Thank You, Jackie

In 1946 baseball genius and then Dodgers club president and general manager Branch Rickey broke one of baseball’s longest and most disgraceful unwritten rules by signing a talented young black shortstop from the Negro League Kansas City Monarchs to a minor league deal with the Montreal Royals. And on this day every year we celebrate one of the most important days in American history. On April 15th, 1947 Jackie Robinson started first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. By breaking baseball’s color barrier Jackie Robinson had to be big, bigger than his Brooklyn teammates that drew up a petition to keep him off the ball club, bigger than the pitchers who threw at his head, and bigger than the base runners that dug their cleats shamelessly into his legs. He had to be bigger than the bench jockeys who yelled some of the most horrible racial epitaphs imaginable and insisted he carry their bags and shine their shoes. And bigger than the so-called fans who mocked him with mops on their heads and wrote him endless death threats. I can’t decide which is more impressive, that he was man enough to take this challenge… or that he was man enough not to give in and fight back. Today we honor Jackie Robinson being bigger than baseball, too many times in our society we throw around the word hero - Jackie Robinson is the definition of the word. It’s days like today and people like Branch Rickey that make me proud to be a baseball fan. But it’s the courage of men like Jackie Robinson that make me proud to be an American.