ABSTRACT
Is there a way to measure how contemporaries actually responded to the unprecedented happenings on National League ball fields that season? One common way of doing so has been to look at attendance figures for the 1947 season. These figures, we are told, are entirely commensurate with the history that we now take for granted was being made. In his recent book on baseball's struggle to adapt itselfto the changes in twentieth-century American life, G. Edward White writes that, in 1947, "the Dodgers had also drawn over a million fans for the first time in their history, and National League attendance had set an all-time record.,,2 Jules Tygiel's oft-cited account similarly sums up Robinson's impact at the gate: "Throughout the season fans continued to watch him in record numbers .... Thanks to Robinson National League attendance in 1947 increased by more than threequarters of a million people above the record set in 1946. Five teams set new season records, including the Dodgers, who attracted over 1.8 million fans for the first, and last, time in the club's Brooklyn history.,,3 Red Barber recalled that "wherever Jackie played, he drew large crowds. He became the biggest attraction in baseball since Babe Ruth. Robinson put serious money into the pockets of every National League owner.'.4 This consensus was indeed summed up, during the 1947 season, by Wendell Smith, who wrote, "Jackie's nimble/ Jackie's quick! Jackie's making the turnstiles click."S
But simple errors in these accounts aside (the Dodgers had drawn over one million in five previous seasons, and National League attendance increased by about one and one-halfmillion),6 do the 1947 attendance figures actually support such sweeping statements, no matter how charmingly rhymed, about Robinson's impact at the box office? In fact, close study of attendance in 1947, in the context of seasons before and after, reveals a more complicated picture of how baseball's paying customers responded to Robinson's debut. Indeed, these accounts, by overstating Robinson's impact on attendance, and glossing over some troubling issues raised by the numbers, thereby-unintentionally to be sure-tend to minimize the challenges and limits which even so great an athlete as Jackie Robinson faced, in what proved to be difficult years for the business of baseball.
