Editor’s note: This story first appeared in The Sporting News dated June 2012, a special double issue with the cover headline “This Game We Love: 10 stories of courage, ingenuity, deceit and redemption that shaped baseball and our devotion to it.” In the issue, TSN, which had covered baseball since March 17, 1886, ranked the top 10 stories that shaped baseball and Jackie Robinson breaking MLB’s color barrier was No. 1. This and an accompanying story — “If not for Jackie …” — are the last stories in the TSN print archives about Jackie Robinson.
April 15, 1947, is the continental divide of baseball. All things that came before flow one direction, all that have come afterward flow another.
The foreword to baseball’s biggest, most important story was written nearly 18 months earlier when Branch Rickey signed Jack Robinson, as The Sporting News called him then and his widow calls him now, to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers’ top minor league team in Montreal.
But on April 15, 1947, a country eager to watch barnstorming Negro Leaguers play yet unwilling to feed or house them in their travels began to live up to its potential.
That day, Robert Lipsyte and Pete Levine write in Idols of the Game, “represented both the dream and the fear of equal opportunity and it would change forever the complexion of the game and the attitudes of Americans.”
Can there be a bigger thing than to change attitudes on both sides of a racial divide? From one side, to understand what Jackie Robinson meant — and continues to mean — is to imagine possibilities that never existed. From the other is to see that accepting those not like us makes us better, not just athletically but socially and morally.
Jackie Robinson took an oh-fer that day and still managed to score the winning run in a 5-3 Dodgers victory over the visiting Boston Braves.
Seven decades later, we continue to struggle with our differences.
Participation in baseball among African Americans has fallen, primarily because of opportunities in other sports. But if we measure ourselves by who’s playing what games, then we sell short what Jackie Robinson meant, why he not only broke baseball’s color line but also fought for other civil rights in his lifetime.
Jackie Robinson’s widow, Rachel, oversees the Jackie Robinson Foundation. At 89, she is keen to help America appreciate her husband’s struggles and understand his legacy.
Earlier this year, she was invited to the first game under the Dodgers’ new owners. To Dodgers fans in Los Angeles, the ceremonial first pitch by Magic Johnson, the face of the new ownership group, signaled a new era.
To Rachel Robinson it meant more.
“The fact that he’s a Black man does make a difference,” she said. “It means there is still African American influence in the game and in the organization. If you’re asking me if it’s like when Jack broke in, you might make the comparison in some ways. Sixty-five years later, and still room for improvement.”
Friend + co-worker Matthew Shelburne heard I was working on a #JackieRobinson project (more on that later) and DM’d, “Biked over to his grave the other day in Queens and figured you would appreciate it.” Because that’s just how we roll at The @SportingNews.
? Matthew Shelburne pic.twitter.com/ASI2hcdRrZ
— ??? ????? (@bobhille) April 11, 2022
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