the Jackie Robinson thread

born January 31, 1919

https://www.mlb.com/mets/news/mlb-to-honor-jackie-robinson-in-2019/c-303242338

https://www.mcny.org/exhibition/dugout-jackie-robinson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-7Ac2LVVYU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9khkP3rx52A

In tomorrow's @nytimes, a 24-page special section on the 100th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's birth. Designed with @waynekamidoi and @fredeeky pic.twitter.com/oCSwfySJFo

— andrea margaret (@zagatam) January 30, 2019

nice

damn, Thursday is not one of my days to buy the paper! gonna have to forage

After his birth in Georgia 100 years ago today, Jackie Robinson moved with his family to Southern California where he lived until he began his career for the Dodgers. #JackieRobinson #JR100 pic.twitter.com/79hsobAg0E

— Amy Essington, PhD (@Prof_Essington) January 31, 2019

http://www.milb.com/images/2006/12/19/DrpOPtut.jpg

JR with the montreal royals in 1946: 124 G, .349/.468/.462, 3 HR, 92 BB, 27 K, 40 SB, 15 CS, 113 R. team went 100-54 to win the international league

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/30/sports/30Robinson-ast74/merlin_149712792_48ddb9c4-67de-44ee-8d42-f78d503979d5-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp

Robinson walks outside Ebbets Field, the day after he broke the color barrier and became the first African-American to play in the Major Leagues. April 16, 1947.

this section in Empire Strikes Out (Elias, 2012) on Jackie Robinson being used by cold warriors as a counter to Paul Robseon then later regretting it is interesting to me--the last paragraph, especially. The amount of pressure he was under to be The Good Black Man was incredible. pic.twitter.com/mDzod5GmJt

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) January 31, 2019

http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2019/01/jackie-robinson-in-celebration-of-his-100th-birthday-six-sites-to-visit-in-brooklyn-and-queens.html

Happy 100th Birthday Jackie! #JR100 pic.twitter.com/CBXC8ZmY4j

— Dick Allen (@DickAllen_15) January 31, 2019

I mentioned this in one of the Dock Ellis threads: in the DE documentary there's audio of Ellis reading an encouraging letter Robinson wrote to him at the height of Dock's notoriety, around 1971, and Ellis just bursts out in sobs. It's tremendously moving, and a hint of how much he meant to black players who were kids in the '40s and '50s.

I imagine someone's done this (post a link if you know of anything): what might his career stats have been if he'd debuted at 20 or 21 instead of 28? I'd estimate 250 HR, 2,700 hits, 350 SB (when that would have been a huge total), 80 or 85 WAR.

Jay Jaffe did this for SI

https://www.si.com/mlb/2016/04/15/jackie-robinson-statistics-hall-of-fame

other baseball greats born on january 31:
ernie banks (1931)
nolan ryan (1947)
yuniesky betancourt (1982)

I wanted to show my class 42, but a quick check of IMBD and, as expected, lots of language. So I showed them The Jackie Robinson Story instead, which had been sitting on my shelf unwatched for many years.

"N______" turns up once, much to my surprise. (I stopped the film and we talked for a minute.) Other than that, the story is watered down in the way you'd expect (but which is good for kids...or at least good for teachers if you're answerable to a principal and parents). Robinson is okay playing himself. That sounds bizarre, but that's about all you can say; he's okay. I've never heard Branch Rickey talk, but the guy who plays him doesn't look remotely like Rickey, nor does he come across in the way that I always envisioned Rickey to be. Subjective impression--I could be totally wrong. I didn't expect the bulk of the film (we've still got six minutes to go) would be pre-Dodgers.

The thing that's hardest to adjust to--I asked the class if they picked up on this; amazingly, no one seemed to--is how unbelievably slow and stilted the film is. (Typically, they were more concerned about the fact that it's black and white.) It's pretty much on a level with Ed Wood in the pacing department. It eschews corny Hollywood theatrics for big dead empty spaces.

it’s good that they recognize him, and i honestly think mlb does good things regarding diversity (even if the ultimate goal is further profit)

but man they really drive the jackie robinson thing into the ground, as if everything was solved 73 years ago

I think Jackie Robinson said exactly that, standing beside a very agitated Bowie Kuhn 48 years ago.

One of the other volunteers at a Statford vaccination clinic yesterday went to school with Robinson's son David, and he also attended a commencement address given by Robinson a few years later. (He's American, his wife is Canadian.) Also: saw Koufax pitch in Shea Stadium. The only thing he remembers is that he thinks the Mets didn't score, which would narrow it down to one of these three games:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196207120.shtml
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196307120.shtml
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196506120.shtml

I watched 42 today! Some very uncomfortable viewing, I mentioned the Pee Wee Reese moment in my thread maybe, which is supposedly maybe apocryphal but in the context of the film was genuinely heartening ofc.

What Mookieproof says re the unsolved nature of racism in the game was on my mind reading this thread. I liked that the film showed that his teammates didn’t accept him, that there is that scene with Rickey & Reese in the office where the latter is complaining about the hate mail and Rickey just takes out sheafs of hate mail sent to Robinson and hands it to him.

I enjoyed when he was shifting back and forth to fuck with the pitchers on 2nd, but I was also reminded in doing so of something I had read about the play in the Negro Leagues being faster and less staid than the major leagues - and that to this day you will still hear about black players described as being “showboating” or other coded phrases because there is still a lot of thinking that bat flipping, celebrating and fun isn’t playing the game the white way.

It is enraging when you are watching the Phillies manager loudly and clearly repeatedly hurling racial slurs at Robinson, and the announcer was brushing it off as “chirping.”

I thought about how tough he was to live all that, and the bat smashing scene in the dugout is great because it brings the person to life, and for a modern audience it is just underlining how hard it must have been to live with all that hate just for existing and playing the game. It was showing the pain behind the icon, what being the first meant. It’s a decent film, I liked Boseman very much. I would have liked to have seen more of his reactions to all the hate he received, because as tough as he was, it seemed pretty fucking unbearable.

105. I've got a grade 3 kid today who's seen 42 and wanted to tell the class all about him, so that was nice.

I love that. It’s a wonderful film. Watched it again recently.

I still haven't seen it because the Ken Burns documentary set the bar so high I'm resigned to being disappointed. My brother-in-law says I have to see it.

It’s obviously not remotely documentary but it captures the importance of the event and it’s visceral. The film as I saw it very much encourages you to draw parallels between “controversial” contemporary parts of the game, like bat flipping and showmanship, and the whole thing with playing the game the “right” way. I’m not explaining it very well, but Boseman is a wonderful Jackie.

and Alan Tudyk is pretty great at being the ermmm, the thing he had to be.

https://imgur.com/a/9goLghU

well, here's the image

https://i.imgur.com/YgbsqnA.jpeg

the former page: https://web.archive.org/web/20240915202349/https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2490361/sports-heroes-who-served-baseball-great-jackie-robinson-was-wwii-soldier

Vile

Saw that Jeff Passan had tweeted about this, good for him. What a disgusting government.

fucking bleak shit.

now all that Pete Rose posthumous pardoning talk from earlier this month is starting to make more sense under this lens.

Passan got two more awful replies from the DOJ before the article was reinstated

Cute racist wordplay in those awful replies.

Fuck MLB, fuck Manfred, fuck the milquetoast Dodgers if they don't speak up:

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:brgzzc3whw24y5w7wl3hcfhn/post/3lmsafginnc2d

Not related entirely to #42, but the priceless looks on these media-coached/tamed players' faces when Reggie speaks raw truth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMH2z4lFvZw

Thanks for posting that. Shit's real.

Fuck Manfred and MLB. Really hope some players, especially prominent ones, call shit out tomorrow.

https://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/story/2025-04-15/dodgers-jackie-robinson-day-white-house-visit-optics

i'll repost in solidarity with the message:

Dodgers’ celebration of Jackie Robinson Day rings hollow in wake of White House visit

By Dylan Hernández
Columnist
April 15, 2025 8:30 AM PT

Five years ago, America was listening.

That was the year in which George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were killed by police officers.

That was also the year in which the Dodgers refused to take the field for a late August game to protest racial injustice in the wake of a police shooting of a 29-year-old Black man in Wisconsin.

The summer of racial reckoning, and the Dodgers’ modest role in it, feels like something from the distant past.

Rather than continue to stimulate important conversations, the Dodgers are back to whistling past America’s graveyard, pretending there is nothing hypocritical about visiting President Trump one week and celebrating Jackie Robinson Day the next. Conservative Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham wanted athletes to “shut up and dribble,” and the Dodgers are doing the baseball equivalent of just that.

The opportunity for the Dodgers to regain their stature as agents of change has come and gone, their salute to Robinson on Tuesday reverting to its previous form as a cynical exercise in stealing the valor of a previous generation.

This shift in social climate was subtly pointed out by Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts earlier this month when he explained his decision to visit the Trump White House after declining to do so with the Boston Red Sox in 2019.

“At the time,” Betts told reporters, “the world was a different place.”

The world was in even more of a different place in 2020. Most of the country was in lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Major league teams played 60-game regular seasons in which no fans were allowed in stadiums.

Baseball clubhouses are traditionally white and politically conservative spaces. The pandemic didn’t change that. What changed in the Dodgers locker room was a willingness to listen.

On Aug. 23 of that year, a Black man named Jacob Blake was shot by a police officer in Kenosha, Wis., leading to demonstrations around the country. Two days later, at a protest in Kenosha, white 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people.

The Dodgers were at Oracle Park on Aug. 26 when they received word of boycotted games in the NBA, as well as Major League Baseball. The only African American player on the team knew what he had to do.

“In my shoes,” Betts said at the time, “I couldn’t play.”

Manager Dave Roberts and third base coach George Lombard also ruled themselves out.

Betts told his teammates he would support them if they played the San Francisco Giants that day. They wouldn’t hear it. They joined his protest.

Starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw said: “As a white player on this team … how can we show support? What is something we can do to help our Black brothers on this team? Once Mookie said he wasn’t going to play … we felt the best thing to do to support him was not playing.”

Betts was moved by the gesture.

“I’ll always remember this day,” he said. “I’ll always remember this team just having my back.”

Five years later, as Betts said, the world is a different place. Civil rights violations don’t inspire the same amount of outrage as they once did, particularly in baseball clubhouses. Trump’s casual racism has become normalized to such a degree that even former outspoken critic Snoop Dogg was convinced to perform at a pre-inauguration event.

Still the Dodgers’ lone African American player, Betts said earlier this month about his decision to join his team at the White House: “It comes with the territory, being Black in America in a situation like this. It’s a tough spot to be in.”

Tough, presumably, because he didn’t know how his teammates would react if he shared his thoughts. Tough, presumably, because he wondered if he would divide the team by taking a stand.

Reflecting on his refusal to visit Trump with the Red Sox, Betts said, “I regret that because I made it about me. This isn’t about me.”

In other words, this time around, he prioritized the well-being of his team over his personal convictions. The choice was understandable. Betts is a baseball player before he is an activist. His primary objective at this stage of his life is to win another World Series, and creating the perception of a divided team would be counterproductive to that.

Which was why Dodgers owner Mark Walter or president Stan Kasten should have stepped in and told the players they wouldn’t visit the White House, that something more important than baseball was in play. They didn’t, of course. Kasten saying the Dodgers accepted Trump’s invitation because the players wanted to is the kind of spineless buck-passing that has become standard procedure for this front office.

Walter and Kasten had the power to restart a necessary dialogue at a time when the Trump administration not only sent a brown-skinned man without a criminal record to a Salvadoran prison by mistake but also defied a Supreme Court order to facilitate his return. They didn’t. Their silence was a betrayal, both to the Dodgers and their history.

Worth noting, as always, that Rachel Robinson is still alive (turns 103 in July).

Here's the same section from last year's Jackie Robinson Day press release, where they have removed a sentence about "spearheading initiatives that support communities and meaningfully address diversity and inclusion at all levels of our sport."

okay that didn't go well

https://i.imgur.com/rqPdgxp.jpeg

thank god jackie robinson wore neither 45 nor 47 i guess

Very good article.

https://www.theringer.com/2025/04/15/mlb/dodgers-white-house-visit-trump-jackie-robinson-dei