If baseball is integrated . . .

Jackie Robinson on integrity. (The Commonplace Book Project)

The Commonplace Project is a daily post based on Ray Bradbury’s advice to aspiring writers: read a poem, a short story, and an essay every day for 1000 days. These posts start with a quote and go wherever the rabbit hole leads. Follow The 1000 Day MFA so you don’t miss a thing.

“It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.” — Jackie Robinson

January 31, 2019 is Jackie Robinson’s 100th birthday.

His life could have been different. Maybe it even should have been. He grew up in Pasadena, California — an affluent community — in poverty. His parents were sharecroppers and his father left the family when he was a baby. Because of segregation, he wasn’t allowed to do the things he wanted to. So he joined a gang, but a friend talked him out of staying with it.

His older brothers recognized his athletic ability and encouraged it. He couldn’t have harbored any real hope that he’d become a professional baseball player. There was an unspoken, but definite color line. Sports helped him get an education, though.

Before Robinson was the first black player in Major League Baseball’s modern era, he was UCLA’s first four-sport athlete. After his retirement, he was also the first black vice president of a major American corporation (Chock Full O’Nuts from 1987 to 1964.)

He was politically active all his life. It’s interesting to me that he considered himself a conservative. He campaigned for Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy, although he did praise Kennedy for his work for civil rights. He eventually switched party allegiance and campaigned for Hubert Humphrey over Richard Nixon.

Robinson died young, only 53, of a heart attack caused by heart disease and the complications of diabetes. The Dodgers retired his number, 42, and then all of baseball retired it — the only time any sport has ever given an athlete that honor. Every year, on April 15, the day that he played his first game for the Dodgers, every major league baseball player on every team wears the number 42.

I talk a lot about how important audacity is. I think maybe nobody embodies that more than Jackie Robinson did. It’s hard for me to even wrap my mind around what he had to overcome to become who he became. How easy it would have been for him to fall into generational poverty, or o be swallowed up by the gang he joined when he was young.

I’m not sure if he was the best African American baseball player in the country on April 15, 1947. Another black player, Larry Doby, integrated the American League in the same year to much less fanfare and press coverage.

What I do know is that Robinson was audacious enough to be able to withstand what he had to withstand to break baseball’s color line. I think that’s maybe highlighted by his signature move — stealing bases.

Formal segregation of Major League Baseball didn’t happen until 1876. William Edward White, who passed as white and has only recently been discovered to have been African American (and a former slave,) played in one game in 1879. He is the only black player to have played at all in the 19th century.

The American League had two black players, brothers named Weldy and Moses Fleetwood Walker. Racism and threats of teams boycotting games caused official segregation that lasted until Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.

The Jackie Robinson Museum is scheduled to open in 2019 in Manhattan.

And Major League Baseball is celebrating Robinson’s 100th birthday all year.

As I wrote this post, I re-watched (for maybe the dozenth time) the 2013 biopic 42. If you haven’t seen it — or even if you have — you should. It’s one of the most inspiring movies I’ve ever seen.

As good as the movie is, it’s Hollywoodized. I really enjoyed this article about the real story behind the integration of modern Major League Baseball.

I’ve added Jackie Robinson’s autobiograpy, I Never Had it Made, to my reading list

Today’s Poem:

Baseball and Classicism

BY Tom Clark

Every day I peruse the box scores for hours Sometimes I wonder why I do it Since I am not going to take a test on it And no one is going to give me money

The pleasure’s something like that of codes Of deciphering an ancient alphabet say So as brightly to picturize Eurydice In the Elysian Fields on her perfect day

The day she went 5 for 5 against Vic Raschi

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nationand the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.