Baseball's greatest story will be rewritten again Monday as the sport celebrates the 66th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking the major leagues' color barrier.
Yet the man who wrote the story will be forgotten.
In every game, players from every team will wear 42, the number on the back of Robinson's jersey when he debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.
Yet nobody will sit in the stands with a manual typewriter atop their knees in memory of the man who, even as he wrote about integration on the field, was barred from the press box because he was black.
Nobody will honor the man who endured the same prejudice as Robinson as he fought that prejudice with his words. Nobody will remember the man whose hidden fight became an inspiration for Robinson's public battle.
Everyone will remember the headline, but few will remember the byline — Wendell Smith.
The humble, bespectacled journalist was Robinson's chronicler, his confidant, and sometimes even his conscience. As sports editor and columnist for the African American-owned Pittsburgh Courier, Smith accompanied Robinson throughout his first major league season, creating his image, reporting his words and crusading for his rights.
As Robinson grew more popular, Smith became more invisible, until he eventually became Robinson's ghost writer in the literal sense, the memory of him turning ethereal and nearly vanishing altogether.
"Everywhere we went, Wendell Smith was there," said Don Newcombe, former Dodgers pitcher, who was Robinson's longtime teammate, friend and fellow pioneer. "He was instrumental in so many things that happened, he should not be forgotten."
The movie "42," which opened Friday and chronicles Robinson's entry into the major leagues, is the rare piece of work that illuminates Smith's role in Robinson's life. Smith is the first voice heard in the movie, and his presence as Robinson's guide and companion is visible throughout. It was so startling to see Smith's image resurrected that, when the character first appeared on the screen, Newcombe nudged his wife Karen and said his name out loud.
"I was so happy and surprised to see him up there," Newcombe said.
That it took 66 years for Smith to be appropriately recognized is, sadly, not surprising.
Although he was the only baseball writer assigned strictly to follow Robinson, he wasn't even allowed into the Baseball Writers Assn. of America until Robinson's second season. Although Robinson often cited Smith for his contributions to baseball's desegregation, he wasn't inducted into the writer's wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame until 1994, 22 years after his death.
Yet even today, Smith's 91-year-old widow, Wyonella, follows the advice that her husband often gave Robinson as the two men traveled through the baseball world battling ignorance.
"If I complained about anything, Wendell would be turning over in his grave," she said from a Chicago retirement home. "Like he would tell Jackie, you can get angry as heck, but you don't take anything as an insult, because you know who you are."
In the best tradition of old-school journalists, Smith was not only a writer, but a fighter. He found his cause in 1931, at age 17, when he was a pitcher for a Detroit American Legion team and his catcher was close friend Mike Tresh. One day, with major league scouts watching, they combined on a 1-0 victory. Afterward, a scout signed Tresh, not Smith. His explanation? Tresh was white and Smith was not.
Tresh enjoyed a 12-year career with the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians. Smith headed off to West Virginia State College to become a sportswriter whose career was based on righting that injustice.
"Wendell decided that day that if he was going to do anything in his life, he was going to make sure blacks played in the major leagues," Wyonella said.
Once Smith began covering the Negro Leagues for the nationally circulated Courier in 1937, he had his platform to make a difference. About that time, Robinson was at UCLA and became the first athlete to letter in four sports at the school.
In 1945, it was Smith who accompanied Robinson, then a shortstop with the Kansas City Monarchs, to a group tryout with the Boston Red Sox. When that proved to be a publicity stunt, Smith traveled to Brooklyn to personally alert Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey about Robinson's potential as a groundbreaker.
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