John “Spider” Jorgensen
Interest in baseball was high in
California as far back as the
1860s. The State Agricultural Society awarded a Silver Ball at the 1860
State Fair to the Eagles of San Francisco who had defeated the Sacramento
Base Ball Club.
The Civil War helped spread the game;
reports came of games played in prisoner of war camps. A National
Association of Baseball Players was formed and was holding annual
conventions.
Teams proliferated in the Sacramento
area. So it was natural for me and the kid down the street to get into the
game. My childhood pal was Donald John “Spider” Jorgensen. After we came
back from World War II, Spider chose to get back into the game. I had gotten
married and chose to stay in Folsom where I served many years in the
governance of the town of our birth. Spider went on to make his mark in the
record books of baseball but most important he had a front row seat in a
changing world...he played alongside Jackie Robinson, the first black player
brought into the major leagues.
Today Spider lives at Rancho Cucamonga in
San Bernardino County but comes to Folsom frequently. Some time ago he gave
me a copy of a column written by a Los Angeles reporter named Geoff Smith
for the Los Angeles Daily Bulletin. Spider told me he had told his story so
many times and this writer got it about right. He gave me permission to
quote from it.
John “Spider” Jorgensen wasn’t looking to
be part of history. He just wanted to play baseball. Then again, maybe the
same could have been said of Jackie Robinson, the first black to play modern
major league baseball.
Spider wasn’t thinking about color lines
on April 15, 1947; he was thinking about base lines. He wasn’t searching for
meaning in the events that were about to unfold; he was searching for an
infielders glove. According to Jorgensen, he was more surprised to see his
name on the lineup card than to see a black player across the infield.
He knew that Robinson would become the
first black player in the major leagues that day but you have to forgive a
young third baseman preparing for his own big-league debut if the
significance was a little lost on him at the time, even though he played in
that historic game using Robinson’s glove.
On that April day, Spider Jorgensen was
in a bit of a haze. A day earlier, he thought he was going to be spending
another year in the minor leagues. He was expecting to join the Brooklyn
Dodgers Class AAA team, the Montreal Royals, when they opened the season in
Syracuse, New York.
But the Dodgers, with injuries to
infielders Cookie Lavagetto and Arky Vaughn, needed a third baseman. So
Jorgensen, 27, got the call and was at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn for the
Dodgers’ opener against the Boston Braves. However, his shoes, glove and
bats were en route to Syracuse.
“I came into Ebbets Field on opening day,
scared to death,” Jorgensen says. “I didn’t think I was going to play. I
didn’t have any equipment with me. My glove, bats, everything else went to
Syracuse because the Montreal Club opened up there. Then Jackie comes over
and says ‘Here, use my second base glove.’ He was going to play first base.
So I used his glove and borrowed a pair of spikes and I’m in the lineup. So
I really didn’t have time to get nervous.” Jorgensen went 0 for 3 with an
RBI while batting seventh that day. Robinson was also 0 for 3 and scored a
run batting second.
Spider is immortalized with Robinson in
record books and the famous photograph (see above) taken before the game of
the Dodgers’ starting infield — Jorgensen, shortstop Pee Wee Reese, second
baseman Eddie Stanky and Robinson. But he doesn’t remember much hoopla
surrounding the game. “It was the ordinary writers of the Brooklyn club,” he
said. “There were about five of them. There wasn’t much hoop, hoop, hooray.
There were only 25,623 in the bleachers that day.”
Jorgensen does remember the harsh
treatment Robinson received from the Philadelphia Phillies led by Manager
Ben Chapman’s hateful verbal assaults. “They really ragged on him...oh, my
God...but he took it. The word spread that he’s not supposed to do anything
but just play. And that he did. He took that c--p.”
Jorgensen says he was oblivious to some
of the racism that Robinson endured that season. He didn’t know, for
example, that a Philadelphia hotel didn’t want to let Robinson stay there
until years later when he read about it in a book. “Mind you, I didn’t know
what was going on. I was struggling, too. I was just a rookie. I was worried
about myself.”
He first remembers hearing about Robinson
in the late 1930s when he was at Sacramento City College and Robinson was a
four-sport star at UCLA. The two became teammates in 1946 when Robinson
joined the Royals as second baseman. Jorgensen played third and future
Dodgers General Manager Al Campanis was the shortstop. Jorgensen remembers
Robinson being accepted relatively easily by his Montreal teammates. “How
was he accepted? He was okay. We had some Southern guys. They just seemed to
take it in stride. I remember the fellow named Marv Rackley (from South
Carolina) and he just didn’t seem to think anything about it. The manager of
the Baltimore Club...used to talk to me at third. I just half listened. He
used to tell me, ‘Spider...there’s going to be a whole army of them from now
on and they play for nothing.’ ...In Montreal they (fans) really thought he
(Robinson) was great.”
Rackley, Jorgensen’s roommate in 1946,
seemed to sense the significance of Robinson. “We’re...eating
breakfast...we’re talking and Marv said ‘You know, John, this is going to be
quite an event one of these days.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said
‘Well, here’s the first black ball player in the professional ranks. It’s
going to mean something.’ I didn’t think anything about it. I went 0 for 4
that day. I used to play against...them (black players) in California. He
was just another player, that’s all.”
Jorgensen got along with Robinson but
never got real close. They were teammates from 1946 until Jorgensen went to
the Giants in the middle of the 1950 season. He remembers Robinson’s
tolerance the first two seasons and he recalls how he (Jackie) unleashed his
aggression in 1949.
“I got to know him as well as anybody,”
Jorgensen says. “I never went over to his house and had dinner...he never
came to our place. But things were a little different then. You didn’t chum
around with those guys. You didn’t room with them. There was a separation
but that’s the way times were. If you started running around with those guys
or said you wanted to room with them, they’d call you a ‘N---- L.’”
Spider tells about Ed Stevens who played
first base for Brooklyn in 1946 but lost his job to Robinson in 1947 and was
scorned when he went back to Texas in the off season. “...When he went home
that winter, Ed said, boy, they got on me something fierce...all the people
said ‘How come you let that N---- take your job!’”
Spider Jorgensen did not affect history
the way Robinson did. He just ob-served...(and at the time) the magnitude of
the events of April 15, 1947 were lost on him. He was in Brooklyn to play
baseball, after all, not change the world. But the world was changing and he
had a front row seat.
Today, at age 83, Spider is still
scouting the Los Angeles and Las Vegas areas for the Chicago Cubs. As of
this writing, he has just signed a new two-year contract with the Cubs. He
knows Dusty Baker very well and is happy to still be retained by the Cubs.
By the end of the contract he will be 85 years old!
He was a man of many talents
Jackie Robinson was a man who succeeded
at whatever he
tried. Born in 1919 and died in 1972, he was a great athlete and successful
business executive. He first attended Pasadena Junior College, then
transferred to UCLA where he excelled in football, basketball, baseball and
track.
Discharged in 1945 from the army with the
rank of 1st lieutenant, he first signed with the Negro American League in
Kansas City. Later he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers where he became the
first black to play major league baseball. He batted .311 in 1380 games from
1947 to 1956 and was the first black to be elected to the Baseball Hall of
Fame in 1962. He went on to become a successful businessman in New York and
served from 1964 to 1968 as special assistant for civil rights to Governor
Nelson Rockefeller. He starred in a motion picture and became a recognized
author.
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