#GoingDeep: The simple brilliance of Clyde Sukeforth

Needless to say, it was a big deal. But before Sukeforth and Robinson could face the challenges that 1947 would bring, the “second-string catcher” had to earn his own cup of coffee. And that story brings us back to Washington, Maine.

Clyde Leroy Sukeforth was born on Nov. 30, 1901 to Pearle and Sarah Sukeforth. He grew up on a farm, and attended a one-room schoolhouse throughout high school. He and his sister, Hazel, would walk to school every morning – three and a half miles, each way – until Clyde transferred to the Colburn Classical Institute in 1916.

Although Washington was hundreds of miles away from the closest big league ballpark, baseball was an integral part of Sukeforth’s childhood.

“As a kid, we played baseball seven days a week, practice or games. In those days, football wasn’t too attractive, basketball didn’t mean much unless you were 7-feet-tall,” he told the Sport Collectors Digest. “When I was a kid I remember standing by the stagecoach, waiting for it to come through with the morning edition of the Boston Post, and the first thing I did was I opened it up to read about the Red Sox.”

His love of the game – and prowess behind the plate – only grew stronger as the years passed, and eventually earned him a spot at Georgetown University.

“After World War I, baseball was at its peak,” Sukeforth told the Hall of Fame in 1995. “All the industries supported ballclubs getting high school and college players and semi-pros. I was playing for the Great Northern Paper Company. The team was mostly Georgetown players. They had a catcher who had signed with the New York Giants and they asked me to play catcher.”

After two years in Washington, “Sukey” signed with the Cincinnati Reds, for $600 and a $1500 bonus. Making only one plate appearance in 1926 – a strikeout – he was sent back down to Double-A for the rest of the season. But the rookie learned quickly, and by 1929 was the Reds’ starting catcher.

Unfortunately for Sukeforth, a tragic shot-gun accident in 1931 would impair his eyesight, prompting a trade in 1932 that would ship future Hall of Famer Ernie Lombardi to Cincinnati and Sukeforth to the Dodgers. Though he’d only play three seasons for Brooklyn – aside from an astounding 18-game stint at catcher at the age of 43 in 1945, during the player shortages of World War II – the trade marked the beginning of a partnership between Sukeforth and future Hall of Famer Branch Rickey that would shape the course of baseball history in more ways than one.

Sukey would then embark on a seven-year managerial career in the minor leagues, taking over the Dodgers’ Double-A-farm team in Montreal in 1939. His teams never had a losing season, and won better than 55 percent of their games. On March 1, 1943, Rickey brought him back to Brooklyn as a coach, and a couple of years later, as a scout.

He came with “a box of about five dozen smelt which he had caught through the ice along the coast near his home,” Rickey said to The New York Times. “That’s why he got the job.”

The Dodgers executive, determined to be the first to tap into this untouched pool of talent, had his scouts milling around the Negro Leagues as early as 1943.

“We made ourselves low-key. When you had white scouts at colored ballgames, people asked a lot of questions,” Sukeforth told the Maine Times. “There was a black team in Brooklyn – the Brooklyn Brown Bombers – and we were allowed to say we were scouting for them.”

But Robinson was different. This time, Rickey opted for a different approach.

“We normally did not announce our presence to the teams or players,” Sukeforth said to the Hall of Fame. “When he sent me to see Jackie, he told me to identify myself. Up until that time, we made ourselves inconspicuous.”

At this point, Sukeforth was the last Dodgers scout to see Jackie. Tom Greenwade, the scout who would later bring Mickey Mantle to the Yankees, was among those who had paid Robinson a visit. But this was a delicate situation, and Rickey needed a scout with sensitivity to make contact. So he chose Clyde.

“It didn’t matter to me whether a fellow was red, yellow, black, or green,” Sukeforth said in an interview years later. “If he was a prospect, he was a prospect. Mr. Rickey felt the same way.”

Sukeforth probably told the story of his first encounter with Jackie in 1945 hundreds of times. So much so, that it sounds nearly identical in all of his interviews:

“[Rickey] called me in and he said ‘I want you to go to Chicago on Friday, and see a game between the Kansas City Monarchs and the Lincoln Giants,’” he told the Hall of Fame. “’Pay particular attention to a shortstop named Robinson. Especially his arm. Tell him who sent you.’ He comes out with a couple of other boys and I hailed him. I delivered my message. He was thunder struck. He couldn’t conceive why Mr. Rickey was interested in him or his arm.”

Even without hearing his voice, you can sense the unembellished way Sukeforth relays this narrative. But as was usually the case with Clyde, his involvement behind-the-scenes played a bigger role than he led on. For one, the scout knew Robinson was a terrific athlete, but wasn’t able to see him play that day because he was recovering from a shoulder injury. He brought him back to New York anyway, in what seems in retrospect to be a scouting of a man’s character more than anything.

After the game, they met at Chicago’s Stevens Hotel to speak further about Mr. Rickey’s proposition. Sukeforth had another upcoming assignment in Toledo, so Robinson would meet him there after the Monarchs’ series had ended.

“We took a train to New York, rode overnight,” Sukeforth said to the Associated Press. “That morning I took Robinson into the old man’s offices and the old man really gave him a grilling.”

No mention was made of the two dollars Clyde paid the operator that night to allow Jackie to ride the whites-only elevator with him to his room. Or of the fact that Clyde sat alongside Robinson from Toledo to New York in the Pullman sleeper car, assuaging his concerns about integrating the big leagues for hours. In Sukeforth’s eyes, he was just doing his job. Nothing more, nothing less.

“I get a lot of credit I don’t deserve,” he told Baseball Research Journal in 1987. “I treated Robinson just like any other human being. See, coming from Maine, I never thought about color. I don’t feel I did anything special. I was just there.”

Rickey and Robinson met on Aug. 28, 1945. By October of that year, Robinson was signed for a $3,500 bonus and $600 a month to play with the Dodgers’ affiliate in Montreal, the Royals. He debuted in the big leagues on April 15, 1947 – with none-other than Clyde Sukeforth serving as interim manager – and broke the color line, opening the door for countless African-American ballplayers to come.

“The pressure Robinson was under that day, oh my God,” Sukeforth said to Sports Collectors Digest. “Just put yourself in his position, with the future of a million Blacks resting on your shoulders. The ordinary man would be under great pressure just because it was Opening Day of the season. But having to break a color line, and in the process change the course of baseball – Robinson was really something special.”

Jackie Robinson would remain with the Dodgers through 1956, but Branch Rickey left before then, becoming the Pittsburgh Pirates’ general manager in 1950. Clyde followed him there in 1952.

Two years later, Rickey sent him on to Richmond to scout Joe Black, on the Dodgers farm team.

Sukeforth came back with a draft recommendation, just not the one Rickey had foreseen.