1 Those
of you who play baseball may have heard of him. Jack Roosevelt Robinson
(Jackie) was born on January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia, but grew up in
Pasadena, California. As he grew, he worked hard and became very good
at the sports he played. In fact, while attending the University of
California at Los Angeles (UCLA), he became the first athlete in the
school's history to letter in four sports – basketball, baseball,
football, and track. 2 In
1942, Jackie joined the United States Army, and became a second
lieutenant a year later. He then received a medical discharge in 1944
and began teaching physical education at Samuel Huston College in
Austin, Texas. 3 The
next year, he joined the Negro League and played for the Monarchs.
During his year in this league, a man named Branch Rickey was
diligently looking for black baseball players to play in the major
leagues. See, at this time in our country's history, black people were
not allowed in the same places as white people. Everyone thought that
Rickey was going to start an all-Negro league, but secretly, he was
looking for one player that was strong enough to break the
color-barrier that had plagued baseball for 60 years. He found that
player. 4 Jackie
Robinson began playing in the major leagues for the Brooklyn Dodgers in
1947 as the first black man ever to play baseball in the majors. He was
28 years old and older than the other rookies. He had an excellent
10-year career with the Dodgers, stealing home nineteen times in his
career. The Dodgers wanted to trade him to the New York Giants in 1956,
but Robinson was very loyal to the Dodgers and was grateful for what
they had done for him and for civil rights, so he refused. He retired
in January of 1957, having never played for anyone else but the Dodgers. 5 In
1962, Jackie Robinson was the first black baseball player ever to be
inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was there when the Dodgers
retired his baseball uniform in June of 1972, just four months before
he died. In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of his breaking the color
barrier, Jackie Robinson's baseball number 42 was permanently retired
from the game.
