The Pecan Park Eagle

Jackie Robinson of the Montreal Royals, making his debut in organized baseball in a game with the Jersey City, N.J. team at Jersey City, April 18, 1946, slides into third base safely in the fifth inning on teammate George Shuba’s long fly. Larry Miggins waits for the ball. With Robinson connecting for four hits, one of them a three run homer, the Royals took the game 14-1. (AP Photo/John J. Lent, File)

As most of you know, Jackie Robinson’s on-the-field crossing of the old segregation color line by race that kept identifiable blacks from playing in organized (white) baseball did not happen in 1947 when he started the NL season with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It happened a year earlier, when Robinson started the 1946 AAA International League season with the Montreal Royals in their April 18, 1946 game on the road against the home club Jersey City Giants.

If you know that much about this game, you may already also know that our SABR Larry Dierker Chapter member Larry Miggins played 3rd base for Jersey City that fine day and – was, in fact – the first defensive player ever photographed with Jackie Robinson successfully advancing to 3rd base on a fly ball in an organized baseball game.

Here’s a link to a column I wrote about Mr. Miggins and his connection to the first Jackie Robinson game back on May 17, 2011:

Larry Miggins: His Link to Jackie Robinson

Connection? Did I actually say “connection?”?

Connection? Heck! Aside from Mr. Robinson himself, there were only 21 other men on this planet who played in that long overdue game in 1946 – and only three of them are still confirmed as members of the living today. In addition to our Larry Miggins, age 91, but soon to be 92 on August 20th in the summer of 2017, the two others include former Royal and Dodger Marvin Rackley, age 95, and  former JC Giant Jaime Almendro, age 89, of Puerto Rico.

Three other players carry incomplete birth records at Baseball Reference.Com and are, so far, unconfirmable as to whereabouts, living or dead. Those three players are all former JC Giants: Norman Jaeger, Phil Oates, and Russ Wein. (These three men have been accounted for through new information. Just keep reading to discover what one volunteer researcher has helped us do here.)

If anyone out there knows anything that will help us bring the survivorship accounting up-to-date for those who played in this historic game up to date, we will be most happy to credit you with your major contribution to our research here – and to the very active idea that history is always a gradient process over time when it comes to the availability of participants and other eye witnesses to any major event.

If they are available and still capable of human engagement, hopefully, someone has, or will, try to interview Rackley and Almendro in person for their impressions and observations about the game. My apologies for my own ignorance to date on what has been done or neglected in these areas previously. And, yes, it would help to get confirmation on the three current mystery status players, as well.

If it is not under way elsewhere, what we have here is – a great SABR project for drawing a more complete accurate picture on the actual date that Jackie Robinson boomed across the color line with a 4 for 5 game that also included a home run, 4 runs scored, 4 RBI, and 2 stolen bases – plus a team Montreal blow-out win of 14 to 1.

Here’s the Box Score of the 14-1 Montreal victory over Jersey City, followed by what we know of the survivorship status on each of the 22 men who played in the game:

BOX SCORE

Survivorship/Deceased Status for Each of the 22 Players

When this column went to publication last night, 4/4/2017, three players for the Jersey City Giants were listed with only unconfirmed years for each of their birth dates and no data at all for their current standings among the living or dead.

Much to our surprise and great appreciation, Pecan Park Eagle reader and excellent contributing researcher, Cliff Blau, was able to quickly ascertain and reasonably verify the birth and death dates of all three men, Cliff also confirmed the place of birth and death locations for each of the three men in question. That “place” data for each men is posted in the comment section by Cliff Blau.

Footnoted here to Cliff Blau’s initials are:

(CB1) * = Data collected by Cliff Blau on Norman Jaeger;

(CB2) * = Data collected by Cliff Blau on Russ Wein;

(CB3) * = Data collected by Cliff Blau on Phil Oates,

Summary.

Of the 9 Montreal players who played in Jackie Robinson’s April 18, 1946 opening day game, including Robinson, only one, Marv Rackley, remains alive today.

Of the 13 home club Jersey City players who also performed in that same game, only two men, Larry Miggins and Jaime Almendro, are still living.

In total, 19 of the total 22 game participants are alive today, May 5, 2017.

Thanks again to Cliff Blau and all others who got into the spirit of wanting to help here. Small as it may seem, the demographics of Jackie Robinson’s real first game in organized baseball are a little neater ad more complete than they were 24 hours ago. And that feels good. Really good.

____________________

Bill McCurdy

Publisher, Editor, Writer

The Pecan Park Eagle