A HANDSHAKE FOR THE CENTURY…NAH, THE MILLENIUM

It took place on April 18, 1946.

George “Shotgun” Shuba’s defining act as a ballplayer came in a minor league contest 75 years ago.

“It was only a handshake…On a minor league field…And it wasn’t ’til later…It became a big deal…It was just something that happened…It was nothing he’d planned…The guy hit a homer…So he stuck out his hand…”

But it was so much more than that, as Shuba, a modest sort, tried to explain to his son Mike, when the boy was young.

It seems that Mike Shuba was teasing one of his kindergarten classmates for being overweight.

That’s what the letter from St. Christine School — addressed to Mike’s parents — said.

When Mike got home, his father pointed to the only memento displayed in the house from his 14-year professional baseball career — a framed photograph hanging on the wall above his recliner.

“I want you to look up at that photo,” father instructed son.

“That’s me and Jackie Robinson and I want you to understand what it means:

‘You treat all people equal.’

Do you understand?”

The framed black-and-white image showed George Shuba shaking Jackie Robinson’s hand at home plate, after Robinson hit a home run for the Montreal Royals on Opening Day, April 18, 1946 in Jersey City, NJ.

It was Robinson’s first regular-season game in the formerly all-white minor leagues, a milestone for baseball and for America, which came a year before he broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The shunning, harassment and abject race-based intolerance of Robinson — by fans, players, some teammates and managers — is well known.

But on that very first day in Jersey City, he was welcomed by one man.

Robinson, facing Jersey City southpaw Warren Sandel in the third inning, blasted a fastball 340 feet over the left-field wall — a three-run homer, propelling the Royals to a 14–1 shellacking of the Giants.

Shuba, on-deck, watched, waited and did what you do.

You congratulate your teammate.

You shake his hand.

That simple handshake is believed to be the first of its kind between black and white players on a modern professional baseball diamond.

George Shuba told the Montreal Gazette years later that Jackie Robinson had called to thank him for the handshake, because he’d feared his own teammates wouldn’t shake his hand.

“And I said: ‘What for? Are you on our team? Are you on our side? OK then.’”

The handshake appeared in newspapers across North America the next day and then was pretty much forgotten for half a century, except in the family room of the Shubas’ home.

In the late 1990s, when the elder Shuba was in his seventies, Mike embarked on a mission to have others see the principled man an adoring son saw, in a long-cherished photograph.

A mission became something of a crusade and continues today, nearly seven years after George Shuba’s death.

Perseverance and good will offer their own reward.

The Shubas’ hometown of Youngstown, Ohio will unveil a bronze statue this summer, memorializing Robinson and the unheralded outfielder who gave him a hand one day, 75 years ago.

A writer bestowed upon Shuba the nickname, “Shotgun,” in 1945, when he saw him rifle line drives to all fields for the Dodgers’ Double-A farm team in Mobile, AL.

Hank Aaron said years later that Shuba was his favorite player when he was growing up in Mobile.

WOW!!

That’s some compliment.

Shuba, 21, and Robinson, 27, were on the Triple-A Royals for the 1946 season opener, an afternoon game on the road against the Jersey City Giants, a dozen or so miles from Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field.

Robinson had just endured a miserable six weeks of spring training in Jim Crow-era Florida, after his historic signing by Dodgers president Branch Rickey.

That day in Jersey City, he became the first black player in white organized baseball in the modern era.

Reporters and photographers from mainstream white newspapers, wire services and the black press were on hand to chronicle the moment.

Frank Hague, Jersey City’s legendary mayor, declared a half-day municipal holiday and somehow orchestrated more than 50,000 ticket sales for the 25,000 seats at Roosevelt Stadium.

There were plenty of no-shows among locals who had been obligated to buy tickets, but the park was packed to the gills, due in part to black fans who came from out of town to see Robinson make history.

Wearing №9, Robinson was starting at second base and batting second.

In his first at-bat, he grounded out, and in his third at-bat, he beat out a bunt — sandwiched around epic at-bat #2.

Giants pitcher Sandel recalled in the 1994 book, “Dugout to Foxhole,” that he saw Montreal’s third-base coach, Royals manager Clay Hopper, flash the bunt sign, so the lefty decided to take a little off his first-pitch fastball in order to get in good fielding position to defend the speedy Robinson.

Big mistake.

340 feet worth.

In his 1972 memoir, “I Never Had it Made,” Robinson remembered, “It felt so good I could tell it was a beauty.”

“When I crossed home plate, George Shuba was waiting for me. ‘That’s the way to hit that ball, Jackie,’ Shuba said. ‘That’s the old ballgame right there.’ He shook my hand.”

Newspapers all over published the ground-breaking baseball image: Two smiling Royals face-to-face, one black, the other white, right hands interlocked.

Game stories rightly focused on Robinson’s most auspicious debut.

He had four hits — including a pair of bunt singles — four RBI, four runs scored and two stolen bases.

His daring and disconcerting basepath machinations induced two balks.

He was a one-man wrecking crew and his sensational performance was celebrated by black and white fans alike, who mobbed him at game’s end.

And there was no mention of the handshake, beyond the photo captions.

That campaign, Robinson led the International League with a .349 average and scored 113 runs as the Royals ran away with the regular season, then won the playoffs and the minor league version of the World Series.

After Opening Day, he hit just two homers the rest of the year.

And in the Royals’ second game, Shuba hit three, joking characteristically in his 2007 book, “My Memories as a Brooklyn Dodger,” that he waited until game №2 because he “didn’t want to rain on Jackie’s parade.”

Robinson’s career has been well-documented; Shuba was a utility outfielder and left-handed pinch-hitter who played seven seasons with Brooklyn which included three trips to the World Series and one title — Brooklyn’s only— in 1955.

His personal highlight during game action, came in 1953 when he hit the National League’s first pinch-hit World Series home run.

That was during ‘game action.’

What far exceeded that was his participation in the handshake, which he considered a basic move, the right one and an example of how people should behave.

No questions asked.

Certainly Mike Shuba, now 60, learned valuable lessons from his humble dad, whom he adored.

“I wanted to tell the world and all kids across the nation that in my photo of the handshake, that’s not just another white arm. In the 1946 photo, that’s my father, George ‘Shotgun’ Shuba, and he was a better father than a baseball player and he always did the right thing.”

A seven-foot statue of the Jackie Robinson-George Shuba handshake, sculpted by Brooklyn-born Marc Mellon, is nearing completion and is tentatively slated to be unveiled in Youngstown in July or August, commemorating its 75th anniversary.

[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in April 2021.]