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Apr 8, 2007 8:30:57 GMT -5
Post by pemoco on Apr 8, 2007 8:30:57 GMT -5
MLB is planning to recognize the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier by having each team have a player wear #42 on the anniversary date. At the risk of starting a political discussion, what is the general feeling about this? Is it a fitting tribubte to a great accomplishment, or is playing games with uniform numbers something that is more sizzle than steak and cheapens the legacy of a great moment? For the Yankees, it obvious who will wear 42, since Mariano wears the number regularly. For the Mets its less clear (see attached article). Heard the Dodgers are going to have all their players wear 42 that day. ------------------------------------------------ Several could wear Robinson's No. 42 Sunday, April 08, 2007 ATLANTA -- As it turns out, Willie Randolph could have company when he dons a Mets uniform with the No. 42 on the back a week from today to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier. According to Pat Courtney, a spokesman for Major League Baseball, more than one representative from each team can wear Robinson's retired No. 42 on that day if they choose. "They have to clear it with us, but yes (they can)," Courtney wrote in an e-mail message. Before Randolph announced last week that he would wear Robinson's number for the April 15th game against the Washington Nationals at Shea Stadium, both Lastings Milledge and Damion Easley, the Mets' two African-American players, each expressed an interest in wearing the number. "Why not?" Easley said. "It'd be an honor to do that." Added Milledge, "Definitely. I will definitely wear it. If it wasn't for (Robinson) I wouldn't be here." www.silive.com/sports/advance/index.ssf?/base/Sports/117602826550060.xml&coll=1
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Apr 8, 2007 9:01:15 GMT -5
Post by mpep on Apr 8, 2007 9:01:15 GMT -5
I think it's a nice tribute. Using his first game's date for the celebration was brilliant since it falls when there's not a lot of attention on the pennant races yet and no other big stories in other sports.
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Apr 8, 2007 9:46:11 GMT -5
Post by philinla on Apr 8, 2007 9:46:11 GMT -5
I think I would have liked watching him play.
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Apr 12, 2007 22:26:38 GMT -5
Post by pemoco on Apr 12, 2007 22:26:38 GMT -5
Is Jackie Robinson's legacy fading six decades later? By Mike Dodd, USA TODAY
Sunday, more than 100 Major League Baseball players will wear No. 42 on their uniforms in honor of the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in the national pastime.
The Brooklyn Dodgers icon's number was retired from everyday use 10 years ago Sunday in an elaborate 50th-anniversary ceremony at New York's Shea Stadium that included President Clinton. MLB Commissioner Bud Selig used the occasion to emphasize baseball's commitment to hiring minorities.
Celebrations of Robinson and his legacy abound again this year, with one at the Dodgers game in Los Angeles and smaller programs at each of the other 14 ballparks hosting major league games.
But all the pomp also will put a spotlight on a troubling question for baseball: Is Robinson's legacy within the game fading?
The percentage of African-Americans in the major leagues is the lowest it has been since the 1960s — 8.3%, or only 72 players on opening-day rosters this month, according to a USA TODAY study that included injured players on the disabled list. The percentage of blacks in front office, managing and coaching positions hasn't increased during the last decade. Even Major League Baseball's central office, which has about 470 employees mostly in New York, has a smaller percentage of blacks in its workforce that it did in 1997. However, two of MLB's five executive vice presidents are African-American.
Robinson, who continued his crusade for equal opportunity for the disadvantaged after his playing career ended in 1956, probably would not accept the current situation, his widow says.
"He was always impatient for change and a fighter for change," Rachel Robinson says. "I think he would think the struggle is still on and he would not be satisfied with where we are."
"Are we where we should be? No. We've got a lot of work to do," says Jimmie Lee Solomon, MLB executive vice president for baseball operations. "Are we working on it? Yeah, we're working hard on it."
MLB is trying to boost blacks' participation with urban initiatives on several fronts, including its Diverse Business Partners Program and Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities (RBI), a youth program that helped lead current big-leaguers Dontrelle Willis of the Florida Marlins and Coco Crisp of the Boston Red Sox to pro careers in the game.
But the efforts are not gaining much traction in addressing a number of problems, particularly the growing disconnect with African-American youths and sports fans, who continue to be more interested in football and basketball.
A Harris Interactive survey released in January found only 7% of African-American adults said baseball was their favorite sport. It comes at a time of a growing presence of other minorities on the field; nearly one in three MLB players is Latino or Asian. Their increased presence has pushed the league's overall percentage of minority players to 40.5% this year, the highest ever.
But as the number of African-American players dwindles, the effect eventually could reverse gains made in increasing blacks' presence in front office and coaching positions in baseball.
"I don't doubt that opportunities will be provided," says Chicago White Sox senior vice president-general manager Ken Williams, the majors' only African-American GM. "But my concern is with the dwindling number of participants on the African-American front. As we move forward in future years, there will be fewer people in the pipeline. So how will those numbers grow? … Where are the candidates going to come from?"
Baseball has made significant progress in its overall diversity in the last 10 years. It received its highest marks ever in the recently released 2006 Major League Baseball Racial and Gender Report Card from the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, which annually examines the racial and gender composition of pro and college personnel in various sports.
But MLB's scorecard for African-Americans shows no home runs:
•The percentage of African-American players has continued to decline, dropping by 50% since 1997, according to the Institute's report. The overall figure was about 27% in 1975 and 17% in 1997.
•There are two African-American managers this year (the New York Mets' Willie Randolph and the Texas Rangers' Ron Washington). That's one fewer than in 1997, although during the last 10 years, there have been as many as eight in the same season (2002). The percentage of African-American coaches has remained 14% to 18% over the last 10 years. Representation in the general manager's office is the same as it was in 1997: one (Bob Watson was the New York Yankees GM at the time).
•The percentage of African-Americans in MLB's central office has dropped from 13% to 10.4% since 1997.
Community programs launched
Baseball has begun several diversity initiatives in the last 10 years. MLB says its Diversity Business Partner's Program, founded in 1998, has resulted in more than $400 million being spent with thousands of minority- and women-owned businesses.
MLB opened a Youth Baseball Academy at Compton Community College in Los Angeles last year, a $10 million facility, and continues its RBI program, which gives one-time grants to Boys and Girls Clubs of America seeking to start or expand urban baseball and softball leagues. RBI programs have been started in 185 U.S. cities, serving as many as 120,000 boys and girls, MLB says.
Baseball sponsored its first Civil Rights Game this spring in Memphis; proceeds are benefiting several charities, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Negro League Museum.
MLB also partners with its players union in the Baseball Tomorrow Fund, which it says has awarded more than $10 million in grants to programs that encourage youth participation in baseball and softball.
"I will stand up and shout from the top of the mountain (that increasing blacks' participation) is a priority for them," Williams says of MLB and its 32 clubs. "There is not just a business interest in keeping (Robinson's) name alive and the hope and vision behind the name. There is an interest from the heart."
Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, notes the irony regarding Robinson's dual dream of increasing minority involvement on and off the field.
"At the time of his passing (1972), African-Americans were starting to emerge as players but virtually non-existent in front office and managing positions. That has gotten significantly better," he says.
"But the part of his dream which looked like it was going to be a no-brainer — lots of African-American (players) — has gone in the other direction."
'Nothing is getting done'
Cleveland Indians pitcher C.C. Sabathia was the most recent player to sound the alarm over blacks' decreasing presence in baseball, saying last month that a concerted effort is needed. "Any reaction is good," he says of his comments, "because nothing is getting done."
"It's scary to see what's going on out there," says Minnesota Twins outfielder Torii Hunter, who launched a national urban youth baseball program to encourage participation by providing equipment and transportation to a tournament in Williamsport, Pa., home of the Little League World Series.
Many African-American athletes who might have pursued a career in baseball during a previous generation are pursuing basketball and football. Theories for the decline almost outnumber the players.
"A perfect storm was created," says Solomon, citing full college scholarships for football and men's basketball, the expense of baseball equipment, shoe companies' promotion of African-American basketball stars and baseball's focus on scouting in Latin America.
Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, author of Dropping the Ball: Baseball's Troubles and How We Can and Must Solve Them, suggests MLB, corporate sponsors, players and the NCAA unite to fund grants to deserving inner-city youths who receive only partial scholarships for college baseball.
Division I-A NCAA programs can offer 85 football scholarships and 13 men's basketball scholarships, but only 11.7 for baseball. Also, while schools must give a full scholarship to each player receiving aid in football and basketball, each baseball scholarship can be divided among several players.
Among Division I schools, 6.5% of baseball players were African-American in 2005, according to the NCAA's most recently available race and ethnicity data.
Winfield and current big-leaguers cite the expense of playing the game and baseball's marketing strategy as factors.
With youth baseball, "It's more like a country club. You've got to get instruction, playing in tournaments with fees," Hunter says. "And the equipment is more expensive."
Winfield says there are decreasing open spaces in U.S. cities and many parks departments can't afford the cost of maintaining baseball fields.
And while basketball markets stars such as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant — appeals that resonate with many African-American youths — baseball sells the experience of going to a game, which doesn't.
"Kids don't grow up saying I want to be like Yankee Stadium," Winfield says.
Solomon says Nike and other shoe and apparel companies, not necessarily the NBA, deserve credit for starting the slick marketing of NBA stars, but he agrees baseball must do better. "I think we have to focus on ways to get our players in front of our potential fans and our current fans," he says.
Hunter, a native of Pine Bluff, Ark., also says many African-American youngsters view the media and public criticism of superstar Barry Bonds as racist.
Bonds, who is arguably the game's highest-profile black player and is closing in on Hank Aaron's career home run record, has been at the center of a steroid controversy the last few years.
"The one big, black face is Barry Bonds, and they see he is constantly being scrutinized and he has never tested positive for anything," Hunter says. Black youths "think 'That game is not for us.' "
Finding top prospects
Critics suggest baseball teams have de-emphasized scouting America's inner cities to put their resources into scouting and developing players in Latin America. The logic: It's easier and cheaper to sign Latino players.
A team can develop a young player at an academy in Latin America and sign him when he turns 17. In the USA, that player would go into the amateur draft, fair pickings for all 30 teams and commanding a signing bonus if selected in the first round.
Solomon says he has heard anecdotally from urban areas that "scouts don't come here," but he believes "that's less and less the case." Teams will find the top prospects anywhere, he says. "The question is whether scouts will see the marginal African-American player.
"That's what the RBI program is designed to do, and that's what the Baseball Academy in Compton does," he says. "We just had a showcase in Compton, and there were 150 scouts there."
Meanwhile, Rachel Robinson says she is thrilled so many players will wear No. 42 Sunday. Ten years ago, she said, she hoped the 50th anniversary celebration would be a driving force to re-energize equal opportunity efforts in baseball and beyond.
Was it? "Not totally," she says. "I would have liked to have seen an increase in African-American inclusion in the game. The diversity is there in terms of the Latinos and also bringing in Asians … so for that I can applaud them. Yet for me, diversity right now is not the issue. It's more the inclusion."
Contributing: Bob Nightengale
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Apr 14, 2007 11:26:15 GMT -5
Post by pemoco on Apr 14, 2007 11:26:15 GMT -5
Make tribute to Robinson a lasting appreciation By NANCY ARMOUR - AP Sports Columnist Apr 14, 2007 - 07:15:41 CDT
Setting aside a day each year to honor Jackie Robinson is wonderful. So is Major League Baseball’s decision to retire his No. 42 across the league.
Those tributes, however, are easily forgotten once April 15 comes and goes.
If baseball really wants to pay tribute to Robinson and the legacy he left us, all the teams should crack open their considerable wallets on Sunday and write a check to sponsor a Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholar. Same goes for all the gazillionaires whose career paths would have taken a different turn if not for Robinson.
You really want to honor the man who changed baseball for the better? Then help his foundation level the playing field outside the ballpark. “It’s a way that I think perpetuates the dream of an authentically inclusive society,” said Della Britton Baeza, president and chief executive officer of the Jackie Robinson Foundation.
“That’s what Jackie wanted: ‘Just give me an opportunity, and I’ll show you I belong here.”’
A year after Robinson died in 1972, his wife, Rachel, started the foundation and the scholars’ program. The idea was to give underprivileged minority students money for college along with a support system to help them succeed at the highest levels.
Students receive $6,000 per year for tuition at the college of their choice. Each March, all of the scholars go to New York for 4 1/2 days of networking and leadership seminars. They’re also exposed to cultural events like plays, ballets and operas.
“Every internship, every job I’ve had the last four years, I’ve gotten from the networking skills I learned from the Jackie Robinson Foundation,” said Judge Gardner III, who already has an engineering job lined up after he graduates from Washington University in St. Louis this spring.
The foundation’s 97 percent graduation rate is more than double the national average for minority students and well above the average for all students.
More than 1,100 scholarships have been awarded, including 266 this academic year. Graduates have gone on to become, among other things, a classical pianist, a partner at Goldman Sachs and the attorney for the Boston Red Sox.
One scholar, Marcus Ellison, was homeless for a brief time while growing up in Maine. Now he’s the president of a real estate development firm. He also started a nonprofit program that provides tutoring and college prep services to low-income high school students and talked Bates College into giving a scholarship to one of the students.
All that, and Ellison is still a senior at New York University.
“We often talk about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and working as hard as you can on your own,” Ellison said. “But sometimes, no matter how hard you work or how talented you are, you need help from others because you might not even be aware of the opportunities out there.”
The best part? It doesn’t cost that much to give these kids a hand.
A $40,000 donation supports one student for four years. Up the donation to $200,000, and the scholarship goes on forever.
Yes, that’s a lot of money for most people. For a baseball team or a major league player, that’s pocket change. Alex Rodriguez could pick up the tab for three students with what he makes in one day alone.
“Doing our small share to give these young men and women an opportunity that perhaps they wouldn’t have otherwise, and then stepping back and watching them excel and do these marvelous things, that’s far and away the most noteworthy aspect of the partnership,” said Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, whose team sponsors 42 scholars a year.
Right now, only five of the 30 major league teams — the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, White Sox and Texas Rangers — are sponsoring a scholar. MLB and some of its officers also give to the scholars’ program.
And the hundreds of players making an average of $2.94 million this year? Surely they would like to show their gratitude for what Robinson did.
Guess not. Derek Jeter and Royce Clayton are the only current players on the scholars’ donor list.
This isn’t to say teams and players aren’t giving back. Every team has a department that doles out charitable grants and gifts. A-Rod donates to UNICEF and the Boys and Girls Clubs. Ken Griffey Jr. supports the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
But every year at this time, baseball proudly talks about how much Jackie Robinson meant to the game. How, with dignity and class, he changed the course of American history by not only opening our national pastime to players of every race, but by opening our minds to the promise of a colorblind world.
Giving Robinson a day and putting his number up in ballparks is a fine honor. A signature on a check would be an even better one.
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Apr 16, 2007 13:49:29 GMT -5
Post by jumbo on Apr 16, 2007 13:49:29 GMT -5
April 16, 2007 Sports of The Times Honoring Robinson’s Achievement and Carrying On His Legacy By DAVE ANDERSON
The street sign is the same, but nothing else is. Sullivan Place was outside the Brooklyn Dodgers’ clubhouse, under the stands along the right-field foul line, when Jackie Robinson arrived there for opening day on April 15, 1947. But yesterday, amid the wind and rain, Sullivan Place was next to a tree-lined courtyard of the 23-story yellow-brick Ebbets Field Apartments, around the corner from the Jackie Robinson Intermediate School on McKeever Place.
All over the major leagues, on the 60th anniversary of his first major league game, dozens of players, including the entire Los Angeles Dodgers team, were wearing uniforms with his No. 42 on the back in honor of Jackie Robinson Day.
But opening day wasn’t Robinson’s first time in that Dodger clubhouse. The previous Thursday, during an exhibition game at Ebbets Field with the minor league Montreal Royals, for whom Robinson played in 1946 and throughout spring training, the Dodgers announced the purchase of his contract.
When that game ended, still in his Montreal uniform, Jackie Robinson, 28, a four-letter athlete at U.C.L.A. and an Army lieutenant during World War II, entered the Dodgers’ clubhouse.
“As I remember, he walked in with Branch Rickey Jr.,” said Ralph Branca, a 21-game winner for those pennant-winning Dodgers that season, referring to the son of the Dodgers general manager who had signed Robinson to shatter organized baseball’s color line. “There weren’t any lockers available, so Jackie had to hang his clothes on a couple of nails on the wall near the trainer’s room. Then somebody handed him a white uniform with 42 in blue numbers on it.”
Branca welcomed Robinson with a handshake; so did a few other Dodgers.
“Some of the Southern guys didn’t shake his hand,” Branca said in a telephone interview, “but it wasn’t dramatic. I don’t think anybody really grasped the social importance of what was happening. He had been in Montreal and he was just another ballplayer who could help us win. Growing up in south Mount Vernon, I’d played with and against blacks all my life. Four black families lived on our block. So did Irish, Italian and German families.”
That weekend, Robinson played first base in three exhibition games against the Yankees, an annual series in those years, before the April 15 season opener against the Boston Braves on Tuesday.
But one of the Southern guys on that Dodgers team, the right-handed relief pitcher Clyde King, out of Goldsboro, N.C., and the University of North Carolina, did shake Robinson’s hand.
“I remember when Mr. Rickey signed me in 1944,” King said in a telephone interview, “he asked me the questions he asked everybody: ‘Do you plan to have a family? Do you believe in God?’ Then he asked me, ‘Would it bother you if you played with a black man?’ So he was thinking about it even then. I told him, ‘No, I’d played with black kids in Goldsboro; a black lady helped my mother around the house.’ I never knew the difference, I really didn’t.”
Robinson soon had a real locker, not far from Branca’s, and later his locker was along the wall near those of Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider and Gil Hodges. By then the Dodgers and all of baseball had realized that Jackie Robinson, the National League rookie of the year in 1947, had more than a bat and a glove.
“He was the best base runner I ever saw,” said King, once a manager of the Yankees. “One time against the Phillies, he hit a double and when their second baseman came around with the late tag, he slammed his glove into Jackie’s head so loudly, we could hear it in the dugout. Jackie never said a word, but two pitches later, he stole third. That was his answer.”
King, who had a 6-5 record with a 2.77 earned run average that season, recalled the Dodger infielders surrounding him when he arrived in a bases-loaded jam.
“Pee Wee joked, ‘You’re so smart, you’re a college guy, let’s see you get out of this,’ ” King said, referring to the Hall of Fame shortstop and team captain. “But all Jackie said was: ‘Don’t worry about it. Just get ’em to hit the ball to me.’ That’s how confident he was, even as a rookie. When I got out of it, Pee Wee told me, ‘Nice going.’ Jackie didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.”
•
As a rookie, Robinson, batting second and playing first base, hit .297 and scored 125 runs. In 1949, batting cleanup and playing second base, he was the National League’s most valuable player and batting champion with a .342 average, 203 hits, 124 runs batted in, 122 runs scored and 37 stolen bases. He was on his way to the Hall of Fame.
Wherever the Dodgers played, especially in cities like St. Louis and Cincinnati, blacks from all over the South would travel to cheer him. But not everybody accepted him. Early in the 1951 season, four years after his arrival, the Dodgers arrived in Cincinnati after a letter that included a death threat was delivered to the Reds’ offices, The Cincinnati Enquirer and the police department.
“In a clubhouse meeting, our manager, Charlie Dressen, got up and read the letter to us about how if Jackie took the field, he’ll be shot,” Carl Erskine, a Dodger right-hander of that era, recalled over the telephone. “There was complete silence.” Erskine then mentioned the Dodgers’ left fielder at the time, saying: “But then Gene Hermanski piped up: ‘Hey, Skip, I’ve got an idea. If we all wore 42 out there, they won’t know who to shoot.’ ”
Everybody laughed, especially Robinson.
When the Dodgers went out to warm up before the game, Robinson was standing near Reese when Reese joked: “You mind moving over a little, Jack? This guy might be a bad shot.”
Until the run-up to yesterday’s ceremonies, Hermanski’s joke was the only time it had been suggested that No. 42 should be worn by all the Dodgers, much less by dozens of other major leaguers.
It should happen more often than once every 60 years.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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Apr 17, 2007 14:26:55 GMT -5
Post by jumbo on Apr 17, 2007 14:26:55 GMT -5
TIME MAGAZINE Issue Date: Apr. 23, 2007 Where Have We Gone, Mr. Robinson? By Gerald Early In 1964, at the height of the civil rights movement, Jackie Robinson published a compilation of interviews with major league players and managers about the state of integration of the game. Robinson concluded that baseball had achieved considerable progress. Less than two decades after Robinson became the first black player in the major leagues, African Americans made up close to 20% of professional baseball players. The name of Robinson's book was Baseball Has Done It. So what would Robinson make of the relationship between the game he loved and African Americans today? He would find reasons to be encouraged: baseball is more diversified and more international than ever, racism is considerably lessened, and there are nearly twice as many teams as when Robinson first broke in 60 years ago. But African Americans are disappearing from baseball. Blacks make up 8% of major league baseball players today and only 3% of players on NCAA Division I baseball teams. In coming days, you will probably hear sociologists and sports pundits cite those figures as evidence that baseball is turning its back on Robinson's legacy. And so the questions arise: Why are there so few black ball players today? Should there be more? Let's examine the second question first. The percentage of black ballplayers is in decline. And yet it's still roughly what blacks represent in the population as a whole. So they aren't significantly underrepresented. In the mid-1970s, when nearly 1 in 3 major league players was black, many people, including some liberals and some blacks, complained that they were overrepresented. The argument was that too many blacks were being steered into sports, distorting the young black male's sense of ambition. Many people said that blacks' being overrepresented in sports like baseball was bad; now they say that blacks being underrepresented is bad. Well, which is it? Black Americans are far more underrepresented among people who win the science Nobel Prizes, but that's rarely treated as a national crisis. Winning the Nobel Prize for Medicine would do more for the group's image than winning the MVP or a Cy Young Award, which black Americans have already proved they can do. Still, there's no denying that fewer and fewer black youths are taking up the sport. One reason commonly offered is that black neighborhoods lack the necessary equipment and facilities--bats, gloves, green fields--to train children to play. In sociology, this is called deficit theory, the idea that one group does not do what another group does because it lacks the resources. Deficit theory is often used to explain the behavior of black Americans. But it is almost always wrong. If lack of green spaces and the cost of equipment explain why black Americans don't play baseball today, then how does one account for the fact that they played it and even organized their own leagues in the early 20th century--when they had less money, less access to space because of segregation, fewer resources, and faced more rigorous racism? And blacks make up about 70% of players in the NFL, even though football requires just as much green space, organization and uniforms. The real reason black Americans don't play baseball is that they don't want to. They are not attracted to the game. Baseball has little hold on the black imagination, even though it existed as an institution in black life for many years. Among blacks, baseball is not passed down from father to son or father to daughter. As the sports historian Michael McCambridge points out, baseball sells itself through nostalgia--the memory of being taken to a game by your father when you were a child. But for blacks, going back into baseball's past means recalling something called white baseball and something else called black baseball, which was meant to exist under conditions that were inferior to the white version. Even the integration of baseball, symbolized by Robinson, reminds blacks that their institutions were weak and eventually had to be abandoned. As the controversies over reparations for slavery and the Confederate flag have shown, it is difficult to sell African Americans the American past as most Americans have come to know it. Perhaps Jackie Robinson would be disappointed to know that a relatively small number of blacks still remain drawn to the game he transformed. But he would be far more determined that all Americans acknowledge the complicated history of race in this country and how it continues to influence our mores and conversations today. The fact that many of us blacks have become strangers to baseball has a lot to do with the fact that we have developed a better, clear-eyed understanding of our experience as a people. And that is something Jackie Robinson would be proud of. Gerald Early is the Merle Kling professor of modern letters at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. Click to Print Find this article at: www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1609796,00.html
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Apr 17, 2007 14:32:49 GMT -5
Post by jumbo on Apr 17, 2007 14:32:49 GMT -5
TIME MAGAZINE Issue Edition: Apr. 23, 2007 In the Footsteps of a Legend Oral History by Cal Fussman I can remember being a kid back in Mobile [Ala.] sitting on the back porch when an airplane flew over. I told my father when I grew up I was going to be a pilot. You know what he said? He said, "Ain't no colored pilots." So I told him I'd be a ballplayer. And he said, "Ain't no colored ballplayers." There were a lot of things blacks couldn't be back then. There weren't any colored pilots. There weren't any colored ballplayers in the major leagues. So it was hard to have those dreams. Then Jackie came with the Brooklyn Dodgers to Mobile for an exhibition game in 1948. I went to hear him talk to a crowd in front of a drugstore. I skipped school to meet Jackie Robinson. If it were on videotape, you'd probably see me standing there with my mouth wide open. I don't remember what he said. It didn't matter what he said. He was standing there. My father took me to see Jackie play in that exhibition game. After that day, he never told me ever again that I couldn't be a ballplayer. I was allowed to dream after that. --HENRY AARON Here I am, 17 years old, just signed by the Cincinnati Reds, and I join the minor league team in Ogden, Utah. First minute I get some free time in Ogden, I go over to a movie theater. I get to the front of the line and put $10 on the counter. The woman behind the counter says, "We don't serve your kind." I say, "Excuse me?" I mean, I'd heard her say something to me, but I wasn't really focused on what she was saying. "We don't serve your kind." "Well, what kind am I?" She says, "We don't serve blacks. You can't come into this theater." It's hard to describe the shock. Nobody had ever flat-out rejected me before for being black. I took my $10 off the counter and, as I turned away, my eyes filled up with tears. It was the way the lady said it. It set a tone. Go back to where you're staying and don't come out. And that's what I did. I just withdrew. I didn't go anywhere. Probably I should have told people at the ball club what happened. Normally, I think I would have. But I was so crushed that I didn't even think about telling them. --FRANK ROBINSON Why? Why? Why? What is it about us that we had to be treated as subhuman beings? What did we do to be treated like we were treated? Were they afraid of us? Maybe so, because the Robinsons and the Dobys and the Campanellas and the Newcombes and then the great players who came after us--the Mayses and the Gibsons and the Aarons--we set all kinds of records. I'm the only player in baseball history to have won the Rookie of the Year award, the Most Valuable Player award, and the Cy Young Award. Nobody else in baseball history--black, white, brown, tan, yellow, or whatever--has won those three awards in his career. Was the white man afraid of that, afraid of what we would do to baseball? Baseball had a famous commissioner named Kenesaw Mountain Landis back when I was growing up. And Kenesaw Mountain Landis once said, "As long as I'm the commissioner of baseball ..."--and here Landis used the n-word--"will never play in the major leagues." Thank God, he died in 1944. I didn't know who he was, didn't know where he came from, didn't know a thing about him. But I was glad when I read the bastard had died. If Kenesaw Mountain Landis had lived another 20 years, you never would have seen me or Jackie in baseball. I could go to the Army, go to war, fight and die for my country like some of my friends did. This country would take my taxes. But I couldn't play the all-American pastime. Do you know what Jackie's impact was? Well, let Martin Luther King tell you. In 1968, Martin had dinner in my house with my family. This was 28 days before he was assassinated. He said to me, "Don, I don't know what I would've done without you guys setting up the minds of people for change. You, Jackie, and Roy will never know how easy you made it for me to do my job." Can you imagine that? How easy we made it for Martin Luther King! --DON NEWCOMBE Word of the Washington Senators never even got to the D.C. projects where I grew up. We didn't even know there was a major league baseball team in town. Our baseball heroes were these old guys who played on Sundays in mismatched uniforms, argyle socks under the stirrups, and a half-pint of whiskey in the back pocket. A half-pint, because that fit right in. If these guys didn't get too drunk on Saturday nights, they were out there playing on Sundays. And all us kids wanted to do was grow up and be just like them--including the half-pint. But one day when I was about 11 years old, a baseball player from the Senators came to our playground to conduct a clinic--and he was white. It was the very first time I had ever looked a white guy in the eyes. Honest. People just didn't interact as we do today. This guy was wearing an official Washington Senators home uniform, crisp and white with piping around the sleeves and Senators embroidered across his chest. Everything matched. His shoes were all clean and polished. And his eyes weren't all red. The player's name was Jerry Priddy, and he was the second baseman for the Senators. Maybe Priddy had lost a coin toss or something and had to be the one to go over to our part of town and do a little clinic for the organization. But he came over, and he didn't stay for just 15 minutes or half an hour. The man talked to us for at least two hours, and I just couldn't believe it. Priddy even singled me out. He told the other kids to move back and said, "Watch this kid." He bounced a grounder to me, and I got my little feet in place, grabbed the ball, and I took a little hop--just like the guys I'd seen playing on Sundays. I threw it overhand to him, and the ball made a loud pop in his mitt. I still remember what he said: "Wow!" Priddy looked down at my feet and said, "Hey, kid, you've got a chance to be a good baseball player one day. Where's your shoes?" I was barefoot. --MAURY WILLS In 1969, St. Louis Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies. He didn't want to go and eventually sued baseball, challenging its reserve clause, which gave owners absolute rights over players. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Flood lost, but his suit paved the way for modern free agency. He died Jan. 20, 1997. His wife recalls his testimony: Curt wore No. 21. Half of 42. Jackie was Curt's hero from childhood. Curt wore 42 in the minor leagues. But 42 wasn't available when he got to the Cardinals. So he took 21. The moment that Jackie and Rachel walked into the courtroom for Curt's trial--well, that was one of the high points of Curt's life. To have Jackie Robinson tell him, "Young man, I respect you. What you're doing is right. You have the courage to stand up. I am here for you." That brought Curt almost to tears. --JUDY PACE, WIFE OF CURT FLOOD www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1609972,00.html
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Apr 17, 2007 16:44:25 GMT -5
Post by mpep on Apr 17, 2007 16:44:25 GMT -5
One of my constant gripes is how Landis is revered for cleaning up baseball and the conversation always ends there. The thing that galls me is that "cleaning up baseball" wasn't really anything special with the powers the owners gave the commissioner's office, and Landis was only special in his noxiousness. If a more reasonable man had been commissioner in that era, it's possible the color line could have been broken in the 20s. McGraw wasn't the only person clamoring for it.
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Apr 17, 2007 17:51:15 GMT -5
Post by philinla on Apr 17, 2007 17:51:15 GMT -5
agreed.
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Apr 17, 2007 18:15:09 GMT -5
Post by jumbo on Apr 17, 2007 18:15:09 GMT -5
I think it would be fair to say that baseball has reached the position it has, irrespective of the Commissioners it has had to endure.
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Apr 17, 2007 18:19:37 GMT -5
Post by jumbo on Apr 17, 2007 18:19:37 GMT -5
I think I would have liked watching him play. You would have, as did I, even though I disliked the Dodgers as a kid.
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Apr 17, 2007 23:59:53 GMT -5
Post by philinla on Apr 17, 2007 23:59:53 GMT -5
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