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Jackie Robinson: Brooklyn Dodgers
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CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What was it like when Jackie Robinson broke into baseball? Here to talk about that are four men of baseball from that era. Carl Erskine played with Jackie Robinson for nine years as a pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers; Buck O'Neil played in the Negro Leagues for eighteen years with the Memphis Red Sox and the Kansas City Monarchs. In 1962, he became the first African-American coach in the Major Leagues with the Chicago Cubs. He is now chairman of the Negro Baseball Museum in Kansas City.
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Jackie Robinson played for 10 years (not including years spent in the minors and black league). Six of those years he led the Brooklyn Dodgers into the World Series. He signed with the Dodgers in 1945, played in their Minor Leagues in 1946, and in the Majors from 1947 to 1956. In 1947, he was named the NL Rookie of the Year, and in 1949, he was named the MVP. Jackie Robinson was the first black player to be inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame (1962).
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Within the next ten years, Jackie Robinson's name became the example of a special role model for other African Americans making the crossover to the majors. By 1949, the Dodgers had added Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe to their roster of players. Robinson won the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949, and he demonstrated his ability in speaking out about race and being an American before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, DC. Robinson's life was on constant "view." He was a celebrity, but he still had to encounter racial prejudice and bigoted remarks as he played against other teams who had no African American players in 1949. Robinson's mentor and long time friend, Branch Rickey, resigned as the president of the Dodgers in 1950, and Walter O'Malley took the reigns of the Dodger Club. O'Malley and Robinson's relationship was not the best.
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Jackie robinson, born on Janurary31, 1919 in Cairo, GA, was the first black baseball player to play in the major leagues when he sign with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. He played 10 seasons (1947-1956) with the Dodgers and was named Rookie of the Year (1947) and National League MVP (1949). In 1962 he became the first black player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. On Wednesday, March 2th of 2005, Jackie Robinson was awarded Congressional Gold Medal, in honor of his achievements on and off the baseball diamond. He won many awards during his years with the Dodgers and many after, but his biggest award he has won over all was the respect of both black & whites.
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Jackie Robinson may have had more influence on the integration of sports than any other athlete in history. When he began playing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, he broke the color line in professional baseball and paved the way for the entry of black players into all professional sports. Monte Irvin, a black baseball player who came into the major leagues soon after Robinson, was quoted in The New York Times Book of Sports Legends as saying, "Jackie Robinson opened the door of baseball to all men. He was the first to get the opportunity, but if he had not done such a great job, the path would have been so much more difficult."
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Jackie Robinson spends just one year in Montreal, but changes it forever. In 1928 Montreal gets its first serious professional baseball team, the Montreal Royals of the International League. In 1945 the team is a Triple-A minor league affiliate of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Branch Rickey, president and co-owner of the Dodgers, chooses Montreal as the test bed for a move that would change baseball and earn Montreal a place in baseball history: he signs a black man.
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