Ages of Defiance

Robinson used to ride his bicycle through the streets to north Oakland for games that Powles coached at Bushrod Park, a still-lovely swath of green with two ball diamonds at opposite ends.

"George Powles kept me out of trouble," Robinson said in his office. "He got me off the streets. He got me into organized games, and taught me the fundamentals of how to play the game, and I draw a lot from that today."

Robinson was only 14, younger than his teammates, when he played on Powles's 1950 American Legion baseball team, which won a national championship for a second straight year. More than 40 of Powles's protégés became professional athletes, among them outfielders Curt Flood and Vada Pinson, basketball's Bill Russell and football star John Brodie. (Robinson and Russell played basketball together on one of Powles's McClymonds High teams.)

"Powles was their mentor, and because many of his teams traveled, he also opened their eyes to the rest of the country," said Mark Medeiros, deputy director of the Oakland Museum of California, which is assembling an exhibit to honor Powles, who died in 1987.

Marjorie Brans, Powles's daughter, remembers Frank, who visited their home often for meals and baseball talk. "He was a skinny little kid with skinny legs," she said. "He was very shy."

Her description of Robinson as shy might come as news to many who have met him in his adult life and would consider him forbidding. Maybe it's his glare, or his reputation for toughness. As Hendricks said, he is hard to get to know but "a friend for life" if you do.

"That fierceness and aggression came in the minor leagues," Brans said of Robinson. "Black players had a hard time in the South, and he was in the South."

"I didn't know anything about racism or bigotry until I went into professional baseball in 1953," Robinson relates in his 1988 autobiography "Extra Innings." "Racial bigotry was far more blatant and pervasive in this country during those years of my youth than it is today."

Derogatory shouts from the stands, segregated housing and some white players' prejudices against black players hardened his personality. Disagreements with the Cincinnati front office also angered him. "At times I didn't think I was appreciated by management," he said. "This is what I always resented there. They didn't want to pay me. I always had to battle for my salary."

In 1968, Robinson met a man who helped settle him, Hiram Cuevas, who owned the Santurce team in the Puerto Rican winter league. Weaver was Santurce's manager, but when he took over the Orioles he had to give up the job. He helped Robinson succeed him. He did for several years, with the hope eventually of becoming a big league manager. Just as much, Robinson heeded Cuevas's advice to try harder to take things more in stride.

"He was a good baseball man, a very wise man, period," Robinson said. "He sat me down and talked to me about baseball and talked to me about me as a person, about life. It really helped me see myself as I was and see myself as other people saw me." And if that wasn't always in a favorable light, Robinson decided, "then I have to change."

Cuevas helped prepare him for the double dose of pressure that awaited him when he became the majors' first black manager, and a player-manager as well, with Cleveland in 1975. Robinson's record as a manager at Cleveland, San Francisco, Baltimore and Montreal/Washington is below .500, but twice he has been named league manager of the year, in 1982 with the Giants and 1989 with the Orioles.