Happy Birthday Pee Wee

On November 1, 2005, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City unveiled a statue of two pioneers in the civil rights movement. The two men who by their mutual courage broke the color barrier were from very different backgrounds. One, if you know baseball at all, you know was Jackie Robinson. The second, unless you know baseball really well, you would not expect. It was Pee Wee Reese, the man that many feel may have been as important as Jackie Robinson in the breaking of the color barrier in baseball would have been 89 today. Harold Henry Reese was born on a farm in rural Kentucky, and grew up in Louisville. Reese was not a small man in any way, and the Pee Wee is not for his size, at five-foot-nine he was about average for his period in baseball. He earned the nickname as a champion marble player in his youth. A pee-wee is a type of marble.

Reese played a continuing roll in support of Robinson’s breaking the color barrier. Reese was an all-star shortstop for the Dodgers when WW-II interrupted his career. It was on his way home on a troop ship that he first heard about Jackie Robinson, “Hey, Reese. The Dodgers just signed a Niger, and he plays shortstop.” When he returned to the Dodger’s Reese returned to the starting shortstop and team captain, and Robinson was playing in the minors. Several of the Dodger players, most, but not all, from the south began circulating a petition saying they would not take the field if a black was on the team. Reese flatly refused and the petition disappeared…. Strike one. In his later years, Reese would always minimize his role… and for this one he just said, “ I just got out of the Navy, I needed the money.”

The second event wasn’t a matter of money, it was leadership. Pee Wee was the Captain, and it was his job to greet new players when they joined the team, and so on Robinson’s first day, Reese walked over and shook his hand and welcomed him to the team. "It was the first time I'd ever shaken the hand of a black man," Reese said. "But I was the captain of the team. It was my job.” Eventually they settled into a pre-game clubhouse routine in which Reese and Robinson played cards. Robinson played second… Reese played short... No pairing in baseball is as close, not even Pitcher and catcher because the pitcher changes each day, but the double play corner combo is usually the same day after day.

The statue depicts a third event and there is even disagreement about where it happened (it probably happened more than once as the Dodgers made their way around the major league circuit), but the most common claim is Boston, and the old Boston Braves. Jackie took abuse in every park, and as a southern boy playing alongside a black, Pee Wee took a lot also. Modern fans probably have no idea how abusive the dug-out heckling used to be, but it will suffice to say that every derogatory term you have ever heard about blacks came out regularly. In the midst of the worst abuse during one break in the play, Pee Wee walked over and put his hand on Jackie’s shoulder and had a brief conversation. Here is how Jackie described it in his autobiography, I Never Had It Made (1972):

“Pee Wee didn’t answer them. Without a glance in their direction, he left his position and walked over to me. He put his hand on my shoulder and began talking to me. His words weren’t important. I don’t even remember what he said. It was the gesture of comradeship and support that counted. As he stood talking with me with a friendly arm around my shoulder, he was saying loud and clear. ‘Yell. Heckle. Do anything you want. We came here to play baseball.’ The jeering stopped, and a close and lasting friendship began between Reese and me.”

And that’s what the statue shows, two friends chatting during a break in the game. They say when Jackie was dying, Pee Wee visited him and said, “I never went out of my way to be nice to you.” The dying Robinson said, “I know, that’s what I loved about you.”

At Reese's funeral, Joe Black another Major League Baseball black pioneer, said:

"Pee Wee helped make my boyhood dream come true to play in the Majors, and the World Series. When Pee Wee reached out to Jackie, all of us in the Negro League smiled and said it was the first time that a White guy had accepted us. When I finally got up to Brooklyn, I went to Pee Wee and said, 'Black people love you. When you touched Jackie, you touched all of us.' With Pee Wee, it was No. 1 on his uniform and No. 1 in our hearts."

On August 14, 1999, Pee Wee lost his fight with cancer and took one last slide. As God stood, arms spread palms down to call Pee Wee “Safe, at home.” I would like to think that Jackie was standing by the plate to be the first to welcome the new guy.