Eddie Robinson, Jr.: A Legacy in Baseball (1920–2021)

William Edward Robinson, Jr., professional baseball player and baseball executive, was born on December 15, 1920, in Paris, Texas, as the only child of William Edward Robinson, Sr., and Hazel Nannie (Hammer) Robinson. During the Great Depression Robinson’s father lost his auto repair business and left the family. While he was in high school, to help his mother make ends meet, Robinson worked early mornings and Saturdays at his uncle’s motor freight line. After school he played or practiced whatever sport was in season, be it football, basketball, or baseball.

Robinson showed an early talent for baseball. At age fourteen he was playing for Charlie Osborne’s Cubs, a local team made up of players aged fourteen to twenty. After his sophomore year he was recruited to play for the Coca-Cola Bottlers, a local semipro team. He attracted scouts at the state semi-pro tournament in Waco, where he made the all-tournament team in 1938. University of Texas coach Billy Disch offered him a four-year scholarship to play for the university, but Robinson declined. He was the principal breadwinner for his mother and believed that, if he signed a professional contract instead, in four years he could be in the major leagues.

Minor League Odyssey

Robinson signed with the Knoxville Smokies of the Southern Association for a bonus of $300 and, after settling local debts, reported for 1939 spring training in Valdosta, Georgia. At the end of training, the Smokies assigned him to stay in Valdosta and play with the Trojans of the Class D Georgia-Florida League. Robinson struggled at the plate early in the season. He was hitting below .200 and was afraid he was going to be released. However, his manager, Bill Morrell, was more concerned with Robinson's poor fielding. Robinson responded by spending hours every day practicing catching balls thrown in the dirt. Years later Paul Richards, Robinson’s manager with the Chicago White Sox, judged Robinson to be the best he had ever seen at catching short hops in the dirt. Robinson raised his batting average to .249 by the end of the 1939 season, but after the last game Morrell reportedly told the eighteen-year-old Robinson “You may as well go back to Paris and open an ice cream parlor because I don’t think you’ll ever make a big-league ballplayer.”

That comment, however, just made Robinson more determined. In 1940 Robinson took a pay cut from $150 a month to $100 a month, returned to Valdosta, and raised his average to .323 with twenty-one triples. That earned him a promotion for 1941 to the Elmira Pioneers of the Class A Eastern League, with whom he hit a solid .295 and helped lead the Pioneers to win the Governor’s Cup. For the 1942 season Robinson advanced to the Baltimore Orioles of the Double-A International League and batted .306 with twenty-seven home runs and 104 runs batted in (RBIs). Those numbers earned him a late season call up to the Cleveland Indians, with whom he appeared in eight games and stroked his first major league hit. After four minor league seasons, he made his major league debut at age twenty-one.

Military Interruption

World War II was raging, however, and after the 1942 season, Robinson enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He reported to the Naval Training Station in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 15, 1942, his twenty-second birthday. There, after basic training, he was able to play baseball for the camp team. Robinson also married Elayne Wallick Elder, whom he had met in Baltimore, on February 14, 1943. The couple had two children—Robbie Anne, who died from a brain tumor in 1946, and William E. Robinson III—before divorcing in 1951.

Robinson lost three full baseball seasons while serving in the navy. While stationed in Hawaii, he underwent a leg operation to remove a bone tumor. The surgery inadvertently caused drop foot and put his baseball career at risk. A second surgery corrected the problem after a long rehabilitation.

After his discharge from the navy in 1945, Robinson returned to Baltimore for the 1946 season. He slugged thirty-four home runs and drove in a league-leading 123 runs. For his efforts he was named International League MVP, narrowly beating out future major leaguers Jackie Robinson and Bobby Brown.

Major League Career

Robinson earned another late-season promotion to the Cleveland Indians and won the team’s starting first baseman’s job the next spring. In 1947 he batted .245 in ninety-five games before, in early August, fouling a fastball off his ankle, breaking it, and putting him in a cast for six weeks. In 1948 he was again the starting first baseman for the Indians and improved slightly to .254 in 134 games. Those Indians defeated the Boston Braves in six games in the World Series, in which Robinson was the second leading hitter for the Indians; he batted .300 in twenty at bats.

Robinson did not get along well with Indians manager Lou Boudreau, who tended to favor veteran players, and after the 1948 season he was traded to the Washington Senators. Robinson was named the starting first baseman for the American League in the 1949 All-Star Game and helped the American League to an 11–7 victory. He finished the season hitting .294 with eighteen home runs, twenty-seven doubles, and seventy-eight RBIs for a last place team.

On May 31, 1950, Robinson was traded to the Chicago White Sox in a six-player deal. He finished the year hitting .295 and improved to twenty-one home runs and eighty-six RBIs for a sixth-place club. Robinson set a major league record for most games played in a season without stealing a base (155). In 1951, for an improving White Sox team that finished fourth under new manager Paul Richards, Robinson had his best year yet. He batted .282 and finished third in the league in both home runs (29) and RBIs (117). He was also named to his second American League All-Star team. In 1952 Robinson finished the season with a .296 batting average; 22 home runs; and 104 RBIs, one fewer than league leader Al Rosen, and was named the starting first baseman for the American League in the All-Star Game.

Before the 1953 season Robinson was traded to the Philadelphia Athletics for first baseman Ferris Fain. The trade sent him from the up-and-coming White Sox to a team that finished 1953 in seventh place. Although Robinson’s batting average dipped to .247, he had another good power year with 22 home runs and 102 RBIs in 156 games. He was also named to the American League All-Star team for the fourth time and made a pinch-hitting appearance.

After the 1953 season, Robinson was traded for the fourth time, this time to the five-time defending World Series champion New York Yankees in a huge multi-player deal. The Yankees already had two other first basemen, so Robinson, now thirty-three, was mostly used as a pinch hitter. He hit .261 in 142 at bats, but the Yankees finished the season in second place even though they won 103 games. In 1955 Robinson was again relegated to part-time action for New York but had more RBIs (forty-two) than hits (thirty-six) and slugged sixteen home runs in only 173 at bats. The Yankees won the pennant but lost to the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series. Robinson appeared in four of the seven games and reached base in five of his six plate appearances.

On October 6, 1955, shortly after the 1955 World Series, Robinson married Bette Jane Farlow. The newlyweds’ around-the-world honeymoon included the Yankees postseason exhibition tour of Japan. The couple raised three sons—Marc, Drew, and Paul—and were married until Robinson’s death sixty-six years later. While Robinson was between marriages, he had dated pop singer Patti Page.

At the trading deadline in June 1956, the Yankees traded Robinson to the Kansas City Athletics in a four-player deal. For the year he batted only .204 in 226 at bats. In 1957 he appeared in a handful of games for the Baltimore Orioles, the Cleveland Indians, and the Detroit Tigers and, at age thirty-six, retired as a player after being released by the Tigers. Shortly after Robinson retired, the drop foot problem in his leg stemming from the botched surgery during World War II recurred, which would have made it impossible for him to continue to play.

In Robinson’s thirteen-year major league career, he made four All-Star teams and played for seven of the eight American League franchises (he missed only the Boston Red Sox). His twenty-nine home runs for the 1951 White Sox stood as the team home run record until 1970. He was the seventh player and first White Sox to hit a ball over the roof at old Comiskey Park. He had outstanding bat control and rarely struck out. For example, in 1950 he fanned only thirty-two times in 647 plate appearances. Hall of Famer Ted Williams declared that Robinson “was the most underrated and best clutch hitter I ever played against.”

Transition to Baseball Executive

Beginning in 1958 Robinson coached and scouted for the Baltimore Orioles under his mentor Paul Richards. In 1961, when Richards was hired to be the general manager for the new Houston Colt .45s National League franchise, he brought Robinson along as his assistant general manager. Robinson was involved in the first expansion draft for the Colt .45s and became farm director for five years before, in 1966, moving to Kansas City to become assistant general manager for the Athletics.

After the 1967 season Richards, who was then general manager of the Atlanta Braves, brought Robinson to Atlanta as the organization’s farm director. In 1972 the Braves elevated Robinson to the general manager position. In Atlanta he became the only general manager to trade Hank Aaron, who was amenable to finishing his career back in Milwaukee with the Brewers. After the 1976 season Brad Corbett, owner of the Texas Rangers, offered Robinson the opportunity to return to his native Texas as general manager of the Rangers, and Robinson accepted.

The 1977 season, Robinson’s first with the Rangers, was one of the most tumultuous in the team’s history. In June Corbett and Robinson fired manager Frank Lucchesi and hired Eddie Stanky, who quit after only one game. After Robinson hired Billy Hunter as manager, the Rangers went 60–33 for the rest of the season and finished second in their division. Robinson’s tenure as general manager continued into June 1982. Eddie Chiles, who had purchased the team from Corbett in 1980, fired him after the Rangers struggled early in the season. Robinson’s years with the Rangers included five managerial changes and a significant number of trades. Notably, in 1980 Robinson acquired knuckleballer Charlie Hough, who won 139 games for the Rangers, the most in team history.

Within hours of the announcement of Robinson’s release from the Rangers, George Steinbrenner offered him the Yankees’ general manager position. Robinson declined the job because he did not want to uproot his family and leave Texas. Instead, he became a special assistant to Steinbrenner for three years. He consulted and scouted for the team but remained based in Fort Worth.

After his years with the Yankees, Robinson formed his own one-man scouting combine and worked first for the Houston Astros and Minnesota Twins. His scouting and player evaluation helped the 1987 and 1991 Twins and the 1990 Cincinnati Reds win the World Series. When Robinson retired in 2004, after sixty-five years in professional baseball, he had received paychecks from sixteen major league clubs.

Player Advocacy and Death

Robinson also had a long involvement with the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA), beginning in 1953, when he was elected the player representative for the Philadelphia Athletics. Even in retirement Robinson persistently lobbied the MLBPA for pensions for “orphaned” pre-1980 major league players. Before 1980 players had to have four years of major league service to qualify for a pension, leaving many players without one. Working for more than a decade through the Major League Baseball Players’ Alumni Association, Robinson finally, in 2011, got the MLBPA and the commissioner of baseball to agree to fund payments to those roughly 900 former players.

Eddie Robinson celebrated his 100th birthday on December 15, 2020. He was one of only a few major league ballplayers to reach that milestone. He died on October 4, 2021, at his ranch near Bastrop, Texas.