The Secret List of Brooklyn Dodgers Teammates Who Wanted Jackie Robinson Gone in 1947: The Loneliest Bench in Brooklyn
Walk into any stadium in the country on April 15 (Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium, it doesn't matter) and you'll see something that only happens once a year. The date marks the anniversary of the moment Jackie Robinson officially broke the color barrier in 1947, a Tuesday in Brooklyn that forever changed American sports. In a collective tribute, all on-field personnel don Jackie Robinson's legendary Number 42 in Dodger Blue, complete with matching socks and commemorative cap patches.
In the stands, fans are doing it too. For nine innings, the sport looks like an army of one. While the league celebrates a hero, the names of the men who tried to stop him before he even saw a pitch have been forgotten.
Long before the first game at Ebbets Field, a group of Brooklyn Dodgers was busy passing around a piece of paper: a petition.
Led by Dixie Walker, then a fan favorite nicknamed "The People's Cherish", a clique of Southern players, including Hugh Casey, Carl Furillo, and Bobby Bragan, decided they wouldn't take the field with Robinson. Walker threatened to quit, demanding a trade rather than sharing a dugout with a Black man. Dodgers manager Leo Durocher quickly put a stop to it, "I told them what they could do with their petition, and I don't think I got much back talk on it," Durocher recalled. "I told the players that Robinson was going to open the season with us come hell or high water, and if they didn't like it they could leave now and we'd trade them or get rid of them some other way. Nobody moved."
While movies like 42 give us heartwarming scenes of teammates eventually coming around, the reality was a cold war. These men turned the clubhouse into a silent vault where Robinson was the only one without the combination.
Pop culture has told the story for decades . Chadwick Boseman's Jackie found his way into the hearts of his peers, with the famed hand on the shoulder from Pee Wee Reese. But the names on that petition rarely get the spotlight today.
But the most unsettling pop culture trivia is the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story, where Robinson played himself. The baseball legend went to a movie set three years later and acted out the insults and threats from men who were still his colleagues.
It took another player to force the issue. Ken Griffey Jr., the 90s baseball icon with the backwards cap and his own Nintendo game, first broke the rules to wear the number for the 50th anniversary in 1997. Ten years later, he called the Commissioner to ask for permission again, even checking in with Jackie's widow, Rachel Robinson, to make sure it was okay. What started as one player's personal tribute snowballed so fast that by 2009, the league turned it into a dress code.
The 1947 Dodgers roster eventually moved on. Walker got his trade to Pittsburgh. Ebbets Field was torn down for apartments. But the list of names on that petition remains a permanent part of the box score. On April 15, number 42 belongs to everyone: no one is allowed to wear it for the other 161 games of the year. The league retired the jersey and coordinated the tribute, the math of the 1947 clubhouse remains. It was a room divided, some waiting for Robinson to fail, the others watching him change the world.
The jersey is the tribute and the petition was the reality. Both are still hanging over the game today.
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This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 7:01 AM.