Robinson hitless as 1956 All-Star

Fifty years ago today, Frank Robinson made his first professional visit to Washington with unhappy results.

The occasion was baseball’s 23rd All-Star Game at Griffith Stadium. Robinson, a 20-year-old rookie slugger for the Cincinnati Redlegs, struck out twice against Chicago White Sox left-hander Billy Pierce before manager Walter Alston took him out in the fifth inning.

A half-century later, the Washington Nationals manager ruefully remembers.

“You don’t have to be diplomatic about it,” Robinson said recently. “You know how many pitches he threw me? Six — one, two, three, one, two, three [and out]. No respect there.”

And what did Pierce, a notably crafty lefty, throw Robinson?

“I don’t know. He threw me something I couldn’t hit.”

Robinson survived that day to become National League rookie of the year and enjoy a Hall of Fame career with Cincinnati, Baltimore and other teams before becoming baseball’s first black manager in 1975 with the Cleveland Indians. But the 1956 All-Star Game — the first of three in the nation’s capital over a 14-year span — was strictly a downer.

In those days before interleague play and cable television, the All-Star Game was a much bigger deal than now. A great deal of league pride was involved, and the National League was entitled to do some preening after a 7-3 victory here, its sixth in seven outings. The American League had won 12 of the first 16 games, but the momentum shifted completely in the 1950s because the NL had many more black stars like Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, Roberto Clemente and, yes, Frank Robinson.

All-Star starters were chosen entirely by fan vote then, and an extremely aggressive campaign by a Cincinnati radio station resulted in the election to the starting lineup of five Redlegs — so called because some felt the team’s traditional nickname of “Reds” summoned up communist connotations. (The following year, all eight Cincinnati position players were voted in before commissioner Ford Frick decreed that superstars Mays of the New York Giants and Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals start the game.)

As Robinson finished taking batting practice at Griffith Stadium, a Cincinnati writer asked, “Nervous, Frank?” Replied Robinson, who earned his spot by batting .313 with 18 home runs and 39 RBI during the season’s first half: “You don’t know just how nervous.”

Sitting in his office deep in the bowels of RFK Stadium, manager Robinson remembered that, too.

“Yeah, I was nervous, but it was a special little nervousness — not the kind I couldn’t control,” he said. “I looked all around, saw all those great players and just wanted to absorb it, take it all in. But I had a lot of pride and confidence in my ability. I wasn’t cocky, but I felt I belonged there.”

That was Robinson’s first and likely only look at Griffith Stadium, a ramshackle structure built in 1911 that housed the Washington Senators and Redskins at Seventh Street and Florida Avenue NW before D.C. (later RFK) Stadium opened in 1961.

“I don’t remember much about it except that it was a $15 cab ride out to those [distant] bleachers,” Robinson said. “But I didn’t care where the game was played, I was just happy to be there. We didn’t have any [ballpark] jewels in the National League back then either.”

Oddly perhaps, the All-Star Game wasn’t the biggest news in Washington on July 10, 1956. During what the Evening Star called a “dramatic” press conference, Senate Minority Leader William Knowland announced President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s intention to run for a second term. (Ike trounced Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson in the fall even more solidly than the National Leaguers beat the Americans.)

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