They were instilled, in a vivid way, when Erskine’s father, Matt, took him to Marion, Ind., in 1930, the morning after a mob stormed a jail and hanged two Black prisoners. Matt Erskine wants his son to see the effects of hate.
The sight of a bare tree branch and the remains of a noose has seared Carl Erskine’s consciousness ever since. In a state that once counted about 30 percent of the male population as dues-paying Ku Klux Klan members, Erskine grew up with a Black best friend, Johnny Wilson — a prejudice, he said, that was not should earn him special praise.
“I lived in a mixed neighborhood and I knew a lot of outstanding Black families, hard-working families, and Johnny was a friend,” Erskine said. “I ate at his house, he ate at mine, and we were just very, very close. I did not notice the color of the skin. It was never part of our relationship. So it’s hard for me to take any credit for that, because it came naturally to me.
On the top shelf of a cabinet in the Erskines’ living room is a figurine Wilson gave his old friend: two men — one Black, one white — on a bench in baseball uniforms. Hidden behind it was Wilson’s note: “Just like when we were young.”
Wilson died in 2019. Roger Craig, the last Dodger besides Erskine to play in the 1955 World Series, died last month. Two of Erskine’s children, Gary and Susie, will represent him in Cooperstown, part of an extended family that includes five grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren, including a girl named Brooklyn.
Erskine’s name will be permanently displayed in the Hall of Fame by the Buck O’Neil statue, just down a hallway and around the corner from the plaque gallery. That room honored Brooklyn’s most hallowed names — Robinson, Campanella, Snider, Reese, Hodges and more — and, to Erskine, sent a subtle but powerful message that he spent his life promoting.
“There’s an important factor about the plaques around that room in the Hall of Fame,” Erskine said. “They are all bronze. They are all the same color.”