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Another First for Jackie Robinson!
(Repost from November, 2017)
“The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.” -Jackie Robinson
Perhaps truer words were never spoken…
We can’t let the week go by without mentioning that 74 years ago, on November 18, 1949, Jackie Robinson added another first to his growing list of ground-breaking accomplishments: He became the first African-American to win the MVP award.
And what a year it was! Check out these numbers: The future Hall of Fame second baseman posted a lead-leading .342 average, with 203 hits, 122 runs, 16 home runs, 124 RBIs, .432 on-base percentage, .528 slugging average, and a 152 OPS+ (100 being the major league average). Displaying his all-around versatility, his 37 stolen bases were also tops in the league. Jackie led the Dodgers to their second pennant in three years after he broke the odious color barrier in 1947.
Over 10 seasons with the Dodgers, the six-time All-Star hit .311 with 1518 hits, 137 home runs, 734 RBIs, and a .409 on-base percentage. Jackie won the inaugural Rookie of the Year Award in 1947. His .440 on-base percentage in 1952 led the league. A daring and aggressive base runner, he twice led the league in stolen bases. He played in six World Series including the Dodgers’ 1955 World Series championship. In 38 post-season games, he hit 234 with two home runs and 12 RBIs.
In 1997, Major League Baseball universally retired his uniform #42 across all major league teams, the first pro athlete in any sport to be so honored. Major League Baseball has since adopted an annual tradition, “Jackie Robinson Day”, on which every player on every team wears #42.
Jackie Robinson was also known for his ground-breaking pursuits off the baseball diamond. He was the first black television analyst, and the first black vice president of a major American corporation, Chock Full O’Nuts. In the 1960s, he helped establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American-owned financial institution based in Harlem.
In recognition of his achievements on and off the field, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Jackie was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. He was named to the major league All-Century team. He passed away on October 24, 1972, aged 53, due to complications of diabetes.
Gary Livacari
Photo Credits: All from Google search
Information: Excerpts edited from the Jackie Robinson Wikipedia page. Statistics from Baseball-Reference.com
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Love the quote at the top, Gary–Jackie summed it up perfectly.
Greatest competitor I ever saw, and he electrified the National League with his base running exploits in 1947.
The vitriol he must have endured his first two years was unimaginable. But starting with his MVP in ’49, he stopped turning the other cheek and sometimes went a little too far. According to umpire Jocko Conlin, “He used bad language and never accepted a decision that went against him.” Many lost patience with him. But one can understand the pent-up emotions being unleashed.
Next to Babe Ruth, Jackie influenced the game perhaps more than any other player.
Thanks, Gary!
Thanks Bill, I agree with all that.
Whenever I think about Jackie, I also think about how different things might have been if Happy Chandler hadn’t suspended Leo Durocher at the start of the 1947 season. You might remember this piece I wrote about it a few years ago: https://wp.me/p7a04E-517 Very sad to compemplate…
Wonderful athlete. His statistics and ability to disrupt the defense are Hall Of Fame criteria, plus his well-deserved “trailblazer” reputation. One of the trials Jackie suffered was roommates. His first was Wendel Smith a reporter for the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper. Later in 1947 it was rookie Dan Bankhead. Then Joe Black and Don Newcombe. I don’t think Jackie rooming on the road with a sportswriter made him feel a part of the team. And to his credit he later roomed with every black rookie that came to Brooklyn. A great paper written by Henry D. Fetter, “Racial Fault-Lines in “Baseball’s Great Experiment:” Black Perceptions, White Reactions.” dispels some Robinson myths and provides an excellent in-depth look into Robinsons effect on the game. A must read.
Great essay about # 42. Hard to imagine the constraint he had to have to be able to endure such racial prejudice. And, as Mr. Schaefer said, Jackie and Babe Ruth probably had more impact on the game than any other two players in MLB history. {Such a co-incidence that they both passed at the early age of 53}. Both men with brash attitudes….each in his own way. Thnx, Gary.
Thanks for this excellent tribute to Jackie, Dr. Livacari. He is THE reason I’m a life-long Dodger fan — although L.A.’s version of the franchise has made it tough to remain all that faithful in recent years.
What’s especially intriguing about Robinson is that, although he was the first athlete to letter in four sports for UCLA, 1939, he was always considered much better at football, basketball, and track-and-field, with baseball lagging far behind in fourth place. (He batted a whopping .097 in his only season on the diamond for the Bruins.) After leaving college he didn’t play baseball again until signing with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues in 1945, by which time he was a 26-year-old veteran of WWII. General manager Branch Rickey signed him to a Dodger contract late in the year, and sent him to Montreal of the International League in ’46. So in April of 1947, when he finally became a big-leaguer, Robinson was already 28 years old.
Even more fascinating than all these preliminaries, I think, is that Jackie Robinson became a major-league ballplayer DESPITE his color (i.e., by overcoming a decades-long prohibition against blacks), and BECAUSE of his color (in that he was chosen by the Dodgers specifically on account of his race). He was a hero to me for those reasons during his playing days, and remains today my all-time favorite for the same reasons. His fortitude, tenacity, and disruptive influence were — and are — hard to believe.
Although many would deny it, as we flash forward three-quarters of a century since Robinson’s rookie year, this nation has undergone an ironic and dramatic transformation when it comes to matters of race, and racial justice. It’s one he could scarcely have foreseen, nor did I, a naive pipsqueak back in the early 1950s. One fine day, if we live long enough and grow wise enough, perhaps the time will come when a human being’s ethnicity, gender and religion have absolutely NOTHING to do with others’ opinions, treatment and esteem — for better OR for worse. (We’re definitely not there yet.)
Still naive after all these years,
Michael
Thanks Michaael. Nice tribute to jackie. I think we all share your sentiments.