Nobody gives it a second thought when it happens now, but 60 years ago on Tuesday, organized baseball had its first black-white home-run handshake.
Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers' organization on Oct. 28, 1945, spent spring training in Daytona Beach, Florida, with the Montreal Royals of the International League and on April 18, 1946, he was the Royals' second baseman in Jersey City where Mayor Frank Hague's political clout had created an opening-day sellout crowd of 25,000 in Roosevelt Stadium.
Even with jugglers, tumblers and two marching bands, this was not another jazzed-up minor-league opener. This was the 27-year-old Robinson's debut as the first African-American to shatter organized baseball's color barrier. Reporters from several New York newspapers and reporters from three black newspapers were there with their portable typewriters for the occasion.
His first time up, Robinson grounded out. In the third inning, with two on, the Jersey City pitcher, the left-hander Warren Sandell, threw a chest-high fastball that Robinson drilled for a 335-foot home run over the left-field fence. As Robinson approached home plate, teammate George Shuba, in that era long before high-fives and power-fists, extended his right hand and Robinson shook it -- a simple, silent, seminal moment in baseball history. Not that Shuba, whose father arrived in the US in 1912 from Czechoslovakia, realized its social significance.
"I really didn't," he said over the telephone the other day from his home in Youngstown, Ohio. "Our teammate hit a home run so I shook his hand."
Growing up, Shuba, later a Dodgers outfielder from 1948 to 1955, had often played with black youngsters in Youngstown, notably Tom Pinckney, a star running back at Chaney High School. At spring training with the Royals, he had developed a friendship with Robinson.
"It didn't make any difference to me that Jack was black," he said. "I was glad to have him on our team."
And what a team those Royals were. They won the pennant by 18 1/2 games as Robinson's .349 average led the league. He hit only two other homers, but scored 113 runs, drove in 66 and had 40 stolen bases. Clay Hopper, the Mississippi-born Royals manager, initially resisted the decision of Branch Rickey, the Dodgers' president, to put Robinson in Montreal, but he grew to admire him.
"Jackie's a player who must go to the majors," Hopper said. "He's a big-league ballplayer, a good team hustler and a real gentleman."
Robinson's Hall of Fame career more than justified Hopper's kind words. As the Dodgers' first baseman in 1947, he was the National League Rookie of the Year. Moved to second base, he was their cleanup hitter and the NL's Most Valuable Player in 1949, and during his 10 seasons as the Dodgers' most daring base runner, they won six pennants and the 1955 World Series.
Shuba, meanwhile, played only 20 games in 1946 with Montreal (of his 11 hits there, seven were home runs) before being sent to Mobile of the Southern Association where he hit 11 homers and drove in 56 runs with a .290 average. Two years later, he arrived in Brooklyn with the nickname Shotgun, a left-handed hitter who sprayed line drives as if they were buck shot.
His best season as a part-time outfielder and pinch-hitter was 1952 when he batted .305 with 9 homers and 40 runs batted in in 94 games; as a pinch-hitter in the 1953 World Series against the Yankees, he hit a home run off Allie Reynolds.
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