a letter to Dodgers owner Branch Rickey asking to be traded. From the MLB Network special Jackie Robinson: ”A very popular player, a charming fellow, [Dixie Walker] prepared a petition [for Dodgers manager Leo Durocher] saying, ‘If you promote a black man [Robinson], we will not play.’ Branch Rickey [the Dodgers' president and general manager] contacted Durocher and said, ‘Stomp this fire out right now because we can’t let it spread.’" Durocher called a meeting of the players and said, "I don't care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin' zebra...I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What's more, I say he can make us all rich." Dixie Walker left a note for Branch Rickey, asking to be traded. Leeds, Alabama, is where Dixie Walker had his hardware store. He had to go home and answer to his customers, to his friends [who asked], ‘Do you mean you shower with this guy? Do you eat with this guy? We don’t do that.’ Branch Rickey explored trading Walker, but he couldn't afford to lose his star outfielder, and he continued to rely on Leo Durocher to keep the team in line.” In a 1981 interview, Walker explained that his trade request was not due to Robinson, but because Walker had become a scapegoat for opposition within the team. In his 2002 book, The Era, 1947–1957, author Roger Kahn wrote that Walker admitted to starting the Dodgers' player petition in 1947, in which the signatories opposed the integration of baseball. In an interview with Kahn, Walker stated, "I organized that petition in 1947, not because I had anything against Robinson personally or against Negroes generally. I had a wholesale business in Birmingham and people told me I’d lose my business if I played ball with a black man." According to Kahn, Walker referred to the petition as "the stupidest thing he’d ever done" and asked Kahn that, if he had the opportunity, he would write that Walker was sorry and apologized for his actions. In his 2014 book, Rickey & Robinson: The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball, Kahn also wrote that, in May 1947, Walker — the NL's player representative — proposed the idea of a league-wide players' strike in an attempt to end Robinson's MLB career. Although the St. Louis Cardinals reportedly were in favor of