WI in 1947 Branch Rickie and Jackie Robinson didn't break the color barrier in MLB; let's say neither existed. . . . How/when would MLB become integrated?
Probably about half a season later when Bill Veeck signs Larry Doby to play for the Indians.
Your post suggest you believe Branch Rickie and Jackie Robinson aren't as important as purported. You believe that without Robinson, the AL would have made the break through anyway? I have often heard that the AL was the tougher nut to crack when it came to segregated baseball.
However Veeck was very unpopular with other owners due to his rebellious nature. It is not unlikely to think the other owners might not have supported Veeck and even challenged integration if he was the point man for all of baseball.
Another interesting angle to the whole idea of baseball integration: in 1903, John McGraw tried to sign Charlie Grant, a black second baseman. to the Baltimore Orioles (then a scrambling team in the upstart American League).
A few years later McGraw became manager of the NY Giants and one of the most powerful people in baseball. Supposedly McGraw several times talked about signing black players in the 1900s-1920s.
What if, for instance, in 1925, he's getting fed up with getting overshadowed by Babe Ruth and he says, "the hell with the unwritten rule, I am John McGraw of the NY Giants, I am gonna sign black players whether anybody else likes it or not."
McGraw kept a list of black players he wanted for the Giants: IIRC, it was found among his personal effects when he died. I've mentioned the scenario you suggest elsewhere, by the way: i.e., McGraw goes to the Giants' upper management after the Yankees have beaten them in the World Series, and proposed signing a couple of black players in order to (a) return to/stay on top of the NL, and (b) regain primacy among the fans of New York. With players like Cool Papa Bell and Josh Gibson, he might just have done so.
This has “NYC black player arms race” written all over it. If the Giants do it, you bet your ass the Dodgers will, and then the Yankees almost have to - especially if McGraw beats the Yankees with a guy like Gibson.
Well, maybe with respect to the Yankees: even in the '20s, the Yankees front office had a rather elevated / elitist opinion of the franchise, figuring they could go on winning with a lily-white roster. Now, if someone like often cash-strapped Connie Mack or perpetually cash strapped Clark Griffith had signed a couple of black stars relatively inexpensively, and either the A's and/or the Senators had started winning big time, that would definitely have forced the Yankees' hands.
I was thinking the same thing from a different point of view. The Yankees could continue to dominate the AL with white players, assuming no one else in the AL got on board with integration, but if they kept losing the World Series to the likes of the Dodgers and Giants after they sign black players, the Yankees will likely follow suit.
I can’t imagine people would be that up in arms in NYC over the Yankees not integrating for purposes of equality and civil rights, but if the fans start agitating with “why aren’t they doing everything in their power to win?” then signing black players will be a near-certainty. It wouldn’t matter if the teams taking down the Yankees are the likes of the A’s, Senators and Indians (or maybe Comiskey decides black players are cheaper and signs them to save a buck, which would inevitably bring back the term “Black Sox” in a whole different light) or if it’s the crosstown rivals in the Series.
Another wrinkle - given that Landis was a hardcore segregationist (how much of this was Landis himself and how much was him pandering to ownership is debatable) the best that black players could hope for would be that Landis would allow owners to integrate but not demand or even ask that they do so. OTL the last holdout was the Red Sox (the Senators held out until 1954 and the Yankees until 1955, but in fairness, breaking in with the Yankees was a hell of a feat no matter what color you were, and it happened a year after the Yankees cracked 100 wins and still didn’t win the pennant, so based on that, the Yankees would probably be the last NYC team to have a black player and probably would do so between five and 10 years after their crosstown rivals did so. And it would probably happen after a tough loss.)