You may have noticed a theme running through the various Frank Robinson appreciations populating the great wide ether: You had to give as well as you got when interacting with him.
Even if I had been aware of this axiom, I doubt I would have acted on it. I first starting covering baseball in 1981, Robinson’s first season as manager of the Giants. I wasn’t quite 25 years old. Robinson scared the life out me.
Duane Kuiper? Different story. Kuiper was in his second season with the Cleveland Indians in 1975, the same year Robinson was hired as manager — the first black manager in major league history.