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+--- Thread: Ken Burns myth busting about Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese "statue moment" debated (/showthread.php?tid=190465)
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Ken Burns myth busting about Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese "statue moment" debated - pRICE cUBE - 04-26-2016
http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/04/where_ken_burns_jackie_robinson_documentary_goes_awry.html
The media climate at the time: http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/fandom/post/_/id/20917/did-reese-really-embrace-robinson-in-47
The documentary correctly observes that the embrace likely did not happen in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, or anywhere else during Robinson’s first season in 1947. But it goes too far in implying that it did not happen at all. “Today it’s remembered in statues, in children’s books, but I don’t think it happened,” Jonathan Eig, author of the terrific book Opening Day about that first season, said in the documentary. “The myth serves a really nice purpose. Unfortunately, it is a myth.” Eig tempers his remarks in his blog, insisting that “there’s very little reason to believe it happened in 1947, when it would have mattered most.”
An interview with Robinson in the July 1952 issue of Focus magazine, which was edited by noted baseball writer Arnold Hano, reveals the first specific reference to the incident. In response to a question about “turning points in your experience as a Dodger,” Robinson replied: “We were in Boston in ’48, and the Braves were ‘giving it’ to Reese for playing shortstop alongside me. Peewee came over from shortstop, put his arm around my shoulders, as if he had something to say. Actually, he just wanted to show where he stood. The jeers subsided … ”
Baseball historian John Thorn seemed more open than Eig to the possibility that it happened, just not in 1947. “We don’t know that this ever happened,” Thorn said in the documentary. “We don’t know when it happened. It is likely that if it happened, it didn’t happen in 1947, because Reese would have had to traipse across the diamond to first base to throw his arm around Jackie.” During his rookie season, Robinson played exclusively at first. The documentary concluded that “there was no mention of the gesture that year in either the white or black press.” In an interview with ESPN, Burns was more forceful, stating it “never happened.” “There is no image or write-up anywhere,” he said.
Robinson repeated the same story in a Feb. 8, 1955, issue of Look magazine, as well as in Carl Rowan’s 1960 biography of Robinson, Wait Till Next Year, and Robinson’s autobiography, I Never Had It Made. Robinson told Look: “Pee Wee was great to me in 1948 when Eddie Stanky went to the Boston Braves and I moved to second base. He took a lot of bitter abuse around the circuit because of it. Pee Wee comes from Louisville and the bench jockeys kept asking him how it felt to be playing beside a Negro. The first day we played in Boston that spring the Braves tried to give us a real bad time. But Pee Wee shut them up. He walked over to me and put his arm around me and talked with me in a friendly manner, smiling and laughing. There was no more trouble after that from the Braves. He did the same thing later in other parks.”
Re: Ken Burns myth busting about Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese "statue moment" debated - Speedy - 04-26-2016
I'd say that if Jackie said it happened, that's good enough for me.
Re: Ken Burns myth busting about Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese "statue moment" debated - deckeda - 04-26-2016
And it's plausible that neither the white nor black press wanted to "stir" anything up.
Re: Ken Burns myth busting about Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese "statue moment" debated - blooz - 04-26-2016
deckeda wrote:
And it's plausible that neither the white nor black press wanted to "stir" anything up.
Yep. Those were hard times.
Re: Ken Burns myth busting about Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese "statue moment" debated - pRICE cUBE - 04-26-2016
Photography of the era consisted of cameras not conducive to the unlimited amount of photos todays photojournalists are capable of. My best guess is the Graphflex or similar which meant a game had 6 exposures on 3 cartridges from it. Perhaps photographers did not feel like using 1/6th of their images on a non-action image. I had a colleague complain to me how lucky I was to have 36 shots per roll of film when I was a rookie photojournalist. He said, "I had 6 shots per sporting event kid, don't tell me you didn't get one good shot from 6 rolls of 36 exposure film."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_Graphic
Re: Ken Burns myth busting about Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese "statue moment" debated - Ombligo - 04-26-2016
LOL Danny..
I had a staffer say almost the same thing to me during my first year at the Times. He also said editing was easier with just a few big negs to look at instead of a few hundred tiny ones. The older shooters would use maybe a roll of film a day, the kids would comeback with 10-12 rolls. I recall one who shot nearly 30 rolls at a high basketball game. The editors were not happy with him that night.
Re: Ken Burns myth busting about Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese "statue moment" debated - vision63 - 04-26-2016
Ombligo wrote:
LOL Danny..
I had a staffer say almost the same thing to me during my first year at the Times. He also said editing was easier with just a few big negs to look at instead of a few hundred tiny ones. The older shooters would use maybe a roll of film a day, the kids would comeback with 10-12 rolls. I recall one who shot nearly 30 rolls at a high basketball game. The editors were not happy with him that night.
The editors were looking for this maybe?
Re: Ken Burns myth busting about Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese "statue moment" debated - pRICE cUBE - 04-27-2016
vision63 wrote:
The editors were looking for this maybe?
My Journalism instructors would be aghast by the assigning of the descriptors in a photo caption. It was another era of journalism where people were described in images as "aghast". Also, that picture is cropped too loosely IMHO.
Re: Ken Burns myth busting about Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese "statue moment" debated - Speedy - 04-27-2016
Back then the average reader knew what "aghast" meant.
Re: Ken Burns myth busting about Jackie Robinson/Pee Wee Reese "statue moment" debated - vision63 - 04-27-2016
You guys are too funny.