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This week, as the Dodgers raced toward the finish seven games ahead, it was at least arguable that Jackie Robinson had furnished the margin of victory. The Dodgers are certainly not a one-man ball club. They have a bull-necked powerhouse of a catcher named Bruce Edwards, 24, whose special talents are steadiness and hustle. In Pee Wee Reese and Eddie Stanky, both short of height but long on skill, they have the best keystone combination in the league. The Dodgers also have a special affection for 34-year-old relief pitcher Hugh Casey, who has come onto the hill to save game after game, and is held in higher esteem by his team mates than strong-arm Ralph Branca, the Dodgers' only 20-game winner. And of course there is Dixie Walker, the "Pee-pul's Cherce," who at 36 still hits when it will do the most good—with men on base. In a locker-room gabfest a few weeks ago, the Dodgers agreed among themselves that Jackie Robinson was the team's third most valuable player—behind Edwards and Reese.
No Drink, No Smoke. Branch Rickey, the smartest man in baseball, had looked hard and waited long to find a Negro who would be his race's best foot forward, as well as a stout prop for a winning ball team. Rickey and his men scouted Robinson until they knew everything about him but what he dreamed at night. Jackie scored well on all counts. He did not smoke (his mother had asthma and cigaret fumes bothered her); he drank a quart of milk a day and didn't touch liquor; he rarely swore; he had a service record (as Army lieutenant in the 27th Cavalry) and two years of college (at U.C.L.A.). He had intelligence, patience and willingness. He was aware of the handicaps his race encounters, but he showed it not by truculence or bitterness, and not by servility, but by a reserve that no white man really ever penetrated. Most important of all Robinson's qualifications, he was a natural athlete. Says Rickey: "That's what I was betting on."
Pepper Street Gangman. It ran in the family. His older brother, Mack, was second in the 200-meter run at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Jackie was a broad-jumper who once set a Southern California junior college record of 25 ft. 6½ in.
The Robinson family—four boys and a girl—grew up on Pepper Street in the poor section of well-to-do Pasadena. They never knew their father (mother still doesn't talk about him). To support the kids, mother Robinson took in washing & ironing. Jackie, the youngest, was a charter member of the Pepper Street Gang, half a dozen Negroes and three or four American-Japanese who liked to break street lamps and watch the changing colors of the shattered bulbs. "It was awful pretty," recalls Jackie.
He played softball on the corner lot with the gang, occasionally earned pocket money by sneaking onto neighboring golf courses to retrieve lost balls. He could outrun the gang—and the cops—every time. But a stern talk from Ma Robinson put him out of business. She was, and is, a fervent Methodist who can be volubly graphic on the subject of hell. (A few weeks ago, when the Dodgers were not doing so well, Jackie wrote to his ma: "Quit praying just for me alone, Ma, and pray for the whole team.")