MLB.com: Mets of Yesteryear, Today Reflect on Sen. Obama's Historic Win - Rod_Carew29's Blog

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MLB.com: Mets of Yesteryear, Today Reflect on Sen. Obama's Historic Win

Posted on November 11, 2008 at 05:38 PM.

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Race has always mattered in this country...maybe one day, it won't....

A Victory More Important Than Baseball

11/06/08 12:10 PM EST

NEW YORK -- The crackling voice on the other end came from a home on a golf course in Port St. Lucie, Fla., the city where the Mets have staged their 21 most recent Spring Training camps. The voice and the home belonged to Al Jackson, the wonderfully happy man Bob Murphy used to call "Little Alvin Jackson." The crackling voice said it was unlikely that a man of color would have owned a home within a par five of a golf course in St. Petersburg, the Mets' first Spring Training home in 1962, the year of their first camp.
"But things have changed," Jackson said with a crackle and then a cackle. "Oh boy, have they changed!" His voice then quieted to a reverent level. It said, "Can you imagine?"

It was Wednesday night when Jackson characterized that sea change. What had happened one night earlier never could have happened in 1962, either, he said.

"I equate this with Jackie Robinson," Jackson said. "It's changed the game."

Jackie was No. 42. Barack Obama will be No. 44. In between, decades that opened golf-course living and many other doors to a man of color and his brethren have passed.

The other side of the equation wasn't lost on Jackson as he spoke into the telephone. If anything, Obama's election underscored the other side: What happened in '62 wouldn't happen now.

"I hope not," he said.

It was late February or maybe early March in 1962 when Jackson was making his way to the Mets' camp. Bennie Daniels, a fellow pitcher and once a Pirates teammate, had picked up Jackson in Texas. They made the trip from there to St. Pete.

It was St. Pete Beach, actually, right off the Gulf of Mexico, where Jackson and Daniels parted. The Colonial Inn, right on the water, was the site. The Yankees had made that hotel their Spring Training headquarters through 1960, before moving to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It was a popular hotel even 20 years later. But all Jackson and most of the fledgling Mets knew about it before they arrived was its address. More information became available upon check-in.

"Pitchers and catchers reported early," Jackson said on Wednesday. "I was the first black to show up. Nothing had been ironed out yet."

And even when it was, wrinkles persisted.

"I was tired from the trip; I hadn't planned on going out anyway," Jackson said. "I just went to my room."

And there he received a welcome call from the hotel manager and a set of ground rules. The hotel restaurant and bar were out of bounds for Jackson; so, too, was the swimming pool.

"Tough feelings," Jackson said.

Accommodations eventually were made, which is not to suggest the hotel became accommo****** to Jackson, Charley Neal, Joe Christopher and the other African-Americans. A Mets dining room was established on the second level. Breakfast and dinner were served.

"We ate there the whole spring, pretty much," Jackson said.

But there was no Mets bar or swimming pool.

"Charley and I chipped in and bought a car together, an old Mercury. We fixed it up," he said. "We needed it. We knew if we needed to get haircuts, we had to go to the black section, and you couldn't walk there. There was a big black neighborhood down by the ballpark [Al Lang Field]."

Aware and prepared, Jackson rented an apartment in the spring of 1963.

* * *
The hotel situation had changed by 1981, when the Wilsons -- Mets rookie Mookie and his wife, Rose -- came to St. Petersburg, looking for Spring Training housing. But they preferred not to stay in a hotel. They made telephone calls about renting apartments and found vacancies. They told the landlords of their interest and their plans to "be right over." They didn't mention their race. And when they kept their appointments, they were kept out. The apartments that had interested them already had been rented in the brief interim.

"Amazing how that happened more than once," Mookie said, though he hardly was amazed.

Aware of the circumstances Jackson had endured, Wilson characterized his experiences as "more subtle when I was coming through" but hardly more acceptable. "What happened then, I don't think it happens as much now," he said Wednesday from his home in South Carolina. "I hope it doesn't."

He, too, recognized the equation didn't reverse.

"No way what happened [Tuesday] night could happen back then [in 1981]," is how he put it.

Obama's election thrilled the Wilsons.

"I never thought it would happen in my lifetime," Mookie said. "But when people are in distress, it brings about change." He called the election "a sign that it is a free America."

He embraced Obama's acceptance speech.

"Amazing, very sharp," he said.

He believes it has echoed beyond the borders of the country, and he wonders: "I don't now if it's a change in the country or a lack of candidates."

Wilson had sweated the outcome, even after California electoral votes went to Obama.

"I was full of anxiety as we watched it," he said. "I'm an ex-ballplayer. When you have a lead, what can go wrong will go wrong."

But the 27th out did come. Obama had carried 27 states by Wednesday morning.

* * *

Marlon Anderson is African-American. He has participated in two Mets Spring Training camps, 2005 and '08. In March, he lived across I-95 from the Mets headquarters in a gated community that was home to many players. Nice digs. No problems.

And as Jackson noted in the book "Carrying Jackie's Torch," there never was an African-American section of Port St. Lucie. The sprawling city that now stands on Florida's East Coast had neither street lamps nor curbs, much less neighborhoods before the Mets headquarters were built in 1987. The area belonged to gators, wild boars, panthers, snakes and armadillos.

It has golf courses, manicured lawns now. It has a president-elect who wouldn't have been nominated, Anderson suggested, when the Mets broke ground.

"It's a huge event for our country, for every industry," Anderson said on Wednesday from his home outside Houston. "We've come out of our shell. We're not so close-minded. If a black man can lead the country, he can lead a company or a team. He can be the general manager.

"That Obama is black is huge. But that's he's qualified is more important."

Marty Noble is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.