Remembering the game that changed America
Today marks 78 years since a single man walked onto Ebbets Field and changed the relationship between sports and race in America.
On April 15, 1947, Jack Roosevelt Robinson became the first Black player in Major League Baseball.
Jackie Robinson wasn’t the first Black professional athlete in a major U.S. sport, professional football was integrated from its inception except for a period of segregation from 1934 to 1945. Robinson wasn’t even the first Black professional baseball player, as professional teams comprising all Black players in the Negro Leagues, existed as far back as the 19th century.
But this was different, this was “America’s Pastime,” and MLB was it’s biggest stage.
Robinson’s journey wasn’t an easy one. Throughout his career he regularly endured jeering, insults and even threats to his family; teams threatened to refuse to play against him, and even some of his fellow Dodgers threatened to sit out games rather than play with a Black man.
Despite all that, Robinson and the Dodgers won the National League pennant his rookie year, a season in which he was also named Rookie of the Year. Two years later, he would be named National League MVP.
More important, Robinson’s perseverance opened a floodgate in American professional sports.
By the 1960s, most professional sports leagues in the United States had integrated and numbers of Black players in most of those leagues was on a steady upward trend.
Each year, on April 15, MLB recognizes Jackie Robinson Day. We think it’s an appropriate time to reflect on the impact simply stepping onto a field can make.
— JP
