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Jackie Robinson

by Matt Smith

Yesterday was Jackie Robinson day in MLB.  The amount of writing (rightfully) already devoted to it left me feeling that there was little I could add that wouldn’t just reflect the thoughts of most other people.  The struggles Robinson and many others went through should never be forgotten.  It has to be said that MLB is very good at honouring this sort of thing and has a keen sense of the importance of its past. 

I watched the A’s – White Sox game yesterday evening and the commentators interviewed a representative from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (I didn’t catch his name, unfortunately).  He mentioned that a couple of years ago, White Sox GM Kenny Williams promised the late Buck O’Neill that he would take the White Sox team for a visit to the museum.  Williams kept his promise and it clearly meant a lot to the museum.  The story reminded me that I still haven’t read the book ‘The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America’ published last year.  By all accounts, it is an excellent read. Nobody did more than Buck O’Neill to ensure that the rich legacy of the Negro Leagues will be remembered for generations to come.  Yesterday’s events have made me push it to the top of my ‘books to buy’ list.  As always, I’ll post a review after I’ve had a chance to read it.

In the meantime, I’m drawn back to a quote about Robinson by his wife, Rachel, in The Boys of Summer:

“My husband underplays things … That’s his style.  Don’t let him fool you.  What he came up against, and what we all came up against, was very, very rough”.

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