Baseball Forced Change in Social Mores

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.