The briefest of tryouts

Jimmy Dykes with the Chicago White Sox

With his team training in Pasadena, Calif., Chicago White Sox manager Jimmy Dykes gives a cursory tryout to a local college kid – a four-sport star from UCLA, no less – before dismissing him 82 years ago today.

Less than a month later, the local college kid is drafted into the Army, but he returns to baseball with the Negro Leagues after World War II.

Jackie Robinson at UCLA

The onetime college star then joins another team – the Brooklyn Dodgers, who in 1947 make Jackie Robinson the majors’ first Black player in the 20th century.

Setting up Robinson’s brief tryout 82 years ago today is Herman Hill, a West Coast editor with the Pittsburgh Courier.

Along with Robinson, just out of Pasadena Junior College, Hill brings to the tryout Nate Moreland, a pitcher with Pasadena JC.

“Jimmy Dykes had once praised Robinson and said he was worth $60,000 of anybody’s money,” Hill later says of a salary then that today is equivalent to $1.1 million.

“Dykes had seen Jackie play semi-pro ball,” Hill says, “but he blushed when we came on the diamond. He refused to pose for pictures with Jackie and Nate.”