April 15th Marks Anniversary of A Milestone That Helped Usher In Obama

[Benny B]

 

[225for70]

That's an Insult to Jackie Robinson..

[Soul Crusher]

Guilt ridden white libs, dopers, mushy moderates who bought into the msm nonsense, GWB's terrible second term, ushered in obama.   

[Benny B]

MLB celebrates Robinson's enduring impact
Baseball pioneer will be honored throughout big leagues Friday

By Mark Newman / MLB.com
Jackie Robinson started 151 games at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, including his historic debut on April 15 of that season.

In his 1972 autobiography, "I Never Had It Made", he recalled what it had felt like to stand alone at that position, the first and only black player in Major League Baseball at the time.

"I had to fight hard against loneliness, abuse, and the knowledge that any mistake I made would be magnified because I was the only black man out there," Robinson wrote. "I had to fight hard to become 'just another guy.' I had to deny my true fighting spirit so that the 'noble experiment' could succeed. ... But I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect."

Friday is the eighth annual Jackie Robinson Day throughout the Majors, marking the 64th anniversary of the day baseball's color barrier was broken. If only Robinson could see the respect now. MLB is commemorating this year's special day with the launch of the new IAM42.com online campaign, multiple events, and, once again, all players and on-field personnel wearing the No. 42. It is the same number Robinson wore for Brooklyn from 1947-56.

"Each year, Jackie Robinson Day is an occasion for us to pause and reflect on the game's proudest and most powerful moment," said Commissioner Bud Selig. "Jackie's legacy is as strong and vibrant as ever throughout Major League Baseball. I am proud that the No. 42, which has come to stand for Jackie's courage and grace, will again be worn in honor of our game's greatest pioneer."

"Jack loved the game of baseball and the tremendous power it had and still has to bring people together," said Rachel Robinson, Jackie's wife and founder of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. "I believe he would have found Major League Baseball's decision to perpetually honor his legacy in this way both gratifying and humbling."

IAM42 is a new digital campaign designed for fans to make a personal connection to the legacy of the Hall of Famer through online video sharing and social networking. IAM42.com features personal video tributes from 64 current players and legends, including Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Lou Brock and Andre Dawson; and MLB All-Stars Jason Heyward, Prince Fielder, David Price, Mariano Rivera and David Wright.

Beginning on Jackie Robinson Day, fans of all ages are encouraged to share their thoughts on the enduring impact of Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier. The site will be updated throughout the year, in the leadup to the 65th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's Major League debut.

IAM42.com is the latest MLB initiative aimed at educating all fans about Jackie Robinson and supporting his enduring legacy, joining Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI); Breaking Barriers: In Sports, In Life; Diverse Business Partners; and the MLB Urban Youth Academies. IAM42.com is powered by MLB.com.

"Jackie Robinson Day to me means he was a great person, one, but for the game of baseball and for the civil rights movement, of course," said Heyward, the Braves' second-year outfielder. "And for the people all across the world to show that we can put differences aside and play a game of baseball, and all be entertainment no matter what the ethnicity."

"Wearing No. 42 on Jackie Robinson Day, to me, means the epitome of baseball today," Reds outfielder Jay Bruce said. "It lets everybody on the same stage, all the best players in the world get to compete against each other, and that's really the only true way that baseball is what it is."

Entertainer Sean Combs, who was honored at the recent Jackie Robinson Awards Dinner, said: "What Jackie Robinson has done for our culture is more powerful than just changing the face of sports and breaking down the color barrier. He changed all our lives."

Commissioner Selig and MLB have celebrated Robinson's longstanding legacy by retiring Robinson's number throughout the Majors in 1997 and, since 2004, dedicating April 15 as Jackie Robinson Day in his memory. Yankees closer Rivera is the last player who will wear No. 42 regularly, because he is the only player still active who was wearing it at the time it was retired throughout the game.

"The number alone is a tremendous responsibility," Rivera said. "Being the last player to wear No. 42 is a blessing, a privilege and an honor. I always try to do my best."

"The first thing you notice is everybody wearing the No. 42," Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins said. "It's the one day that it's accepted to wear it in baseball, because it's been retired. Everywhere you go, there's a 42 -- banner or star or square, whatever they have, a flag hanging up. It's all over the place. You know exactly the reason for the day, you know exactly what he meant to the game, and it's just a way to pay a tribute back to him."

The RBI program will host a youth baseball and softball clinic for 250 young boys and girls in Newark, N.J., and will feature Rangers manager Ron Washington, representatives from the New York Yankees and MLB Network analyst Harold Reynolds. The RBI program is the MLB youth initiative designed to provide opportunities to play baseball and softball, to encourage academic success, and to teach the value of teamwork and other important life lessons to underserved young people, ages 5 to 18, from urban communities.

Additionally, the Baseball Tomorrow Fund will be present to unveil the newly constructed indoor practice facility, which is adjacent to a recently renovated field complex that serves as the home fields for the Newark RBI League and the local Little League program. A BTF grant of more than $33,000 provided funding for the purchase of batting cages, pitching tunnels and related equipment for the indoor facility, as well as coaches training clinic expenses.

Sharon Robinson, MLB educational programming consultant and daughter of Jackie, will be representing MLB in a Brooklyn school visit to announce a first-place winner in the 2011 Breaking Barriers Essay Contest, which recognizes students for their efforts to overcome personal barriers using the values exemplified by Jackie Robinson.

The Robinson family will join MLB in a special Jackie Robinson Day celebration at Yankee Stadium, prior to the 7:05 p.m. ET game against the Rangers in a nationally televised game carried live by MLB Network. The ceremony will include Rachel and Sharon, who is also vice chair of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Additionally, the historic Tuskegee Airmen will be appearing on-field during pregame ceremonies.

One No. 42 jersey from every club will be signed and auctioned off on MLB.com, with the proceeds benefitting the Jackie Robinson Foundation. The foundation, established in 1973, provides four-year college scholarships, graduate school grants and extensive mentoring to academically distinguished minority students with leadership capacity. MLB and the 30 clubs sponsor more than 60 Jackie Robinson Scholars. The Foundation strives to cultivate future leaders who will be ambassadors of Jackie Robinson's guiding life tenet, "A life is not important except in its impact on other lives."

In support of Jackie Robinson Day, MLB Network will air "Letters From Jackie: The Private Thoughts of Jackie Robinson" at noon ET on Saturday. The special, which was produced by MLB Productions, focuses on Robinson's role in the American civil rights movement, predominantly after he retired from baseball. The story is told in Robinson's own words, through letters he wrote throughout his lifetime to political figures, including President Dwight Eisenhower, and to a young pen pal, Ron Rabinovitz, with whom Robinson kept in touch from 1955 until his death in 1972.

All clubs playing at home on Friday will commemorate Jackie Robinson Day with special pregame ceremonies in their ballparks. Home clubs will feature Jackie Robinson Day jeweled bases and lineup cards, and a special video that highlights Robinson's story and nine values will be shown in-stadium. Clubs not playing at home Friday will hold Jackie Robinson Day commemorations at their ballparks during another homestand in April.

[Benny B]

April 16, 2009
Sports of The Times
Timeline Stretches 62 Years, From Robinson to Obama
By GEORGE VECSEY

Rachel Robinson did not know what to expect, 62 years ago. Survival would have sufficed. She held her first-born, Jackie Jr., and went through the usual agony in hailing a taxi that would take her anywhere, much less Brooklyn.

“You braced for attack,” she recalled on the anniversary of her husband’s debut Wednesday, when a handsome space was dedicated in her husband’s memory, and all major-league players wore his No. 42 in tribute.

This produced the odd effect of never quite knowing who was at bat, or running the bases, as the Mets defeated the Padres, 7-2, but it was a tribute to a man who produced a Hall of Fame career under extreme pressure.

“In that era, you anticipated trouble,” she said.

In the long run, things went well enough that her husband scored the winning run, and then a lot more winning runs after that, although at a terrible cost in anxiety. Those days are commemorated in the new Jackie Robinson Rotunda at the Mets’ new ballpark in Flushing. Robinson never played for the Mets — as if that mattered — but he is an American hero, honored by the Wilpon family, which owns the ball club, and has made Jackie Robinson part of the Mets’ heritage in the direct line out the Jackie Robinson Parkway from Brooklyn to Queens.

Fred Wilpon, who once pitched batting practice to the Brooklyn Dodgers and who went to Ebbets Field with his father, has made sure that the new park in Queens has a powerful tribute to the first African-American major leaguer of the 20th century.

On Wednesday, for the first time, the annual Robinson tribute was conducted with an African-American president in office. There is a direct line from Jackie Robinson to Barack Obama — the sense of yes, we can. Can dance off third base and bother the pitcher and create a run. Can win an election and set many plans in motion.

These eras were linked in a pleasant ceremony Wednesday at the Rotunda, a covered but open space behind home plate. This meeting space, open for every home game, displays photographs of Robinson’s life, and has videos of his pigeon-toed romp around the bases, and lists the tenets of his disciplined, educated life. Impossible to miss, for the millions who will come through the new ballpark in the months and years to come.

The message is positive — as forward looking as the scholars who have gained their education through the Jackie Robinson Foundation who spoke to younger students Wednesday in a separate forum.

“Role models,” said Della Britton Baeza, the president and chief executive of the foundation. “Here you have our scholars talking to students a little younger than they are.”

Jeff Moss, who went to Morehouse College on a foundation scholarship and helps run a branch of CitiGroup in Brooklyn, spoke to young students later in the afternoon. CitiGroup has its name on the field, part of a 20-year, $400 million naming rights contract with the Mets, which was made before CitiGroup required a federal bailout to keep it going.

•

“They put their money where their mouth is,” Britton Baeza said of CitiGroup’s involvement in the foundation.

At the least, the Rotunda is a highly visible reminder of a man who made history 62 years ago by signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

“This is a forever place,” Wilpon said. “The entrance to our home.”

The Rotunda was a meeting place for Dodgers fans. I once literally bumped into Jackie Robinson in a hot-dog line, on a day when he was sitting out with an injury. He was wearing a royal blue Dodgers jacket and by 1954 was more white-haired and stocky than I could have imagined.

The first days in 1947 were tenuous for Robinson, who was on his best behavior, a nervous smile on his face. In that first game, he was already Jackie Robinson, pushing a bunt down the first-base line with a runner moving, discombobulating the Boston Braves’ defense. Then Pete Reiser hit a double and Robinson scored the winning run.

“I want you to know on this day I feel blessed,” Rachel Robinson said at the ceremony. “I don’t feel like a victim.”

She walked into the Rotunda, with photographs from her life. “It’s a great thrill,” she said. “A little painful, with all those memories, our family at certain stages.”

A lovely book from 2007, “Opening Day” by Jonathan Eig, about the Robinsons and 1947, supplies the detail of Rachel Robinson’s taking along a bottle of formula for her infant son, and asking somebody at a concession stand to heat the bottle — in water used to boil hot dogs. A woman seated next to her held young Jackie inside her coat to keep him warm while Rachel Robinson needed both hands for other tasks. Jackie Jr. died in a car crash in 1971. Jackie Robinson, nearly blind from diabetes, died at 53 in October 1972. But daughter Sharon and son David were with her Wednesday.

•

She also counts as her children the approximately 1,300 students who have attended college on the foundation’s scholarships, with a graduation rate close to 100 percent — a legacy of an American hero from Brooklyn who has found a shrine a few miles away in Queens.

[Benny B]

The Life of Jackie Robinson
Rachel Robinson


Robinson family, 1956
Jackie, wife Rachel, children David, Sharon, Jackie, Jr.


Jackie Roosevelt Robinson dedicated his life to Civil Rights. He inspired millions when he broke the chains of integrated baseball. We should remember this great man for his Major League play and for his work to give all people the freedom they deserve.

After Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, the other sports soon followed. The color barrier also started to break in more than just sports. There were more job opportunities, voting, places in local government and eventually federal government. All over the country people began to accept African Americans doing all things in life. Robinson proved that what could be done in baseball could be done everywhere.

An article in Newsday, notes Robinson's "ripple effect so manifest, beyond sports…that I think the Obama campaign is linked to Jackie…both men finding enormous appeal among younger people not yet locked into old societal limitations".

Today, there are black men and women in more positions of authority than ever before. In sports they are managers and coaches. In business they are bosses and owners. In the military they are generals and admirals. And in politics, they are Supreme Court Judges, Secretary of State, Senators and Congressmen.

Recently, our country achieved its biggest milestone in the advancement of Civil Rights. Sixty-one years after Robinson made history, we have finally elected a black man, Barack Obama, to represent all Americans as President of the United States.

 

[Benny B]

BUMP