“Life is not a spectator sport. If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you're wasting your life.” – Jackie Robinson
It was April 15, 1947. From all accounts, it was a bright, sunshine filled day in Brooklyn, New York. In many ways, it was a day just like any other day. As the Ebbets field stands filled up with people, I wonder if they knew that they were about to witness an event that would change history forever.
The story of Robinson’s entrance into the Major Leagues has been well chronicled and is the subject of a book by Jonathon Eig entitled Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season. His relationships with Branch Rickey, the general manager and president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, his teammates such as Carl Erskine and Pee Wee Reese, and his wife Rachel Robinson who, at 85 is one of the more eloquent people you will ever hear speak, are diligently researched and beautifully told.
That was 61 years ago. My Mom and Dad were 10 and 11 years old respectively on that day. Growing up in Brooklyn, they were diehard Dodger fans. That was when baseball was the biggest sport in America, when the players lived in the communities where they played and greed and steroids hadn’t almost ruined the game. Robinson was a legend. In his rookie year, he played in 151 games, hit .297, led the National League in stolen bases and won the first-ever Rookie of the Year Award, all while earning a salary of $5,000, the league minimum.
But the story of Jackie Robinson transcends baseball. This is a story about courage, the courage of a man who stood up for what he believed in. He challenged segregation. As a young man, he was court-martialed for refusing to move to the back of a military bus, more than ten years prior to the now famous Rosa Parks incident. Throughout his baseball career he worked hard, lived proudly and gave of himself to his community, his team and his nation.
It is the story of Branch Rickey, a man who took a chance on Robinson because, while he was a good ballplayer, Rickey believed he was a strong enough man to face what was in store for them as they challenged one of society’s accepted norms. It was Rickey who encouraged Robinson to “turn the other cheek”, a stance that must have been very difficult when faced with the discrimination and hatred he received at the hands of fans, managers and even some of his own teammates. When those same teammates refused to play alongside Robinson, it was also Rickey who traded them.
It is the story of teammates Pee Wee Reese and Carl Erskine, who befriended Robinson and stood publicly in support of him against angry fans who heckled him when he came to play ball in Cincinatti, Ohio. When other players refused to play with him, it was these men who stood by their teammate. “You can hate a man for many things,” Reese would say, “Color is not one of them.”
Taped to the cabinet in my kitchen is a card that a friend sent me. “Be the change you want to see in the world,” it says, paraphrasing the quote by the late Mahatma Gandhi. I keep it there to remind me of the challenge, a challenge each one of us has each day, the chance to make the world just a little bit better because we were in it. It is not always easy. There are days that I stumble. Days when my humanness gets in the way. I look upward. “Help,” I pray. And help usually comes.
The legacy of Jackie Robinson is an example of what can happen when we stand up for what we believe in, when we take chances and challenge others to think and act differently. It is a legacy about choosing to speak up for what we believe, even when it seems like we are a lone voice in the wilderness.
It is a lesson I hope my children will learn. Who knows what impact any one of us can have?