made one of the most daring moves by playing Major League baseball. The amount of pain and suffering this man went through was so harsh that I don’t know how he was able to play. Carl Erskine said,’ Maybe I see Jackie differently. You say he broke the color line. But I say he didn’t break anything. Jackie was a healer.
He came to rectify a wrong, to heal a sore in America’ (Dorinson back cover). Jackie was born January thirty-first 1919. Shortly after he was born, his father deserted his family. Almost a year after that, Jackie’s uncle came to visit and convinced his family to move to California with him. The whole family moved out there with his uncle. They moved to Pasadena, California.
The neighborhood they moved into was mostly a white neighborhood. The white people did not want them in the neighborhood. They would criticize Jackie and his family. When he was about eight years old, he had learned to stand up for himself and answer back when the occasion demanded. Jackie went to Muir Tech. High School.
At high school is where he began to get interested in sports. He competed in football, baseball, basketball, and track. He was a good player in every sport. During high school, college recruiters failed to pay attention to him. He didn’t receive any scholarship, so he decided to go to Pasadena Junior College. Pasadena Junior College is where Jackie began to get noticed for his athletic abilities.
He set many records in track, baseball, and football. Babe Hormel wanted to recruit Jackie from Pasadena Junior College. One of the best athletes on the West Coast (Tygiel 27) After two years at Pasadena Junior College, he transferred to UCLA. Jackie went here so his brother, Frank would be able to attend most of the games. His brother never did get to see a game because he died in a motorcycle accident.
At UCLA, Jackie lettered in four sports in one year. He was the first player to do that. He played track, baseball, basketball, and football. Jackie was one of the best all-around athletes that UCLA has ever had (Tygiel 26). Jackie decided to drop out of college and join the army. Jackie applied for Office Candidate School.
He was stationed at Fort Riley in Oklahoma. Blacks were not accepted for OCS. Jackie did not like this and confronted the action. This was his first attempt at racial discrimination. He sent complaints to the Secretary of Defense.
Within a few days, Jackie and several blacks were in OCS (Duckett 23-24) After the Army, Jackie joined the Kansas City Monarchs. This is a team in the Negro Leagues. He was paid three hundred dollars a month. Blacks who wanted to play baseball could sign up on black teams only. These teams were poorly financed, and their management and promotion left much to be desired. Travel schedules were unbelievably hectic (Duckett 36).
Branch Rickey was the baseball coach at Ohio Wesleyan. He was on his way to a game in South Bend, Indiana when his team needed to stop at a hotel to get some sleep. He had one black player on the team that couldn’t stay in the hotel. The manager of the hotel wouldn’t let him. Rickey convinced the manager to let him sleep there (Duckett 38). Branch does not care about skin color.
He only cares about the talent of a player. He was later owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers organization. He was very interested in Jackie. He wasn’t sure about taking Jackie because of his temper. Rickey talked to Jackie and told him if he could control his temper, he would be able to play. If Jackie tried to fight back in a Major League game, he would be harassed, booed, abused and maybe even killed.
It was a crucial event in the history of the American rights moment, the importance of which went far beyond the insular world of baseball (Dorinson 132). Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jackie said,’ I know that I am black man in a white world’ (Duckett 12). Jackie will be the first black in the Major Leagues. No one wanted Jackie to play.
Fans would send him mail threatening him, damage his property, curse at him, and would even hit him. They believed blacks should play in their own league. The police barely helped him from the people that would go to his house and damage it because he was black. Rickey also received a lot of grief for signing him.
Some fans said they would stop going to the games, until they got rid of Jackie. They even threatened to kill Rickey. April fifteenth 1947 was Jackie debut. Opening day for Jackie Robinson was very exciting. He enjoys coming out to the large crowds.
He is also afraid of the fans booing and yelling at him (Dorinson 131-132). Jackie Robinson’s major league debut was more than just the first step in righting a historical wrong (Dorinson 132). Jackie was fine after the first game. His fears were not over after the first game.
Every game Jackie would have to worry about guys sliding in cleat first, throwing sand in his eyes, and even intentionally hitting him. Jackie still kept his calm through all of this. He never once complained or fought back at the other players Jackie would get very lonely because he didn’t have any friends or anyone to talk to. His teammates, the other teams, and even the fans didn’t like him. One man though did become friends with him.
It was his teammate Peewee Reese. Reese was a white man that played shortstop for the Dodgers. During one game, Jackie mad a diving catch to win the game for the Dodgers. Jackie got hurt on the play. Reese goes over to second base to make sure Jackie was alright. No one else came over to see if he was alright.
It showed a lot of courage for Reese to do that. Reese took a lot of crap for doing it but he didn’t care. Thus in eight years America’s most prominent national sport moved from a tradition of seventy years discrimination to almost complete integration (Tygiel 156). The big step of Jackie joining major league baseball changed everything in sports and life. He was a civil rights leader just like Martin Luther King Jr.
He made the big step to show that it’s not impossible to get things to be equal. We should all be very thankful for what Jackie Robinson has done. He didn’t give into fear and run away from the challenge of breaking the color barrier. He took the challenge and conquered it. He changed the history of baseball and the rest of life.
He helped the blacks become equal to the white race.