, Jackie?" Greenberg asked, in a conversation recounted in Smith's column.

Robinson answered, "Pretty good, but it's plenty rough up here in the big leagues."

"Listen," Greenberg said, "I know it's plenty tough. You're a good ball player, however, and you'll do all right. Just stay in there and fight back, and always remember to keep your head up."

Robinson was not the first Black ballplayer to play on the Wrigley Field diamond. The Tribune reported on Sept. 6, 1942 that a Negro League doubleheader would be played, with the first game featuring the Birmingham Barons and the Memphis Red Sox and the nightcap pitting the Cincinnati Ethiopian Clowns against the Kansas City Monarchs. The opener would be "played for the Negro championship of the south while the final contest is billed as being for the unofficial world's Negro championship."

The Monarchs would eventually figure in the history of the Cubs. A former Monarch, Ernie Banks, would become Mr. Cub, while another former Monarch, Buck O'Neil, would eventually be hired as a coach by the Cubs, the first Black coach in Major League Baseball.