Jackie’s Priorities of the Highest Order

Jackie Robinson’s name stands for the flag, brotherhood, equality, democracy, tolerance, Americanism--everything good about America.

That’s because he symbolizes the righting of an ancient wrong. Quicker than you could say Jack Robinson, Jim Crow was gone from our national sport.

It seems hard to believe now but for more than half a century, black men were barred from participating in a game and a country that should have been as democratic as the Declaration of Independence.

Oh, it wasn’t written anywhere. It was just observed everywhere. It was the worst kind of law: the unwritten law. The written kind you can deal with. You challenge it, change it. The unwritten law is as hard to lay a glove on as a feather in the wind.

It was not only baseball’s shame, it was the nation’s. Some other sports had few blacks. But other sports got their recruits out of college. Baseball didn’t. There had been black athletes in college football--Fritz Pollard, Brice Taylor, to name a couple of the more famous. And, in fact, Jackie Robinson himself. Robinson not only played college football, at UCLA, but pro football, with the L.A. Wolves.

To be sure, the Wolves were minor league football. But still pro football. And in those days, Jackie Robinson couldn’t play in any league in organized baseball, not even the Sally. And baseball didn’t have the excuse that it needed its raw material from college. It was the rare big league ballplayer who had been to college. The scouts didn’t want him there.

The so-called color line was held in place by silent acquiescence, not only by a whole sport but a whole country. It didn’t need bravery to break it, it just needed a conscience. It was removed by the stroke of a pen, not armed rebellion.

It was quite obvious that Branch Rickey didn’t pick Robinson solely for his athletic prowess, he picked him for his brains as well. Baseball may very well have been Robinson’s third-best sport. But that was good enough. Because Jackie Robinson might have been the best American athlete ever.

Jackie was no Joan of Arc, Uncle Tom or martyr to the cause. He didn’t swallow his pride, only his temper. He knew he was surrogate for a whole movement. He knew the way to respect was at the plate and in the field.

He excelled. He led the league in hitting his third year. He led it in stolen bases. He made the Brooklyn Dodgers instant champions. He was a born winner.

The statistics don’t begin to summarize his worth to a team. He led the Dodgers to the World Series six times in the 10 years he played for them. Robinson was never an “I went two for four, too bad about the team” guy. He saw to it the team had a good night too.

The public loved him. He played the kind of daring, exciting, take-a-chance baseball that hadn’t been seen in a long time. The game had been given over to the three-run homer, a stand-around-and-wait-for-the-big-inning bore.

He was perfect for the role history had set for him.

Besides his ability to hit the curveball, get the jump on the pitcher, turn the double play or turn somebody’s triple into an out, Robinson had one other thing going for him--Rachel.

The marriage of Jackie and Rachel Robinson was not only a love story, it was a lesson in commitment. From their meeting at UCLA in the ‘40s to the day death separated them, the Robinsons were Jackie’s second team and the goal was equality. Jackie never compromised in his demands--and neither did Mrs. Robinson.

When Jackie died, of the complications of diabetes--too young at 52--in 1972, Rachel Robinson, in her grief, knew that the country had lost more than an ex-ballplayer. It had lost a leader. Jackie needed more years to complete his work.

So Rachel Robinson decided to give them to him. She formed the Jackie Robinson Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to carrying on the work of her late husband in bringing his fellow African-Americans into the American workplace.

“Jackie was never one to just sit and complain,” says his widow, who has never remarried. “He went out and did something about it. He was as impatient with his own people for shirking responsibilities as he was with the power structure for not giving them any.”

He fought for opportunities, not advantages.

His career had become a rallying point for the liberal establishment. Before Robinson showed what could be done, no one had considered integrating lunch counters, drinking fountains and the front of buses. Robinson provided not only a new frontier, he pioneered it.

“Jackie was always a team player,” Rachel Robinson was recalling the other day. “He showed up early for games, he made studies of pitchers. He was always available for interviews because he considered it an important part of the game. He signed autographs. He preached education because he knew it was more than a diploma on the wall, it was a key to a better life.”

In short, Jackie knew that in order to steal second--in order to score--first you had to get to first base. He tried to assist as many youngsters as possible to get to first. By going to college. He induced his own company, Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee, to contribute and later cued in other corporate sponsorship.

His foundation does the same thing today.

You have to think baseball would have been integrated sooner or later. Bigotry could not have held America hostage forever. But Robinson’s contributions were crucial. If he had failed, on or off the field, the change might have been infinitely delayed, increasing the national shame.

It grieves Rachel Robinson that there are players today with no knowledge of the role played by her husband in making the good life available to them.

Jackie wouldn’t care about that. His only goal was winning, not getting credit. And the Jackie Robinson Foundation is winning. More than 500 minority scholars have been sent through college to date--124 this year. The program has a 92% graduation rate. And that’s graduation in engineering, economics, chemistry, nursing, neural sciences and business administration, not advanced shotputting.

On July 18, at the Riviera Country Club, the first Jackie Robinson Invitational Golf Classic and awards dinner will be held. It will be chaired by Lod Cook, and Billy Casper will play a hole with each foursome. The money collected will be used to finance scholarships at 52 colleges and universities.

As usual, Jackie Robinson is trying to help the home team. Only this time it’s not the Dodgers, it’s the U.S. of A. Jackie would want it to finish first again in the real world series.