Sometimes you are a witness to history, and sometimes you step up and grab it by the hand.
George Shuba was by any measure a good ballplayer. He grew up on the tough side of Youngstown, Ohio, dreaming of the big leagues. His father was a Slovakian immigrant who did little to encourage his son, and at Catholic school a nun once hit George so hard that he lost some of his hearing. But he was determined to make it; each day in his room he would take 600 practice swings at a rope he hung from the ceiling, using a bat filled with lead.
In 1943, when he was 17, he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Throughout the 1940’s, he worked his way up through their farm system, playing mostly in New Orleans and Mobile. In 1947, he hit 21 home runs, batted .389, and earned the nickname “Shotgun” for the way he sprayed line-drives all over the field.
And so, in 1948, he was called up to play in Brooklyn. Over the next 7 years, Shotgun Shuba enjoyed a solid career as a utility player on one of the best teams in baseball. He came to the plate a total of 814 times, had 211 hits, 125 RBIs, 24 home runs, scored 106 runs, and batted .259. In his best year, 1952, he batted .305, but a knee injury slowed him down thereafter.
His personal moment of glory came in 1953, when, in the opening game of the World Series against the Yankees, he became the first person to pinch-hit a home run in the Series for a National League team. Unfortunately, the Yankees won the game 9-5 and the Series 4-2. Two years later, Shuba’s fate was reversed; in his final career appearance, in Game 7 of the ’55 Series, he grounded out to end the sixth inning, but the Dodgers went on to win the Series, the only title they ever won in Brooklyn. Look it up: you’ll see Shuba’s name on that legendary championship roster alongside names like Koufax, Hodges, Campanella, Lasorda, Reese, Podres, Snider, and, oh yeah, Robinson.
Yes, Jackie Robinson. And therein lies the real story.
You see, Shuba and Robinson had crossed paths, literally, almost 10 years before they won the Series together. In 1946, they were both playing for the Dodgers’ farm team from Montreal. On April 18, 1946, in the third inning of an away game in Jersey City, with two men on base, Robinson slammed a three-run homer over the left-field fence. As he neared home plate, neither of Robinson’s teammates who had been on base waited to publicly congratulate him.
But another man did: Shotgun Shuba was the next hitter, and he had been warming up in the on-deck circle. He stepped up to the plate and offered his hand to Robinson, who shook it with a small celebratory hop and a huge smile. It was a charged moment, one that probably displeased many in the crowd, and on both team benches. And it was captured by the Associated Press. It is the first photograph of an interracial handshake in professional baseball history.
The moment was dubbed, “A Handshake for the Century,” and it remains the defining image of Jackie Robinson’s arrival in the white leagues. For better or worse, it is also the image that came to define Shuba’s career. After he retired and went back to Youngstown, he kept a low profile. Few people remembered his achievements as a Dodger, but everyone wanted to talk to him about the handshake. He often downplayed it, saying, “As far as I was concerned, Jackie was a great ballplayer – our best…I couldn’t care less if he was black, white or Technicolor.” But Shuba also recognized the moment’s importance. The only baseball memento he displayed in his living room was that photograph, and he carried it with him when he visited local schools to talk about racial tolerance.
In 2005, Shuba attended a 50th Anniversary celebration with many of his surviving teammates at Dodger Stadium. Then he quietly returned to Youngstown, where last month, he passed away, aged 89, in his home.
His son Michael, when asked about the historic handshake, recalled that his dad would routinely say, “Look at that photo. I want you to remember what it stands for. You treat all people equally.”
– Mike Keeler
