JACKIE'S ROUGH BEGINNING : BEFORE DODGERS CAME GRUELING SUMMER IN CUBA.

Byline: Cesar Brioso Miami Herald

On most nights, portable fans could not stir the warm Caribbean air enough to make sleep come easily.

Rusty springs poked through the thick blankets serving as his mattress, an ancient elevator clanked and rumbled within a shaft down the hall, and with darkness as a cover, the roaches scampered across his room at will.

Even daybreak failed to shine much light on the hotel's cheerless atmosphere, rife with the stale odor of cigars.

The foreign din of Spanish filled a dreary lobby, and the local, spicy cuisine of the restaurant set his stomach ablaze.

Fifty years ago this month, with a 28-year-old Jackie Robinson on the verge of breaking baseball's color barrier, conditions endured by him during spring training in Cuba often gave no clues to the coming debut that would forever alter the landscape of American professional sports.

While the Brooklyn Dodgers basked in Havana's opulent Hotel Nacional and his Montreal Royals teammates roomed at the plush Havana Military Academy, Robinson and three other African-American players from the Royals suffered without the accommodations of the Los Angeles Hotel, a ``fleabag'' in the heart of Havana.

Opting for its less volatile racial climate, Dodgers president Branch Rickey had moved the team's training camp from Daytona Beach to Havana for the spring of '47.

Rickey concluded that games in Cuba and Panama, longtime homes of integrated baseball, would serve as the perfect springboard for Robinson to jump from Montreal to the parent club in Brooklyn.

But even with 90 miles separating him from Jim Crow laws in the United States, Robinson found himself segregated - from the Dodgers, from his Royals teammates and from freedoms he expected to be commonplace in Latin America.

So less than three months removed from his historic breakthrough to the majors, Robinson often sat in a seedy Cuban hotel and seethed.

``He hated it, he hated it with a passion, as did all of us,'' said Don Newcombe, 70, who, along with Roy Campanella and Roy Partlow, joined Robinson that spring on the Royals' roster. ``Jackie was more outspoken about it, but he knew there wasn't anything he could do about it. He was trying to get to the big club. He had to keep his cool and be quiet.''

When Rickey signed Robinson on Oct. 23, 1945, it was with the understanding Robinson would curb his fiery temper.

Rickey knew introducing a black player into the majors would be met with strong opposition, and he was ``looking for someone with the courage not to fight back'' when confronted with hatred and bigotry.

For that reason, legend has it, Rickey passed over Cuban star shortstop Silvio Garcia.

``What would you do if a white American slapped your face?'' Rickey asked Garcia.

``I kill him,'' responded Garcia. He never reached the majors.

But when Rickey met with Robinson, the former Negro League star agreed not to respond to the prejudices he would encounter.

``Jackie was not the kind of man to take,'' Newcombe said. ``Jackie was a man who would always fight back. That's the way he was. He was not afraid to fight back, but he had a mission.''

That mission relied on Rickey's grand plan.

The previous spring, Robinson and the Royals found hostility throughout Florida. In Jacksonville, the Royals arrived for a game only to find the stadium padlocked; a city ordinance forbade whites and blacks from playing on the same field. In De Land, supposed problems with stadium lights forced cancellation of a day game. In Sanford, police halted a game in progress because of Robinson's presence.

Despite those setbacks, Robinson went on to have a stellar season for Montreal in 1946, leading the International League with a .349 average and 113 runs scored.

Such a season normally would spell a quick promotion to the majors, but Rickey wanted to proceed carefully.

To avoid the racial tension of the previous spring`, Rickey moved the training camp to Havana and kept Robinson on Montreal's roster.

Blacks and whites had played alongside each other in Cuba since the turn of the century, and Rickey believed exhibitions against integrated teams from Cuba's winter league would foster greater acceptance of Robinson among the Dodgers.

In fact, Rickey hoped the Dodger players would be so impressed after seeing Robinson play, they would insist he be promoted.

``The players could decide Robinson's fate,'' Rickey told The Sporting News in January 1947. ``It's what I'd prefer - that the Dodger players make their own decision after seeing him in action. I don't want to make the mistake of bringing him up prematurely.''

Instead, Rickey's maneuverings began to unravel almost the moment the Dodgers and Royals arrived on Cuban soil in late February.

It was in Havana where Robinson, Newcombe, Campanella and Partlow - and black sports writers Sam Lacy of The Baltimore Afro-American and Wendell Smith of The Pittsburgh Courier - discovered they would stay at the Los Angeles, which The New York Sun at the time described as a ``musty, third-rate hotel'' that ``looked like a movie version of a waterfront hostelry in Singapore.''

Every day, the six men had to be shuttled to the Havana Military Academy outside Havana for the players' workout with the Royals before being brought back at night.

``That damn hotel,'' Newcombe said. ``It was full of cockroaches. It was so hot, you couldn't sleep.''

Robinson was furious about the separate and less-than-equal accommodations.

``I thought we left Florida to train in Cuba so we could get away from Jim Crow,'' Robinson said at the time.

Although there wasn't the legalized discrimination of the United States, exclusive hotels and restaurants in Havana - which catered mostly to American tourists - had restrictions against blacks.

``There were areas of Havana, and Cuba in general, that were strictly off-limits to blacks, American or Cuban,'' said Robert`o Gonzlez Echevarra, a professor at Yale University who is writing a book titled ``Cuban Baseball: A Cultural History.'' ``The fact that the players were playing in Havana doesn't mean that they didn't have any restrictions in Cuba. Of course that would be foolish to claim, but they had fewer restrictions than they had here in the United States. It wasn't like the Deep South.

``I was told Minnie Minoso used to go to, I think it was El Floridita bar or some place, and sit there and have a big milkshake or something by himself, and no one would say anything. Of course Minoso was very famous and rich by Cuban standards, by any standards at the time. He would come in his Cadillac and enter, but he would stick out like a sore thumb because he was the only black there. It was a question of custom. It just was not done. It was horrible, but that's the way it was.''

The Nacional was among Havana's most exclusive hotels, a fact Newcombe discovered first-hand one day when he went to speak with Rickey at the hotel.

``I found that out immediately,'' Newcombe said. ``I wasn't even allowed to go in the lobby of the Nacional to see Mr. Rickey on baseball business. I had to get permission from the bellhops. In fact, one white bellhop put me out of the lobby.''

That was as close as Newcombe or Robinson would come to the lavish accommodations the Dodgers enjoyed at the Nacional.

Back at the Los Angeles, entertainment amounted to the nightly card games, and the standard fare was several notches below the choice steaks served up at the Nacional.

``I remember one day - and I'll never forget this as long as I live,'' Newcombe said. ``During the process of losing weight for my conditioning in spring training, I ate a lot of soup down there. One day, I stirred up a bowl of vegetable soup, and a big cockroach came out. I puked up my insides. This was in the hotel coffee shop. I never ate there again. Nor did I eat very much more for the next four days.''

Robinson's reaction to the food was even m`ore severe. He battled stomach problems the entire time in Havana. Weakened by dysentery, Robinson at times failed to impress the rabid Cuban fans during exhibition games.

``The food plus the fact that he was under constant pressure emotionally gave him problems he would normally never have,'' said Lacy, 93, who still writes for The Afro-American.

After the dramatic conclusion of Cuba's 1946-47 winter league season and a decades-long history of major-league teams and Negro League stars such as Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and Ray Dandridge playing in Havana, the Royals' intrasquad games and exhibitions with the Dodgers simply didn't compare. In fact, one series at Havana's Gran Stadium between the Dodgers and the St. Louis Browns was canceled for lack of interest.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) Stealing home was one way that Jackie Robinson could electrify the fans.

(2) Jackie Robinson, left, talks with Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey.

Daily News File Photo