Jackie Robinson Day

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson's entry into Major League Baseball, integrating the game. MLB is marking the day and it's appropriate.

Robinson not only opened the door for African-Americans to play baseball, he also opened the minds of white Americans to the need of recognizing the humanity of blacks. And he set a precedent which eventually, other major sports would emulate.

Along with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech and the March on Washington at which he delivered it, along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Jesse Owens' gold medal-winning run in the Olympics held in Hitler's Germany, Robinson's major league debut was perhaps the most significant contribution to racial justice and equality in America during the twentieth century.

Robinson's fearless and dignified performance in spite of initial shunning by some of his Dodger teammates, physical abuse from competing players, and threats and taunts from racist fans, is a monument to self-control and to subordination of one's self to a higher cause. Robinson possessed a volcanic temper. But he realized that if he let the vicious racism to which he was constantly subjected incite him to respond or retaliate, he would close the door for other African-American ballplayers who deserved to be in the major leagues. In a real sense, more than a decade before Martin Luther King, Jr. combined faith in Jesus with the tactics of Mohandas Gandhi to press for civil rights, Jackson embodied non-violent social change.

Non-violent, but far from passive. Twenty-eight years old and a veteran of the Negro League by the time he reached his rookie season with the Dodgers, Robinson dazzled the baseball world with his effective hitting, occasional power, blinding speed on the base paths, and extraordinary defensive skills. Robinson's game sang, "We Shall Overcome" long before most white Americans were aware of that song.

It's difficult, if not impossible, to consider the burden that rested on Jackie Robinson's shoulders on April 15, 1947. He was the repository of black aspirations, a challenge to whites who doubted that black players could compete with whites, and a "firebell in the night," awakening Americans to the long-overdue need to address racial injustice. Had Jackson been a mediocre player, the color barrier might not have been broken for years after 1947. But, fortunately for us all--all baseball fans, all Americans--Robinson performed exceptionally well.

As a fan of the greatest game in the world, it makes me happy to know that it was baseball that led America in this important social change.

The recent Don Imus controversy proves that racism is still alive in the United States. The persistence of race hatred into the twenty-first century, makes Robinson's rookie season sixty years ago, when he endured constant taunts and threats for being a black man in what was thought to be a white man's game, all the more remarkable. It also reminds us that, sadly, sixty years is just the blink of an eye.