Tuesday, 4/15/97 Thanks to Robinson, a new fan is born First man
to break baseball’s color barrier inspires writer
To be completely honest, growing up, the one sport I thoroughly
hated was baseball. I despised it, thought it was utterly
ridiculous. Grown men trying to hit a ball with a stick and running
around in circles (or in diamonds, to be more precise). This most
likely stemmed from the fact that I wasn’t very good at it, but I
hesitate to admit falling victim to the sour-grapes syndrome. More
often I would claim my contempt for the sport was born of the
extreme patriotic theme that surrounds it. It’s the All-American
sport. This can seem repelling to someone who has often felt
rejected by American society and who belongs to a member or a group
that was once rejected from the sport for the vast majority of its
existence. Honestly, this wasn’t what troubled me about the sport
when I was little, but it had a definite impact on me later in
life. Last summer, a few months before I entered college, my
attitude toward baseball changed completely. It wasn’t because I
suddenly felt accepted or excessively patriotic. It wasn’t even
because I suddenly discovered the real beauty behind the game. It
was because of one amazing woman, Rachel Robinson, and one man, her
husband, the great Jackie Robinson. A few weeks before school
started I was introduced to the Jackie Robinson Foundation, a
tribute and legacy to Robinson created by his wife. Through this
introduction I learned of the moral revolution that Jackie bravely
initiated throughout the world, and I learned a vital lesson – that
I am an American, and that I should be proud of that. Before this
summer, I sadly admit that I knew nothing of Jackie Robinson. I
knew his name, and I knew he was black, although I often confused
him with Babe Ruth. Anyone reading this article right now with even
a passing interest in baseball is groaning. And rightly you should.
My knowledge of the sport was embarrassing. But I’m even more
ashamed and at times even frightened by my lack of knowledge of
Robinson. And I considered myself an educated person. For those of
you who are currently in the predicament that I once was in, I will
very briefly relate the history of Robinson to you. Born Jackie
Roosevelt Robinson on a plantation near Cairo, Ga., Jackie faced
racism from an early age. A natural athlete, Jackie came to UCLA
and became the first student to letter in four sports – basketball,
baseball, football and track. Discouraged by the occupational
limits placed on blacks, even those with college educations, Jackie
left UCLA and joined the Army. Immersed in a world of Jim Crow,
Jackie soon learned how hypocritical it was to be a black man
trying to fight in an Army that didn’t want him there. After severe
racial incidents, including being illegally ordered to move to the
back of a bus, Jackie was honorably discharged from the military.
After excelling in the Negro Leagues and the minor leagues, Jackie
was asked by Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers,
to create history by becoming the first black man to play major
league baseball. Jackie succeeded with the "Noble Experiment"
because he quietly sat through the vicious attacks by fans and
fellow teammates. He endured, fully aware that what he was doing
was necessary to open doors for blacks in more than just baseball.
And later, when his baseball career ended, he became a civil rights
leader to continue the work. It was pathetic that I didn’t know the
story of the man who allowed blacks to enter not only into every
professional sport in the country but also countless other
occupations that had previously drawn color lines. This year is the
50th anniversary of Robinson breaking the color barrier, and
because of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, I have been exposed to
countless events that I otherwise wouldn’t have access to. But the
affair that had the most profound affect on me was my participation
in the grand opening of the Jackie Robinson exhibit at the Simon
Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance. The Museum of
Tolerance already had a very special place in my heart. During my
first few years in high school, I was undergoing intense anxiety
because I had had some extremely racist encounters in junior high.
Barely a teenager, I didn’t know how to deal with these attacks and
began to think that the entire world was racist against blacks. I
started to believe that all white people saw blacks as inferior and
not human. I began to feel that racism could never be removed from
our society. This instilled a fear in me that was stronger than
anything I had ever experienced before. I didn’t know if I could
survive in a world of racism equal to the one that my parents lived
through. Then I went to the Museum of Tolerance. I had heard
horrible stories of Jews, though I found these depictions difficult
to digest for two reasons. One, I knew a lot of Jewish people, none
of whom seemed to embody this tyrannical stereotype. And two, my
anxiety led me to be deeply religious. As a Catholic, I knew that
Jesus had been a Jew. How could the culture of my savior be
innately evil, like so many people had claimed? So I was very eager
to visit the museum and discover for myself. From the moment I
entered the museum, I felt calm and incredibly relieved. This was a
place of deep faith. The people who worked at the museum surrounded
themselves with violent images of overt oppression; these were
things that I deeply feared, yet people there had the faith to
believe that this wasn’t all that there was to this world. This
show of security was what I needed. And then I saw an exhibit that
described the work the center was doing to identify and eliminate
white supremacist organizations. For the first time I felt safe,
not only within the museum walls but as if nothing would harm me
outside. These may seem like simple emotions, but to a young person
who had just undergone very traumatic racist experiences, these
feelings were intense. The irony of the situation didn’t escape me,
either. The very people who I had been warned about had managed to
make me feel human again. So, when I saw the exhibit dedicated to
Robinson, the man who had made me feel American again, sponsored by
the Museum of Tolerance, the appropriateness of the situation
overwhelmed me. This is where this exhibit belongs. But even though
Robinson has turned me into a baseball fan (though my own
admiration may not reach past the L.A. Dodgers), I’ve spent the
last few days, ever since I decided to write this article, thinking
about the progress that has been made since that day Jackie walked
on the field for the first time as a Dodger. Not only have we been
let into all professional sports, but, sadly, we have been
pigeon-holed into a new stereotype – that of a people with
tremendous athletic ability but not capable of working in the front
offices or behind the scenes of most major sports. Jackie’s attempt
to revolutionize the thinking of professional sports owners,
managers and coaches was only partially successful. There still is
an amazing amount of discrimination out there, but there are also
people dedicated to fighting it, and that in itself is a triumph.
Now we, as a race, need to acknowledge these offers of assistance
and recognize that we are not alone in this battle. Working
together can only make us stronger. This may seem idealistic, but I
want the world that I leave behind for my children to be ideal, a
world without racism. Kester is a first-year undeclared
student.