Handshake of the Century
By BRIAN LAVRICH, Tribune Chronicle
 |
NILES — Jackie Robinson deserves all the credit in the world for breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball. However, he did receive some help along the way, and Youngstown’s George Shuba certainly played his part.
Shuba and Robinson shared what is called ‘‘The Handshake of the Century.’’ Robinson, playing in his first minor league game with white players, homered. As he crossed home plate, Shuba, who was next in the batting order, shook Robinson’s hand.
Many, at the time, wondered what a white player would do when the situation arose.
Shuba was honored for the 60th anniversary of the event Tuesday at Eastwood Field prior to the game between Youngstown State and Cleveland State. The Penguins won, 5-1.
Shuba, who threw out the first pitch, said he never thought of doing anything different for Robinson.
‘‘I had no problem doing it,’’ Shuba, 81, said. ‘‘He was a teammate. I had no problem whatsoever.
‘‘I was just lucky to be the next guy in the order.’’
Shuba, an outfielder, and Robinson, a second baseman, were teammates on April 18, 1946, when Robinson became the first black player to get into a minor league game.
‘‘I really didn’t make too much of it back then,’’ Shuba said. ‘‘We weren’t politicians, we were ball players.
‘‘In Youngstown, there were plenty of black kids playing in high school. I didn’t see the significance back then.’’
He did have one thought in his mind when he heard Robinson was joining him in Montreal.
‘‘I was glad he wasn’t an outfielder,’’ Shuba said.
Shuba, who was 21 when he played with Robinson in Montreal, attended Chaney High School.
‘‘I always wondered if the guy upstairs had something to do with me batting third,’’ Shuba said.
George ‘‘Shotgun’’ Shuba ended up playing seven seasons with Robinson for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was a career .259 hitter. His best season was 1952 when he hit .305 with nine homers and 40 RBIs. Shuba and Robinson were both part of the Dodgers’ 1955 World Series championship team.
Robinson dealt with loads of racism while breaking the color barrier, but Shuba said Robinson never let it get to him.
‘‘He was never scared. I never saw fear in his eyes,’’ Shuba said. ‘‘He had a great personality.
‘‘Jackie was not only a great ball player, but he was also a great person. He was intelligent, very articulate.’’
With Robinson playing second base, Montreal easily won its division and eventually won the championship, defeating Louisville.
Robinson debuted for the Dodgers on April 15, 1947.
Shuba added that his fellow teammates never had any issues with Robinson.
‘‘We had no problems at all,’’ Shuba said. ‘‘Nobody said anything.
‘‘A lot of white guys would have loved to be a Dodger because we had a good ball club. A lot of guys would have given their right arm.’’
Shuba travels with his son, Michael, attending sports shows and ball games.
‘‘I’m very proud for him to be a part of an epic moment like that,’’ Michael Shuba said. ‘‘He has a picture of that handshake above his recliner. He has no other memorabilia in our living room.’’
Michael Shuba said his father’s experience has given him so much joy.
‘‘As long as my dad feels good, we’ll try to go all around,’’ Michael Shuba said. ‘‘It’s important to me to spend this time with him.’’
Handshake of the century
Sixty years ago today, a greeting between Montreal Royals Jackie Robinson and George 'Shotgun' Shuba made history as the first time a black and a white pro ball player shook hands on a field of play. Six decades later, Shuba is still preaching Robinson's message of tolerance and courage
Dave Stubbs
Montreal Gazette
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
MONTREAL - From a simple gesture can come compelling history, and so it was with a handshake on a dusty baseball diamond in New Jersey 60 years ago.
On April 18, 1946, Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier of professional baseball's modern era, playing his first game with the Triple-A International League's Montreal Royals, the top farm club of the major-league Brooklyn Dodgers.
It was a dream debut for the gifted 27-year-old from Cairo, Ga., the grandson of a slave and one of five children fathered by a sharecropper who abandoned his family.
At Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, before an overflow opening-day crowd of 25,000, Robinson hit safely in four of his five at-bats, including a majestic third-inning home run.
He also stole two bases and scored four times, twice on balks by pitchers he rattled with his basepath daring, to lead the Royals to a 14-1 victory over Jersey City, a farm team of the major league's New York Giants.
Today, a snapshot of that day remains locked in the steel-trap memory of George "Shotgun" Shuba, an 81-year-old native of Youngstown, Ohio, so nicknamed for the line drives he sprayed off his Louisville Slugger.
That image is of Shuba, a 21-year-old Royals outfielder, squeezing the hand of a beaming Robinson as the former U.S. army lieutenant crosses the plate following his dramatic, 335-foot home run. This is the first known photograph of a black and a white ball player shaking hands on a field of play, and one Shuba still takes to classrooms to teach youngsters the lessons of tolerance, of doing right, and of respecting yourself and your fellow human beings.
"I couldn't care less if Jackie was Technicolor," said Shuba, who has long dismissed theories that Robinson believed his Montreal teammates feared befriending him in public.
"We'd spent 30 days at spring training, and we all knew that Jackie had been a great athlete at UCLA [in baseball, basketball, football and track]. As far as I was concerned, he was a great ballplayer -- our best. I had no problem going to the plate to shake his hand instead of waiting for him to come by me in the on-deck circle."
The next day, Shuba belted three homers and drove in four in a 9-1 Royals victory. Robinson was among those who shook his hand.
Theses and books have been written, plays staged and movies filmed about the courageous role in baseball of Jack Roosevelt Robinson, the subject of Dodgers president Branch Rickey's "great experiment" to desegregate baseball.
Robinson endured enormous mental anguish and physical abuse to blaze a trail from Montreal's Delorimier Stadium, through the major leagues and into the Hall of Fame.
Robinson's highly anticipated and, in some corners, bitterly opposed debut with the Royals opened a long-locked door. His one season in racially tolerant Montreal was a revelation for all, as he batted a league-leading .349, stole 40 bases, had 65 RBI and ultimately led the Royals to victory in the Little World Series.
All this while abuse and death threats rained on him during every Royals road trip.
George Shuba, the youngest of 10 children born to Czechoslovakian immigrants, had travelled a remarkable path of his own to pro baseball, scouted by the Dodgers in 1943 when he took a few hours away from sandlot ball to attend a tryout camp in Youngstown. He signed his first contract with the organization in the winter of 1944 for $150 a month, with a $150 bonus should he stick until July.
Shuba was assigned to the Royals for the 1946 season, on a team managed by Clay Hopper that was stacked with good talent for obvious reasons.
"The Dodgers didn't want Jackie to be on a last-place club," Shuba said. "They wanted to make sure he had a good supporting cast, so the experiment would succeed."
The Royals won the pennant by 131/2 games, rolled to the International League's Governor's Cup, then defeated the Louisville Colonels four games to two to capture the Little World Series.
Shuba eventually made it to the bigs in 1952, hitting a career-high .305 in 94 games with Brooklyn. He stuck with the Dodgers for four seasons, and is the oldest surviving member of the so-called "Boys of Summer," World Series champions in 1955 and the only Brooklyn team to win the championship.
Robinson, a diabetic, died of a heart attack at age 53 in 1972. His courage and convictions are things Shuba -- who played 355 big-league games over seven seasons with Robinson -- has not forgotten. Shuba preaches this pioneer's tolerance and honour to anyone who has the time to listen.
He asks: "What were the odds that a kid like me, playing sandlot ball in 1943, would in three short years be shaking the hand of the first black player in modern times to integrate baseball? I'd say a million to one."
The framed print -- Handshake of the Century, as it's known in the game -- has hung for nearly 50 years above Shotgun's easy chair. He needs no other reminder of a baseball career he is proud to tie to another man's strong grip.
