SubscribeLest we forget: Bill Mardo
Bill Mardo in 1999.
Mardo, who died Jan. 20 at the age of 88, was a journalist who worked for the Communist publication The Daily Worker in the 1940s-50s. Along with fellow MOTs Lester “Red” Rodney and Nat Low, Mardo — born William Bloom — agitated for baseball to break the color barrier, which paved the way for Jackie Robinson and others to gain entrance to the Majors Leagues.
A few weeks back I speculated about the intentions of Branch Rickey in signing a black player. After all, he’d had ample opportunity while serving as general manager of the St. Louis cardinals before he accepted the same responsibilities with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
According to Mardo’s obit, written by Richard Goldstein,
In April 1997, Mr. Mardo and Mr. Rodney (who died in 2009) spoke at a symposium at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus marking the 50th anniversary of Robinson’s debut with the Dodgers.
Mr. Mardo noted that Rickey had not signed blacks when he ran the St. Louis Cardinals for more than two decades and suggested it was not idealism but pressure from black sportswriters, trade unions and the Communist Party that persuaded him to sign Robinson.
Lest we forget–communists like Mardo stood for everything antithetical to Judaism and the Jewish People. Also–where is your skepticism–Mardo obviously had an agenda to denigrate Rickey and to seriously inflate the role of Communists.
I think a couple of key points are being missed. First, during the 30s and 40s, St. Louis was, for all intents and purposes, a southern city regardless of geography. It was far more segregated than New York. So, obviously, breaking the color barrier was going to be easier in Brooklyn than St. Louis.
Second, it’s not clear why agitation from marginal groups such as communists and black newspapers would have had much influence on Rickey. Old communists always wanted to overstate the importance of the party but it was always very small in the US, despite J. Edgar Hoover’s paranoia. Maybe the labor unions would have had some influence to the extent that union members went to baseball games but I doubt there was a great outcry from rank-and-file union members to integrate baseball. I doubt that Rickey felt much pressure to sign black players.
Third, Rickey probably had a variety of motives in signing Robinson. Idealism was probably one but also self-interest. He knew there was a huge untapped source of great players, which would help his team.
Mardo and other communists, many of them Jews, definitely had a role in breaking the color barrier in major league baseball. They organized picket lines, letter writing campaigns etc. and were a signifcant force in NYC from the mid-30s to the mid-40s. Bravo to Ron Kaplan for giving credit where credit is due.