BEING JACKIE ROBINSON

This Sunday, FOX will premiere a documentary in celebration to the great Mariano Rivera entitled Being Mariano.  I have been anticipating its release for weeks, but before Mariano, there was Jackie Robinson and I had the privilege to meet his daughter, Sharon Robinson, at an event held at my university this week as part of its Unity Days 2013.

The second child of Jackie and Rachel Robinson, Sharon is an intelligent, well-read, educator and an authentic storyteller.  Robinson is an award winning author and the educational consultant for Major League Baseball.  Specifically, Robinson manages Breaking Barriers In Sports, In Life, a baseball centered character education program aimed at helping students face and overcome challenges in their lives much like the challenges her father faced in his short life and career in baseball.  Her talk this week focused on her father, his legacy and her role in educating both baseball players and all of us of the true essence of Jackie’s impact on our lives.  She stated that her father’s Nine Values to Live by include “courage, determination, teamwork, persistence, integrity, citizenship, justice, commitment and excellence.”

Robinson said that the movie 42 was accurate with a little poetic license here and there. “That scene when my father signs the contract with Mr. Rickey on August 28, 1945 was authentic,” she said.  The film enabled today’s players to see first hand the challenges her father overcame to help the game of baseball grow as a sport and as conduit to equality. 

“My father played baseball under an enormous amount of pressure,” she stated in front of a crowd of college students, staff, and community members.  She was surprised at how many current players didn’t immediately see the linkage of Jackie to their present role in baseball.  When she took on her role at MLB in 1997 and her father’s #42 was retired, she had a big job to do- she needed to help current baseball players see the connection between themselves and Jackie.  Ken Griffey, Jr. was the first player to ask to wear #42 on Jackie Robinson Day and that emotion swelled as now all players are #42-for-the-day.  Jackie Robinson Day in baseball “went from a video being played on the screen of Jackie Robinson to players now thanking Jackie for all he has done,” Robinson shared.

Her presentation was filled with a series of incredible stories and pictures of her father throughout his career in baseball and later in his life before his death at 53 in 1972.

There were shots of him in the Negro Leagues, playing for the Montreal Royals and Brooklyn Dodgers, in front of his new Connecticut home with his family and as a civil rights’ activist, where he spent his final years.

Robinson narrated over a series of shots of Jackie famously “stealing home” in the 1955 World Series against the Yankees.  “Yogi says he was out, but clearly, my father was safe,” she laughed.  “Look, Yogi doesn’t even see Jackie coming down the base path.”  

Robinson’s greatest memory of her father was when he went out onto the ice-covered lake in the dead of winter to ensure that it was safe for ice-skating for his kids and their friends.   You see, Jackie couldn’t swim because black people were banned from the community pool where he grew up in all white neighborhood in Pasadena, CA.  Her father always said, “Did they think we didn’t get hot?”   Jackie wasn’t afraid to take risks whether it was stealing a base, retiring from the game when he was traded to Brooklyn’s rivals, the New York Giants, or putting himself in danger in order to yield a greater result.  And in a year where we saw the greatest closer who ever played be celebrated by his rivals and peers in his final season, I can’t help but see the connection between Sharon’s words this week about her father and the amazing legacy that Mariano, our modern day #42, has given to the game of baseball.

“Jackie Robinson was a great man," Rivera said (over the weekend before a game against the Baltimore Orioles). "I have always said that wearing this number is a privilege and a great responsibility & to represent what Jackie represented for us, as a minority, and for all of baseball in general, it's tremendous. For me, it's just a privilege to wear and to try to keep that legacy. It makes me want to be at my best. And that's what I tried to do my whole career."

 Both #42s gave by just being who they are- spirited, passionate ball players.  And baseball is better for it.

Please take a moment, go to Sharon Robinson's website:  http://www.sharonrobinsonink.com/index.htm

--Suzie Pinstripe, BYB Opinion Columnist
Twitter: @suzieprof




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