Jackie Robinson Day Is Celebrated In Los Angeles And Across The League

Seventy-nine years ago this past Wednesday, Jackie Robinson went out to first base at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and became the first Black man to play major league baseball. These facts are well-known and well-trod. So, too, is the story that Branch Rickey told Robinson that they had to win with hitting, running, and fielding, and that he was looking for a ballplayer “with the guts not to fight back” against the racial abuse, taunts, and violence he would encounter. One need not be a baseball historian, or even a baseball fan, to appreciate and honor the legacy of Jack Roosevelt Robinson.

And yet, every year since 1997, on April 15^th, in ballparks all across our great land, we do just that, with MLB’s official “Jackie Robinson Day.” Since 2004, players on every team wear Jackie’s #42 on the back of their jerseys, and they do so in Dodger blue. Pregame festivities include remembrances of the great Dodger and civil rights leader, and special care is taken to make sure that Jackie’s memory is not lost to any generation.

There is no place where the celebration of Jackie is bigger or more heartfelt than at Dodger Stadium. While the Dodgers don’t always play at home on this particular day (as recently as 2014 they played in San Francisco), the schedule-makers do attempt to make that happen. And this year was a perfect alchemy, with Los Angeles playing the New York Mets, who play at CitiField in Queens, which has an entrance that is designed to evoke Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.

Prior to the game, both the Mets and the Dodgers gathered in the Centerfield Plaza, where a statue of Jackie Robinson is located, and listened to the words of Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. There is no one better to discuss the Negro Leagues and the history of the Black player in baseball. Kendrick reminded the assembled players that “the social advancement of America can be tied directly to Jackie’s breaking of baseball’s color barrier…that it wasn’t just a part of the Civil Rights Movement, but the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.”

Back in the ballpark, the players – and essentially all MLB players on this day – took batting practice sporting t-shirts and sweatshirts that read: “Breaking Barriers” with the years of Robinson’s career on either side of the logo.

Once the players had completed their pre-game routines in Los Angeles, Sonya Pankey Robinson, Jackie and Rachel Robinson’s granddaughter, threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Mookie Betts (himself a leading voice for increasing Black representation in baseball). Unfortunately, Rachel Robinson (age 103), who continues to be the guiding force for the Jackie Robinson Foundation that she established in 1973 shortly after her husband’s death, was not in attendance at Dodger Stadium Wednesday night.

The home team took the field wearing Brooklyn Dodgers hats, and proceeded to beat the visiting Mets by the score of 8-2. Shohei Ohtani continued his early-season dominance, throwing six innings, striking out ten, while allowing just two hits (both to MJ Melendez), and his first earned run of the season.

Prior to the game, José Mota, the son of Dodger legend Manny Mota, who broadcasts Dodger games for SportsNet LA, told Forbes.com that in 1948, his father, just ten year’s old at the time, first saw Robinson play. During spring training in the Dominican Republic, and Mota and some other boys climbed a mango tree to look inside the ballpark and watch baseball’s first “colored” player get ready for his sophomore season. That spring in the DR was special for Robinson, in that it was the first time that he stayed and swam in the same hotel as his teammates.

On Tuesday night, ESPN’s Buster Olney had a chance to speak with the older Mota, MLB’s all-time pinch-hit king, who told the reporter that Robinson was his hero.

On October 15, 1972, twenty-five years after his first appearance in a MLB game, the baseball establishment recognized the importance of the achievement, and Robinson gave a speech prior to Game 2 of the World Series in Cincinnati. He concluded his remarks that day with this famous line:

“I am extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon, but must admit that I am going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third-base coaching line one day and see a Black face managing in baseball. Thank you very much.”

Those words would carry even more import insofar as Robinson died of a massive heart attack just nine days later. Two and half years after Robinson said those words, on April 8, 1975, future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson managed his first game for Cleveland, breaking yet another color barrier. Rachel Robinson threw out the first pitch.

While today the Dodgers and MLB hold the icon in the highest regard, ‘twas not always thus. In fact, in 1969, barely a decade after he retired, Los Angeles issued his #42 to Ray Lamb, a 40^th round draft pick. The right-handed pitcher made his MLB debut on August 1, 1969, and immediately gave up a double to Joe Torre. Lamb ultimately pitched three inning and gave up one run in what one might view as a righteous Dodger loss to St. Louis. The Dodgers retired Robinson’s #42 in 1972, followed by the rest of the league on the 50^th anniversary – April 15, 1997.

The statue of Jackie Robinson that sits at the “front door” of Dodger Stadium has three different quotes attributed to the man:

• “There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.”
• “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”
• “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”

Today, the question of freedom still pervades our polity, and we know from history that many people did not like Jackie Robinson – the man or the player. But, the arc of time has allowed Robinson to accrue a level of respect rarely seen outside of world or religious leaders. The impact his achievements and triumphs had on the lives of others is unquestioned. And, the results of Jackie’s feats, performances, and words and deeds – those that were celebrated at Dodger Stadium and fourteen other ballparks Wednesday night – confirm for all time that Jackie Robinson lived an important life.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com