Today is Jackie Robinson Day

Today, April 15, is Jackie Robinson Day, which means all teams will honor him by wearing his number 42.

April 15 is the day to honor and celebrate him and remember the hero that he was because on April 15, 1947, he became the first Black baseball player in the major leagues.

In 2004, MLB first had a Jackie Robinson Day as a celebration of the player who broke the color barrier. Festivities were held at 13 ballparks that year. All 30 teams took part in the celebration in 2005 after then commissioner Bud Selig announced that Jackie Robinson Day would take place every season.

Ken Griffey Jr. is a Hall of Famer who was a 13-time All-Star, a 10-time Gold Glove winner, a 7-time Silver Slugger winner and a one-time MVP winner who led the league in homers four times on his way to hitting a total of 630 homers, which is 7th most all time. Players did not start wearing №42 until 2007 when Griffey Jr. asked Selig if he could wear the number in honor of Robinson. Selig told Griffey that he could and then went onto encourage others aroun the league to also wear Robinsons’ famous №42.

The number of players to choose to wear №42 grew the next few years, which led to the league’s decision in 2009 that all players, managers and coaches would wear №42 on April 15 in tribute to Robinson. In 2022, the league announced that all uniforms would feature a Dodger blue №42, regardless of a team’s normal colors.

In college at UCLA he was the first four sport letterman. He starred in basketball, track and field, football and baseball. Baseball was likely his worst sport of the four, which proves how great of an athlete he was since he is in the baseball Hall of Fame.

Before he was signed by Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey, Robinson was a shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro National League. He was the one chosen to break the color barrier not because he was necessarily the most talented out of the options but because Rickey thought he was talented and had the ability to take the abuse that he would receive for being the first Black player and a league that did not allow Black players before.

In a famous exchange between the longtime Brooklyn Dodgers owner and Robinson in their headquarters on Montague Street in Brooklyn, Robinson asks, “Are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?” Rickey responded he needed a player “with guts enough not to fight back.”

The first step in his Robinson’s journey after signing with the Dodgers was playing with their Triple-A team in Montreal. Before his 1946 season began with the Montreal Royals, he had an exhibition game during spring training in Daytona Beach on March 17, 1946 with his Triple-A team against the parent-club Dodgers. That marked the first time an American League or National League organization fielded an integrated team.

The Dodgers initially had another location in mind, but resistance to integration in nearby Sanford forced a relocation, making Daytona Beach the unlikely setting for history. Nearly 80 years later, the park that held that momentous exhibition game between Triple-A team and Major League team is still hosting games as the home of the Florida State League’s Daytona Tortugas (Single-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds).

“For sociological impact, Jack Roosevelt Robinson was perhaps America’s most significant athlete,” read the New York Times’s obituary of Robinson in 1972.

In his MLB career with the Dodgers, he was a seven-time All-Star in his 10 MLB seasons. In his rookie season in 1947, when he won the Rookie of the Year and finished fifth in MVP voting, he had a 12 homers, 31 doubles, a league leading 29 steals, a .297 average and an impressive .383 OBP. He won the MVP in 1949 after having 16 homers, 38 doubles, a career-high 124 RBI, a league leading 37 steals, a league leading .342 average and a very impressive .432 OBP.

He finished top seven in MVP voting in four of his 10 seasons and top 16 in MVP voting in eight of his 10 seasons. He had at least 22 steals in five of his first six seasons and lead the league in steals in two of those seasons. He had at least 30 doubles in six of his first seven MLB seasons. In his 10 MLB seasons, he had a .313 average, a .410 OBP, an .887 OPS and a 133 OPS+, which is 33 percent high than league average.

Robinson was elected into the Hall of Fame on his first ballot, joining Bob Feller from that year, as the first two first-ballot electees%20of%20all%20ballots%20cast.) by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America since the inaugural 1936 Hall of Fame vote. Robinson earned votes on 77.5 percent (124 of 160) of all ballots cast.

In 1968, he suffered a heart attack. Complications from heart disease and diabetes weakened him and made him almost blind by middle age. On October 24, 1972 he died of a heart attack at his home in North Stamford, Connecticut at just 53 years old.

Tim Kurkijan said that Hank Aaron told him that if it were not for Robinson, he would have never even thought about someday playing in the big leagues. Seven years to the day after Robinson’s debut, the all time great Hammerin’ Hank got hit №1 out of 3,771. (If you took away all of Aaron’s 755 home runs he would still have 3,000 hits.)

Aaron faced a lot of racism and got a lot of hate mail starting the season before and then in that winter where he got death threats, which continuing in the games leading up to him tying and then passing Babe Ruth’s total of 714 homers in the beginning of the 1974 season.

The all time record for total home runs was a very significant record at that time, which meant that he got a lot of hatred and racism since he was Black breaking a record that had been held by Ruth.

In his first at-bat that season — on April 4, 1974 against the Reds’ Jack Billingham — Aaron hit a three-run home run, which tied him even with Ruth. But Aaron did not homer in the rest of the series, and the Braves went home to face the Dodgers in a three-game set beginning April 8. On April 8, Aaron homered in the 3rd inning off of Al Downing to pass Ruth.

“I never wanted them to forget Babe Ruth,” Aaron said. “I just wanted them to remember Henry Aaron.”

A big issue recently has been the Department of Defense wiped a military story about him from its website. Robinson served as a 2nd lieutenant in the arm. The information about his military service was taken off of the website as part of the Trump administration’s wiping out of diversity, equity and inclusion within the federal government. It was later put back on after outcry and major pushback from the public and influential people in the baseball and national media.

Trump had ordered the Pentagon to scan federal websites for articles, social media posts, photos, news articles and videos to remove any web pages that “promote diversity, equity and inclusion.” This even went down to Robinson’s service in the military.

Robinson trained as an officer and was assigned to a tank regiment, but he still had to deal with harassment and the overall policy of segregation in the U.S. military. He faced a court-martial for refusing to sit in the back of a bus while at Fort Hood in Texas, according to Military.com. Though he was found not guilty of the six counts, including insubordination, the court-martial prevented him from deploying to fight in Europe with his battalion.

David Robinson, who is the son of Jackie and Rachel Robinson, said in a statement on March 19 that he was surprised that the government would remove a web page about athletes who served in the military.

“We take great pride in Jackie Robinson’s service to our country as a soldier and a sports hero, an icon whose courage, talent, strength of character and dedication contributed greatly to leveling the playing field not only in professional sports but throughout society,” said Robinson, who is a Jackie Robinson Foundation board member. “He worked tirelessly on behalf of equal opportunities, in education, business, civic engagement, and within the justice system. A recipient of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, he of course is an American hero.”

Jemele Hill talked about on her Spolitics podcast about the Dodgers getting backlash for visiting the White House after the administration removed the information about Robinson’s military service and about how the attack of DEI does not make sense especially after what Robinson went through. He Robinson is an example of why DEI is needed because it gives qualified people a chance.

Robinson does not transcend diversity, equity and inclusion, he personifies it as Hill said in her podcast. Despite the virtually non stop campaign to weaponize DEI the entire purpose of DEI always has been rooted in giving qualified people an opportunity that they would not have had otherwise received because they have historically been not allowed or overlooked from those opportunities. Robinson is really the ultimate example of DEI and why it is helpful. He was qualified to play in MLB but without Dodgers executive Branch Rickey he does not get that opportunity. Without Robinson others after him like Willie Mays, Aaron, Griffey Jr, Roberto Clemente, Albert Pujols, Shohei Ohtani, Rickey Henderson and Tony Gwynn would not have had a chance.