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Honoring Jackie
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/taking_a_bat_to_prejudice.html
Like many New Yorkers leaving home for work on April 15, 1947, he wore a suit, tie and camel-hair overcoat as he headed for the subway. To his wife he said, “Just in case you have trouble picking me out, I’ll be wearing number 42.”
No one had trouble spotting the black man in the Dodgers’ white home uniform when he trotted out to play first base at Ebbets Field. Suddenly, only 399, not 400, major league players were white. Which is why 42 is the only number permanently retired by every team.
Jackie Robinson’s high school teachers suggested a career in gardening. Robinson’s brother Mack had finished second to Jesse Owens in the 200-meter dash at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Whites who won medals found careers opened for them. Mack, writes Jonathan Eig in " Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season," wore his Olympic jacket as a Pasadena, Calif., street sweeper, while Owens found himself racing against horses at county fairs, “one small step removed from a circus act.”
To appreciate how far the nation has come, propelled by what began 60 years ago today, consider not the invectives that Robinson heard from opponents’ dugouts and fans but the way he had been praised. “Dusky Jack Robinson,” as the Los Angeles Times called him, alerting readers to the race of UCLA’s four-sport star, ran with a football “like it was a watermelon and the guy who owned it was after him with a shotgun.”
That cringe-inducing fact is from Eig’s mind-opening book, an account of a 28-year-old man “filled with fear and fury” and terribly alone. It includes unfamiliar details about familiar episodes. There is Lt. Robinson’s 1944 refusal, 11 years before Rosa Parks, to move to the back of a bus at Fort Hood, Tex. And shortstop Pee Wee Reese, a Kentuckian who until 1947 had never shaken hands with a black person, crossing the infield to put a hand on Robinson’s shoulder when Cincinnati fans were being abusive.
But Eig is especially informative about the dynamics among the Dodgers, who, like many teams, had a Southern tinge. The most popular player was nicknamed Dixie (Walker) and one of the best pitchers was the grandson of a Confederate soldier. The Dodgers’ radio broadcaster, Red Barber, a Mississippian, considered resigning, then thought better. Radio presented Robinson as television cameras could not have – as, Eig shrewdly writes, “all action,” undifferentiated by visual differences from his teammates.
After the opening two games against the Boston Braves, the Dodgers played the Giants at the Polo Grounds in Harlem. The president of the National League, fearing excessive enthusiasm, suggested that Robinson should develop a sprained ankle. He did not, and the crowds were large, dressed as if for church – men in suits and hats, women in dresses – and decorous. Soon a commentator wrote, “Like plastics and penicillin, it seems like Jackie is here to stay.”
The Dodgers were not. Ebbets Field’s turnstiles clicked 1.8 million times in 1947, more than they ever had before or would again. But in 1947, in a Long Island potato field, Levittown was founded, offering mass-produced, low-cost housing emblematic of postwar suburbanization. Dodger fans were moving east on the island. After the 1957 season, the Dodgers moved west.
Only 25,623 fans went to the game on April 15, 1947 – 4,000 fewer than on Opening Day 1946 and 6,000 fewer than the ballpark’s capacity. Perhaps some white fans were wary of being with so many blacks. Usually blacks were no more than 10 percent of Dodger crowds, but on this day they may have been 60 percent.
By 1956, Robinson’s last season, he had lost his second-base position to Jim Gilliam, a black man. Robinson died of diabetes-related illnesses in 1972, at 53, the same age Babe Ruth was when he died. Ruth reshaped baseball; Robinson’s life still reverberates through all of American life. As Martin Luther King Jr., who was 18 in 1947, was to say, Robinson was “a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.”
“Robinson,” writes Eig, “showed black Americans what was possible. He showed white Americans what was inevitable.” By the end of the 1947 season, America’s future was unfolding by democracy’s dialectic of improvement. Robinson changed sensibilities, which led to changed laws, which in turn accelerated changes in sensibilities.
Jack Roosevelt Robinson’s middle name was homage to the president who said “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Robinson’s deeds spoke loudly. His stick weighed 34 ounces, which was enough.
As a lifetime baseballl fanatic, I couldn’t be more impressed by how Major League Baseball honored Jackie Robinson today. I am amazed. MLB is pure class.
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I thought he started playing for Montreal . . . ?
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The Brooklyn Dodgers my friend :)
“I asked them, ‘Did you pick me because you thought that I lacked the courage to fight back?’, but they replied, ‘No Jackie, we picked you because you had the courage to not’”
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baseball trivia- Which player homered in his first major league at bat, then played more than 20 years in the majors without ever hitting another? hint….it’s a pitcher
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Jack Roosevelt Robinson’s middle name was homage to the president who said “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Robinson’s deeds spoke loudly. His stick weighed 34 ounces, which was enough.
Wow, that’s a big penis.
Seriously, he was a good baseball player. His personal accomplishments catalyzed a movement much larger than he.
@Scarface:
baseball trivia- Which player homered in his first major league at bat, then played more than 20 years in the majors without ever hitting another? hint….it’s a pitcher
Nolan Ryan. Actually, I don’t know, but I can’t think of many pitchers that played over 20 years, particularly pitchers.
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Yea, its hard to think of any pitchers who played over 20 years, let alone pitchers. :mrgreen:
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Yea, its hard to think of any pitchers who played over 20 years, let alone pitchers. :mrgreen:
sunofa…
I thought I corrected that typo.Anyway, here is the answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_run_in_first_major_league_at_bat
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The Brooklyn Dodgers my friend :)
“I asked them, ‘Did you pick me because you thought that I lacked the courage to fight back?’, but they replied, ‘No Jackie, we picked you because you had the courage to not’”
He played for the Montreal Royals in 1946 - before he played for the Dodgers.
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i love baseball but will never forgive the MLB for the stike in the mid 90’s. ever. or the doping. barry bonds deserves nothing, thats hank aarons spot.
that and its not so clean anymore. all pro sports seem to be going down the tubes. thats why i’m an ardent supporter of college athletics, and want nasty pro slime to keep away from the kids until they are out of college. but hey, thats me.
on the subject of baseball, any of you guys ever been to omaha for the college world series?
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He played for the Montreal Royals in 1946 - before he played for the Dodgers.
Eh, go swallow a hockey puck :)
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i love baseball but will never forgive the MLB for the stike in the mid 90’s. ever. or the doping. barry bonds deserves nothing, thats hank aarons spot.
that and its not so clean anymore. all pro sports seem to be going down the tubes. thats why i’m an ardent supporter of college athletics, and want nasty pro slime to keep away from the kids until they are out of college. but hey, thats me.
Ultimately, it’s about the money. For just about everyone involved. Some players are great athletes, but it seems like the advertising creep has definitely taken some soul out of it. I think in the case of college that we just about get the same thing, except those kids don’t get paid to be in the same position as the pros.
on the subject of baseball, any of you guys ever been to omaha for the college world series?
Nope, but I bet it’s enjoyable.
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