This book excerpt from the chapter “Influences and Memories” appears in Going 15 Rounds With Jerry Izenberg.

By Ed Odeven

Asked about Wendell Smith (1914-72), an African-American journalist who chronicled Jackie Robinson’s career and the seminal moments of the 1947 season, when Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, Jerry Izenberg said “he thinks of two people: Wendell Smith and Sam Lacy.” 

He went on: “They were the pioneers. Wendell Smith, unlike Sam Lacy, translated his ability as a great sportswriter, a great sports columnist really, he translated it into bridging the gap between the black and traditionally white press. … 

“Of course, historically, he was Boswell to Jackie Robinson, he traveled with him in Montreal (in the International League in 1946) and with the Dodgers, and he had a lot of courage.” 

Over the years, Smith wrote for the Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American newspaper, and later joined the Chicago Herald-American and Chicago Sun-Times in addition to working as a TV sports anchor for WGN in the Windy City. 

Smith was portrayed by actor André Holland in the 2013 film “42” about Robinson. Lacy wasn’t portrayed in the film. Smith was posthumously named the 2014 Red Smith Award winner, which is presented annually by The Associated Press Sports Editors. Lacy received the distinguished honor in 1998. 

“They idolized him because he had the guts to write what the others didn’t,” Izenberg said of Lacy. “So many of those guys were on the take. They got to live; the paper wouldn’t pay them anything, the black papers didn’t pay anything. And this guy was unbelievable.” 

Izenberg believes that Lacy (1903-2003) was “overlooked over the years.” 

Eventually, he became the first card-carrying black member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and was inducted into the sportswriters’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. 

“And he was granted that right grudgingly so,” Izenberg said of Lacy’s BBWAA membership, “and Wendell went through the same things. It’s just that I knew Sam better, and he told me more.” 

When Lacy passed away in 2003, Lacy had worked for the Baltimore Afro-American for almost 60 years. For years, Lacy advocated for the abolition of racial segregation in baseball. 

“The Negro Leagues were an institution, but they were the very thing we wanted to get rid of because they were a symbol of segregation,” Lacy was quoted as saying in his New York Times obituary. 

Izenberg remembered hearing about a Cincinnati Reds-Cleveland Indians exhibition game that was held in New Orleans, where Lacy took his BBWAA press card, “and the press box attendant sticks his arm across the entrance there and says, ‘What are you doing here, nigger?’ And he pulls out the card.

“(The attendant responded) by saying, ‘Stick that card up your ass. No nigger’s getting in my press box.’ “

Lacy’s response, according to Izenberg: “Well, there’s only two black guys in baseball (Robinson and Larry Doby of Cleveland) and one of them’s in this game and I’m going to cover this game.”

“(The attendant) then said, ‘You want to cover this game? Take a folding chair from over there and sit on the roof.’ “

Lacy walked up to the roof, sat down and did his job: reporting on baseball. 

“Nobody knows who he is or what he’s doing. He’s the only one up there,” Izenberg said. 

“People are pointing and talking, and he’s got his scorebook out and a bottle of water and he’s got to cover the game.

“About the fifth or sixth inning, there’s a commotion, and there was a metal ladder he had to climb to get to the roof, and here come these four New York writers up the ladder with folding chairs and they sit next to him.

“And he says, ‘What are you fellas doing here? And the guys said we want to get a little sun; it’s stifling in the press box.’ 

“Now when Sam tells me the story he said those white boys were in spring training for like a month. They were as dark as I am because I’m a light-skinned black man. They didn’t need any sun. And that is one of the great stories.”

Izenberg continued: “There were twice as many guys who didn’t want him in that press box as those who did, or any press box. … But these guys were better humans.”

Many years later, another Lacy story also left an impression on Izenberg. 

“Anyway, Sam wanted to give Muhammad Ali a plaque in Baltimore at the Baltimore mosque,” Izenberg recalled. “Now Sam’s wife was very, very light-skinned. … So they are walking up the steps, it’s an old synagogue or an old church that the Nation of Islam has taken over, bought, you know, and he’s got the plaque under his arms. And the guy comes out (from the mosque) and says to Sam, Sam it’s so good to see you, but that white lady can’t come in here. Well Sam didn’t say she’s not white. Sam didn’t say that she was black.

“He didn’t say anything like that at all. He didn’t say it was his wife. He said, Well, if she’s not coming, I’m not coming, and the guy’s standing there looking at them, and they are walking down these steps.

“He gets halfway, turns around, waves, puts the plaque on the steps, turns around and walks out. Now that’s making a statement. That was Sam Lacy.”


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Going 15 Rounds With Jerry Izenberg is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and many other online shops.