Remembering Jackie Robinson: The Greatest Man In Sports History

On this date in 1947, a young, muscular African American and former UCLA athlete from Pasadena’s John Muir High School named Jack Roosevelt Robinson stepped onto the baseball diamond at Ebbets Field, in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City.

He was wearing the home whites of the local team, the Dodgers, playing first base against the Boston Braves on opening day.

Wearing number 42, he went 0-for-3 with a base-on-error, scoring a run to help the Dodgers defeat the Braves 5-3, before roughly 26,000 fans.

But the statistics of the game were insignificant.

What this former Negro League shortstop from the Kansas City Monarchs did that day not only made baseball the national pastime in truth and change the face of sports forever, it also changed America forever.

He did something no other black man had been able to do since 1887 – participate in a major league baseball game.

Jackie Robinson knew full well what he was getting into when he put on that  uniform with the script Dodger logo.

He knew that many of the white major league ballplayers, 60 percent of whom were from the segregated South and consequently saw blacks as inferior, would use any means necessary to see him fail, to keep the majors white and make sure that the color barrier stayed intact. And they did.

Simply put, Jackie went through hell that year.

Pitchers threw at his head on a regular basis, players went out of their way to spike him on the base paths and while running to first base (where he played that season), and vicious racial epithets and taunts were screamed at him by players, managers, and fans alike. In May of that year, the St. Louis Cardinals even threatened to strike rather than play against an African American.

Not to mention the frequent death threats that were sent to him.

Despite having a hair trigger temper and being known as someone who would fight at the drop of a hat, Robinson had to endure all of this abuse while keeping a stoic attitude, which was completely against his character. He had to promise Dodger general manager Branch Rickey that for three years, he would not answer back or retaliate, no matter how bad things got.

Jackie knew that as much as he dearly wanted to, punching out a bigot who threw at him or spiked him while calling him the n-word would lead the rest of the owners – who didn’t want blacks in baseball either – to say, “See, we knew they couldn’t hack it.”

It would likely have meant another 20 years before African Americans got another chance to play in the big leagues had Jackie fought back.

Other Negro League players at that time have said that Robinson was the only one of them who could have pulled that off; that’s why even though he wasn’t seen as the best of that group, he was acknowledged as the best choice.

The fact that Jackie excelled despite all of the forces against him during that 1947 season, winning the first Rookie of the Year award and leading Brooklyn to the pennant, says a lot about the character he had, the kind of man he was.

And it all began 64 years ago today.

Perhaps Bob Costas put it best when he said, “Were there better players? Sure. But were there better men? No.”

Putting it another way, Martin Luther King himself told Robinson that what he did made it easier for King to do his job, all of those sit-ins, boycotts, and marches.

Considering who it coming from, that is truly saying something. Some have said that the Civil Rights Movement started not with the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. the Board of Education Decision in 1954 or the Montgomery Bus Boycott the following year, but with Jackie Robinson breaking the color line in 1947.

Major League Baseball absolutely did the right thing when they announced in 1997 that Robinson’s No. 42 would be retired by all of the major league teams; only the Yankees’ Mariano Rivera wears the number now, as a clause was put in that those who were wearing the number at the time of the announcement could keep wearing it for the rest of their careers.

They also did the right thing by making this day, April 15, Jackie Robinson Day, and asking all players to wear No. 42 in his honor.

I know that I’ll be wearing my replica No. 42 Dodger Jersey tonight as I watch the Dodgers play the St. Louis Cardinals (ironic, isn’t it?) – even though it’s a bit small.

As a matter of fact, I feel that every sports fan out there should take a little time today to remember and celebrate a true sports legend, someone who was not only one of the greatest athletes of all time, but the greatest all-around person in the history of sports.

No one else deserves it more.