Alyssa Rosenberg and Travis Waldron discuss 42, the new film about Jackie Robinson. Both were disappointed by the movie, but Alyssa praises the film for spotlighting “the economics of bringing Jackie Robinson to the major leagues”:
Rickey (Harrison Ford, overacting so dramatically I’m amazed he isn’t sponsored by the ham council) tells his assistant Harold at the beginning of the movie. “Dollars aren’t black and white. They’re green.”
When a gas station attendant refuses Robinson access to the toilet when his Negro League team is on the Deep South, Robinson blackmails him into desegregating it by suggesting the team can buy its gas elsewhere. “Jack, is this about politics?” a white reporter asks him at his first spring training. “It’s about getting paid,” Jackie (Chadwick Boseman, who might have had a star turn with a better script) tells him. “I’m in the baseball business,” Rickey tells Robinson at a later point. “With you and the other black players I hope to bring up next year, I can build a team that can win the World Series. And a World Series means money.”
Dodgers manager Leo Durocher (a fantastic Christopher Meloni) lectures his players, some of whom oppose the idea of playing with Robinson, “I’ll play an elephant if it’ll help us win…We’re playing for money, here. Winning is the only thing that matters.” Durocher himself is suspended from baseball when the Catholic Youth Organization threatens to boycott the league over his affair with a married actress. Even the racist manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, Ben Chapman (a very strong Alan Tudyk) recognizes the economic imperatives, taunting Robinson at the plate “You’re here to get the nigger dollars for Rickey at the gate.”
That economic imperative story is interesting, and it’s important—and it’s a critical reminder that the decision to desegregate baseball wasn’t simply done out of the goodness of Branch Rickey’s heart.
The Dish 