| “ | You don't belong here, n****r! You hear me? Why don't you look in the mirror? This is a white man's game! All right? Get that through your thick monkey skull! | „ |
| ~ Chapman bullying Jackie Robinson. |
William Benjamin “Ben” Chapman is one of the two main antagonists (the other being Fritz Ostermueller) of the 2013 biographical sports film 42. He is the racist manager of the Philadelphia Phillies who bullies Jackie Robinson during the Brooklyn Dodgers' game against the Phillies. He is a fictionalized version of the real life baseball player and manager of the same name.
He was portrayed by Alan Tudyk, who also played Lenny and Dab the Dodo in Ice Age, King Candy in Wreck-It Ralph, the Duke of Weselton in Frozen, Alistair Krei in Big Hero 6 and its spinoff series, Duke Weaselton in Zootopia, Van Wayne in Powerless, Ludo in Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Doctor Phosphorus in Creature Commandos, Elias Marcos in Justified, Joker in Harley Quinn, Captain Cold in Young Justice, Todd/Hushfluffles in Final Space, and Iago in the live-action Aladdin remake.
Role in the film[]
Chapman first appears during the Brooklyn Dodgers' game against the Philadelphia Phillies, where he begins calling Jackie Robinson a number of derogatory names and racial slurs. As the game progresses, Chapman's insults grow gradually worse and more insulting, affecting Jackie's performance during the game. Eventually it gets to a point where, after Jackie strikes out, Chapman actually confronts Jackie as he's walking back to the Dodgers dugout and screams at him that he didn't belong in baseball because it was a "white man's game", and that he needed to get that through his "thick monkey skull". Jackie is seen literally shaking with rage, but manages to return to the team's clubhouse, where he completely breaks down, screaming and smashing his bat repeatedly against the wall before collapsing sobbing onto the clubhouse floor. Dodgers owner Branch Rickey comes in to comfort Jackie and talk him out of fighting Chapman back, stating that, if he did so, he would only end up making himself look bad in the long run, and convincing him that the only way he could rise above Chapman's insults (and by extension, the rest of the MLB's racism towards him) was to prove how good a player he was.
After calming down, Jackie returns to the game, though Chapman continues to insult him. Finally, Eddie Stanky, one of Jackie's teammates who is still in the Dodgers dugout, gets sick of Chapman insulting Jackie and storms over to the Phillies dugout, ordering Chapman to shut up and actually threatening to fight him if he doesn't leave Jackie alone, which he refuses to do. The home plate umpire orders Stanky back to the Dodgers dugout, and as Stanky is returning to the dugout, Chapman insults him too, asking him what it was like to be a "n****r's n****r", to which Stanky replies, "I dunno, Chapman. What's it like being a redneck piece of s**t?" The Dodgers would go on to win the game thanks to another player getting a hit resulting in Jackie scoring.
After the game, Chapman is interviewed by the press about how he bullied Jackie during the game, but Chapman defends himself, insisting that he treated Jackie no different than he treated other players in the MLB, such as Jewish player Hank Greenberg (referring to him as a "k*ke", a common anti-Semitic slur) or Italian-American player Joe DiMaggio (whom he refers to as "The Wop", a derogatory name for Italians) and that they simply laughed such treatment off when he did it to them, apparently not realizing that other players could answer back, while Jackie could not.
As Rickey later points out, Chapman's abuse has the unintended effect of creating sympathy on Jackie's behalf. Harold Parrott, Rickey's assistant, who had initially opposed Ricky's plan to integrate the team, expresses a desire to "ring Ben Chapman's neck" for his attacks on Jackie. Bobby Bragan, a southern-born player who had previously signed a petition against Jackie's addition to the the team, and even later requested a trade to another team, reconsiders his views after the incident with Chapman, and asks to remain on the team with Jackie.
Conversely, the bullying incident begins affecting the Phillies' image, especially after a newspaper article that compares the team to the Ku Klux Klan is published. Phillies' general manager Herb Pennock is angry at Chapman for the incident (particularly the article, which Chapman says shouldn't be taken seriously because "a Jew probably wrote it"), claiming that, because of him, the entire Phillies organization was being painted as racist, and demands that Chapman fix the problem. Chapman refuses at first, claiming that he is simply "defending baseball", but Pennock tells him that he needed to put aside his pride and defend the Phillies organization. When the Dodgers arrive in Philadelphia to play the Phillies again, he arranges for Chapman to participate in a photo op with Jackie.
Shortly before the game, Harold, enters the Dodgers locker room and informs Jackie of the photo op, stating that Chapman wanted to participate in it with him to publically shake hands and make peace. Jackie is skeptical at first, but Harold insisted that the photo op was legit, and was happening to show that people like Chapman were capable of changing their ways. Jackie refuses to participate at first, correctly assuming that Chapman was only participating to save face. Though Harold agrees, he tells Jackie that it didn't matter if Chapman wasn't sincere, and that it would make good press for both teams and for the MLB as a whole. Initially offering to do the photo op either in the locker room or in a hallway, Jackie insists that it take place on the field, "where everyone can see."
Jackie meets Chapman publically on the field, where various sports reporters and photographers are present. Though the situation is clearly awkward for both men, Chapman states that he hopes Jackie has survived the "trial of fire" that the Phillies put him through, and that the entire team wished him good luck. The reporters then insist that both men publically shake hands to bury the hatchet once and for all, and they do so. The reporters take photographs of both men together, but instead of shaking hands, they instead hold a bat together, to which a smiling Jackie somewhat wryly says, "that way we don't have to touch skin." The photos are published in various magazines and newspapers.
During the credits, it is revealed that Chapman was fired as manager of the Phillies the following year and never managed again.
Trivia[]
- The scene where Chapman bullies Jackie is based on an actual event that happened between the two men, with the real-life Ben Chapman repeatedly calling the real-life Jackie Robinson a series of racial slurs. However, the main difference between the scene in the film and the real life event was that Jackie Robinson never broke down afterwards in the dugout in real life like he did in the film. According to director Brian Helgeland, he added the scene in because he felt "there was no way Robinson could have withstood all that abuse without cracking at least once, even if it was in private."
- Later in his life, the real Ben Chapman actually ended up renouncing racism and expressed remorse for his actions and beliefs during his career on more than one occasion, also stating that he was proud that he raised his son (who went on to coach an integrated football team with black players) to be a better man than he was.