Jackie Robinson
Sixty years ago today, Jackie Robinson stepped onto the field for the Dodgers to man first base. He represented the first modern African-American player to play baseball in Major League Baseball. Sixteen years before Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Robinson moved the country forward towards the American Civil Rights Movement of the late fifties and sixties. Twenty years before American would see the first interracial kiss on the silver screen, Robinson was thrilling baseball fans with his talent, skill, and determination.
Jackie Robinson, by virtue of being a baseball player, was one of the first black heroes to white children of American. During his ten year playing career, all in Brooklyn, kids chased him down the street trying to get his autograph. To those young fans, Robinson was fighting the good fight against the hated New York Giants and New York Yankees. Robinson won Rookie of the Year in 1947 and the MVP award in 1949. A whole generation of baseball fans, as well as baseball players were changed forever.
By the time I became a baseball fan, black players were well established. In fact, my favorite players growing up were Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, the two black stars of the 80’s New York Mets. It wasn’t until much later that I even learned of the time when baseball was all white. It seemed inconceivable to a kid in 1986, when the all time home run champion was Hank Aaron, the best pitcher in baseball was Dwight Gooden, and Willie Mays was considered the greatest all around player, that blacks were ever not part of baseball.
Sadly, it is true that just a decade before I was born, that blacks were considered second class citizens by law. It is a blight on our nation that we first had slavery, and then the legal oppression of an entire race. Jackie Robinson, to me anyway, was one those civil rights pioneers that we owe our thanks to opening our eyes to the idiocy of racism. He was a great ball player and a great American. April 15th should be a national holiday, in the same way we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.
