========Hacksaw’s Thursday Podcast..1:30pm
You Tube-Lee Hacksaw Hamilton
Hot Topics-Stay for Fans Forum
=========
“REMEMBERING #42-JACKIE ROBINSON’
=========
Everyone wears #42 this week to salute the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers star Jackie Robinson.
His influence in breaking baseball’s color barrier. His influence too in politics, business, society.
There are so many snapshots and a few videos of the legendary Dodger.
You have seen Jackie stealing home plate on the Yankees catcher Yogi Berra in the World Series in the 1950s. Gee I wish that could be reviewed by today’s replay system.
You have probably seen the picture of the rookie Jackie, standing at the Montreal clubhouse door, black man in a white uniform, with a sign on that door that read ‘No Admittance’. That was about baseball and society.
I have a private photo of Jackie in a 3rd baseline rundown against the Phillies in the 1950s…5-white guys, 1-black man, trying to avoid getting tagged out.
That picture said a thousand words of his life, his times, his accomplishments, and the odds stacked against him.
I have 7-different Robinson bios in my library, the most unique titled ‘I never had it easy’.
The Baseball Reference website will show his 11-year career, stretching from age (28-to-39) as a man of accomplishments. A career (.313) hitter..(200) stolen bases..(761) RBIs…(141) home runs.
It will show how he hit (.297) the first year in Brooklyn after the rookie Montreal season (.346). It will show he hit over (.300) six straight years at his peak, including the (.342) season-MVP season. He played every infield position in virtually every one of those 154-game schedules.
Yes he was a catalyst for the ‘Boys of Summer’ of the 1950s, facing the Yankees six times in the World Series.
His influence was more than changing the game on the basepaths, in the clubhouses, and across every ballpark he played in from Forbes Field-to-Braves Park-to the Polo Grounds.
His influences later in life were spectacular, maybe as a Pioneer that led to Brown-vs-Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act.
He was his own man however, toughened by racism that existed even when Johnny Came Marching home from World War II. He refused to go to the back of the bus in Ft Hood Texas.
He told the Dodgers ‘no’ when they tried to trade him to the hated NY Giants in the fading days of his great career.
He was a standout and standup student body athlete at UCLA.
He went to the Montreal Royals as a 1947-rookie with no friends.
His arrival at Ebbets Field was met with resistance.
He was thrown at, spiked, cursed, bullied, injured. At times an outcast until his own Manager Leo Durocher, a true scoundrel, came to his defense time and time again.
Robinson changed things on the field. Off the field, the Ben Chapman-racist comments out of the Phillies dugout, changed things too. The attention became full of vitriol. But the attention from that incident also galvanized the movement.
I remember getting to the Archives at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and reading the press clippings of his major league debut. The 9-newspapers in New York-Long Island and New Jersey carried stories that referenced him as the ‘colored player’, the ‘blackie rookie’. 1-story mentioned him in the last sentence with no description. A wire story did not mention him at all.
His friend was the legendary Branch Rickey, who fought racism within his own clubhouse and on his roster, dispatching the petition to keep him off the roster, then trading established players who would not accept Jackie as a teammate.
He was devout in what he believed, religion, politics, white women. Was he perfect, no, but he was the first. He was before Paul Robeson. A lead into the iron fisted Olympic sprinters in Mexico City. A forerunner to the Black Panthers.
Was it easy, absolutely not. Life wore him out. His health betrayed him. Leukemia took him as well as blindness. Forever fiery, he could not win the battle of his son’s drug addiction post-Vietnam.
But his influences, what his family has carried thru with his Foundation, carries so much clout. I interviewed Rachael Robinson, now 100-about those times, travails, wins, losses, and the tolls it took on them. His influences in politics, fund raising, hospitals, churches,and businesses in Brooklyn are legendary.
I was asked once, if I could spend an evening interviewing 4-people, who would it be?
I answered God, the legendary FDR-the President before my time, my father who I missed so much growing up, and Jackie Robinson. For what they all experienced in life.
But this a time to remember, and Jackie Robinson should be remembered for so many lines he crossed, what he accomplished, and how he influenced both sports-society.
The ‘We Are Jackie’ mantra baseball is marketing stands for more than base hits and stolen bases and ‘D’em Bums from the 1950s.
#42-forever influential as a person-player.
===============
