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A right-handed hitter, Jackie has a habit of swinging too soon and his motion is half chop, 'half lunge. As a result, he fouls off a lot of balls to the left. But his batting average at week's end was a solid .301. The wise boys who judge a hitter by his Runs Batted In totals are apt to take too fast a look at Jackie's R.B.I, and grumble that Jackie can't hit in a tight spot. But as the club's No. 2 hitter in the lineup, Jackie's job is either to push along the lead-off man by a sacrifice, or to get on base himself. Jackie's R.B.I, total (44) is higher than most No. 2 hitters'—including Philadelphia's Harry Walker, who is baseball's current batting king with an average of .362.
Actually, Jackie at bat is most dangerous when the odds are against him. When the count gets to two strikes, as he explains it: "Then I begin to crowd the plate a little." Says Branch Rickey: "He is the best batter in the game with two strikes on him." Pitchers capitalize on his hasty swing by feeding him slow stuff. "I just can't hit those nuthin' pitches," Jackie complains. Because he is the best bunter in the game, the Dodgers "cut him loose" at the plate (i.e., let him decide for himself whether to take, hit or bunt). He and Pete Reiser are also the only Dodgers good enough to be "cut loose" on the bases, allowed to steal without waiting for a signal.
Timing & Tricks. By now, Robbie has carefully catalogued pitchers' weaknesses. He has, for example, discovered that when Boston's Si Johnson crooks his neck in a certain way, Si has stopped worrying about the base-runner and is about to pitch. This discovery gives Jackie a split-second head start on his way to second.
A similar mixture of timing and careful study enabled him to steal home last month against the New York Giants. (It was the second time this year he had pulled off the most spectacular base-running trick of them all.) Standing on third, Jackie carefully watched Pitcher Joe Beggs' windup. Robinson ran in with the pitch as far as he dared, then slammed on the brakes and began to count: "One-two-three-four. . . ." He ticked off how long it took Beggs to get the ball across the plate. Satisfied that he could have made it in that time, Jackie scurried back to third base and took a deep breath. Next pitch, as Beggs involved himself in another slow-motion windup, Robinson was off like an express, rushing for the plate. The pitcher froze like a man with a high-voltage electric wire in his hand. Jackie went home standing up.
Who taught him to do things like that? Says Branch Rickey: "Primarily God."
The Other Cheek. It is impossible to measure how much better, or how much worse, Jackie's first season might have been had his handicaps been fewer. It was not just that he was playing an unfamiliar position, or that at 28 he was pretty old for a rookie. He also had to turn the other cheek to abuses and insults. First he had to overcome the attitude of his fellow Dodgers, which ranged from mere wait-&-see standoffishness to Southern-bred hostility.