10 questions · Sports
For sixty years American professional baseball had not a single Black player. There was no law, only an agreement among club owners that nobody wrote down and everybody kept. Black professionals played in their own leagues, in front of their own crowds, for a fraction of the money. In 1945 the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey, began looking for a man who could break that wall. He was not looking for the best player but for the right character. Jackie Robinson, born in Georgia in 1919 and raised in California, had starred in four sports at university and had faced a court martial as an army officer for refusing to move to the back of a bus; he was acquitted. At their first meeting Robinson asked whether Rickey wanted a player who would not fight back. Rickey said he wanted a player with the guts NOT to fight back. For three years, that was the deal: Robinson would swallow every insult. On 15 April 1947 he took the field as the first Black player in the modern major leagues. What followed was hard to bear: abuse from the stands, players spiking him deliberately, hotels that would not take him, death threats in the post, teammates circulating a petition against him. Robinson kept playing and was voted Rookie of the Year at the end of the season, then the league's Most Valuable Player two years later. In 1955 he won the World Series with the Dodgers. After his playing days he became an executive, worked in the civil rights movement and helped found a bank that gave loans to Black families who could not get them elsewhere. He died in 1972 at only 53, of complications of diabetes, nearly blind. Since 1997 his number 42 has been retired across the entire league: no player may wear it. On one day a year, every player does.
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Baseball
No Black player had appeared in the major leagues for sixty years: not because of a law, but because of an unwritten agreement among owners.
💡 Did you know? At university Robinson starred in four sports at once: baseball, football, basketball and track.
The Brooklyn Dodgers
His first game was on 15 April 1947: a date now seen as a turning point in American sport.
💡 Did you know? The club moved to Los Angeles in 1958, where it still plays.
Not to fight back
Robinson asked whether Rickey wanted a player who would not fight back. Rickey said: one with the guts not to fight back.
💡 Did you know? When the three years were up Robinson spoke his mind where it mattered and some journalists promptly called him difficult.
Number 42
Since 1997 no major league player may take it on.
💡 Did you know? Once a year, on Jackie Robinson Day, every player wears it at the same time: shirts with no name, only the 42.
He refused to move to the back of a bus
He was acquitted on every count.
💡 Did you know? That was eleven years before Rosa Parks and one of the reasons Branch Rickey picked him of all people.
Rookie of the Year
He had led the league in stolen bases and taken the Dodgers to the World Series.
💡 Did you know? The award now carries his name: it is the Jackie Robinson Award.
A bank
It lent to Black families and businesses who could not get credit anywhere else.
💡 Did you know? He also became the first Black vice-president of a major American corporation.
53
He died of complications of diabetes and was nearly blind by the end.
💡 Did you know? Nine days before his death he appeared at the World Series and said he would only really be pleased when he saw a Black manager in the dugout. That took another three years.
Foto: Photo by Bob Sandberg, Look photographer Restoration by Adam Cuerden · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Jackie Robinson
1919
Born: 31 January 1919 in Cairo, Georgia
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