Jackie's Legacy Still Shines Brightly

NEW YORK -- Why? Why should we continue to celebrate Jackie Robinson all these years later? Why did every major league player, coach and manager have to wear Robinson's No. 42 Wednesday, confusing casual fans and serious scorekeepers who prefer baseball be guided by actual uniform numbers and not some artificial commemoration?

Jerry Manuel, manager of the New York Mets, could have pointed out a perfectly sensible answer as we walked down the Citi Field tunnel late Wednesday afternoon. We passed by a broom closet, the kind where black players like Robinson once had to dress, and a water fountain, which would either have to be sanitized after a player like Robinson sipped from it or, more likely, moved to a separate area so the white players wouldn't be contaminated.

No, in the world as we now know it, the players eat at the same buffets and sleep in the same fancy hotels and relax in the same saunas and nobody bats an eye. Everyone's equal outside the chalk lines. Sixty two years after Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson broke the color barrier and became the first African-American player to suit up in the major leagues, and 12 years after baseball officially retired his number, Robinson's journey is part of the American fabric. He's in the Hall of Fame, he's in history books. There's no reason April 15 ought to be set aside to memorialize him.

Unless you think it's important to pass on qualities like courage and excellence.

Unless you believe the next generation could use a primer on persistence, justice and teamwork.

Unless you treasure commitment and citizenship.

Unless you want a future defined by determination and integrity.

Those are the "nine values" that defined Robinson's life and the legacy he left behind. They are etched into the 70-feet archways of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, the center piece of the Mets' new ballpark, and it might be a better world if every fan who passed through the gates stopped for a second to reflect on Robinson's words.

It might do us all some good to wonder what it must have been like to be Robinson during those years with the Brooklyn Dodgers, when he ignored racial slurs and death threats and cleats meant to harm as he tried to steal a base. When pitchers aimed at his head and opponents attempted to push him off the basepaths and yelled "nigger" from their dugout and chanted for him to "go back to the cotton fields" and some of his own teammates wouldn't sit near him on the bench. At the behest of Dodgers president Branch Rickey, Robinson turned the other cheek and silently suffered all the vile nastiness that came his way.

If those aren't reason enough to sew the No. 42 onto the back of everyone's uniform one day a year, then we might as well stop recording baseball's history and call it a night.

"For me, I celebrate Jackie Robinson every day," Manuel was saying before the Mets took on the San Diego Padres. "That's the reason I wear my pants up. I got the skinniest legs in all of baseball and I put my pants high. And the only reason I wear them high is because of Jackie Robinson."

On a stroll through the beautiful rotunda Wednesday, as scores of players wearing No. 42 went through the rhythmic motions of batting practice inside the ballpark, you could eavesdrop on all sorts of conversations. Many were about Jackie. Children craned their necks to view the frieze lined with Robinson's nine values and enlarged photographs of him etched into tile. They asked their parents questions about this giant man, about his words and deeds.

Two massive video screens bookend the rotunda, showing grainy footage of the giant man stealing home, safe under Yogi Berra's glove. I heard one father tell his daughter that Robinson stole home 19 times. Nineteen times! Her eyes grew wide. I heard two other men grumbling as they stood near the mammoth blue No. 42 statue. We have a black president, said one. Yeah, said the other, why do we have to constantly be reminded of America's racist past?

"That's shocking, but you still hear people say stuff like that," Manuel said, when I relayed the grumblers' conversation. "As an African-American and a guy who came up with civil rights and a follower of Martin Luther King, I can honestly say we can never talk enough about what Jackie did.

"Even though we were cheering for him on the sidelines, we weren't walking together with him. He was doing that alone. What he did made it easier for what Martin had to do. And that kind of impact made it even better for President Obama."

One brick at a time, I suggest.

"No question, to build this bridge of relationships is huge," Manuel said. "We've already crossed some serious barriers but it serves us all well to be reminded about it daily. Here's a guy who famously said, 'A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.' Think about that and then tell me we shouldn't be passing that on to the next generation every single day."

Manuel was too young to see Robinson as a player, so it's his ideas that resonate the strongest. "He said he wanted to see an African-American in the third base coaching box," said Manuel. "What he meant was in a position of authority."

After spending 14 seasons as a player, Manuel went to the third base box, to the bench, to manager, then over to the first base box, back to the bench and manager again. Gary Sheffield is the only African-American player on the Mets, but last year black players did account for 10.2 percent of major leaguers, the most since the 1995 season, according to a report issued Wednesday by Richard Lapchick, director for the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports.

In a ceremony dedicating the Jackie Robinson Rotunda Wednesday, Rachel Robinson, Jackie's widow, said while the leap wasn't huge, it was an encouraging step. She beamed while talking about the financial support the Jackie Robinson Foundation provides to 279 students at 140 colleges and universities in 34 states. Mostly she kept circling around the rotunda and tilting her head to look again at her husband's life work. It was thrilling and slightly painful, she said, because the memories kept "flooding back into me." Mets' owner Fred Wilpon told Jackie's widow, "When we're not here anymore, this will be."

Jackie Robinson never played for the Mets. He was an infielder for the Dodgers in Brooklyn, playing at Ebbets Field. Citi Field is the Wilpon's unabashed love letter to the old ballpark, the Jackie Robinson Rotunda their salute to New York's baseball past. It is where folks can gather freely and discuss how Robinson altered the complexion of our pastime and forced this country to see that blacks could be equal with whites. It is where adults can tell the story about how a white shortstop from Louisville named Pee Wee Reese created a symbol of brotherhood when he draped his arm over Robinson's shoulder, where children can crane their necks and learn about this giant of a man.

It is where the Watson family found itself a couple hours before Wednesday's first pitch. There was Tavis, New York police officer, and his wife Chante, a New York City school teacher, and their three children, and though they live just two blocks from the old Ebbets Field and though they have books about Jackie Robinson and talk often about his legacy, it was different being here in person.

They felt closer to Robinson, connected somehow.

"It's not just baseball he integrated," Tavis Watson said. "He opened up the doors in other sports. The same guy who helped bring Jackie Robinson to Brooklyn went over to Pittsburgh and helped them sign Roberto Clemente. It shows how you can integrate everything and that's something our children should never be allowed to forget."

In ballparks across the land Wednesday, No. 42 was temporarily pulled from retirement and placed on the backs of black and white and Asian and Latino players. It made for quite a stunning visual at Citi Field when Jose Reyes sailed, stomach first, into home plate in the seventh inning, flashbulbs catching No. 42's daring dash.

As he does before every game, Jerry Manuel had paused in a quiet corner of the dugout, pulled up one leg pant, said, "OK, Jackie," and then pulled up the other leg pant and said again, "OK, Jackie." Manuel greeted Reyes in the dugout after his slide into home, old school meeting new school, two No. 42s hugging.

Indeed, a life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

That's reason enough to remember Jackie Robinson, each and every day.