The words “sports hero” get thrown around a lot in America. But today is a day to celebrate a real sports hero, Jackie Robinson. Even if you hate baseball!
If you come down to Ebbets Field today, you won’t have any trouble recognizing me. My number’s forty-two.
–Jackie Robinson to his wife, April 15, 1947:
When Jackie Robinson (1919–72) said that to his wife, it was on the day he became the first black man to play modern major league baseball. Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers that year and was named Rookie of the Year. In 1949, he won the National League’s Most Valuable Player award.
Although he started as a first baseman, Robinson gained his greatest fame playing second base. An outstanding hitter, Robinson finished with a .311 lifetime batting average and was also a superior runner and base stealer. He played all ten years of his major league career with the Dodgers and was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
But the simple numbers of sports statistics and achievements do not tell his story. Born in Cairo, Georgia, Jack Roosevelt Robinson starred in four sports at the University of California at Los Angeles. Robinson served during World War II, and in 1945 joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. In 1946, he played minor league baseball for the Montreal Royals. And then Branch Rickey of the Dodgers made the decision to bring Robinson to the big leagues.
And he would pay a heavy price for his bold move. For much of his career, he regularly received death threats and heard poisonous insults. And not just from the stands in some Deep South backwater, but from the opposing dugout in places like Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love and birthplace of America’s freedom. Robinson later recounted hearing the opposing Phillies players scream at him:
“Hey, nigger, why don’t you go back to the cotton field, where you belong?”
“They’re waiting for you in the jungles, black boy!”
“We don’t want you here, nigger.”*
Robinson battled through it all in an epic career that transcended the sport. When Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line, it was one more crack in the foundation of American racism and segregation. Jackie Robinson helped America take one more crucial step in breaking down the racial barriers that had divided America.
Read what Henry Aaron, another baseball star who confronted ugly racism in a later era, wrote about Jackie Robinson from a Time magazine list of 100 Heroes and Icons
http://205.188.238.181/time/time100/heroes/profile/robinson01.html
This post is adapted from DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT® HISTORY where you can read more about the civil rights movement.
