Major League Baseball marked the 77th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the sport’s colour barrier on Monday.
Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, beginning the end of the racial segregation that had relegated Black players to the Negro Leagues for decades.
“Jackie Robinson became the most vilified, targeted subject of verbal abuse and malicious treatment in the sports arena since Jack Johnson had the audacity to become heavyweight champion of the world in 1908,” sociologist and civil rights activist Harry Edwards said at Dodger Stadium here. “Like Jack Johnson, Jackie Robinson stood alone.”
Members of Robinson’s family, including his 101-year-old widow, were at ballparks from coast-to-coast to honour him.
At Citi Field in New York, Rachel Robinson rode in a golf cart to the New York Mets’ dugout, where she was given flowers by manager Carlos Mendoza, and retired players Mookie Wilson and Butch Huskey, the last Mets player to wear Robinson’s No. 42.
“She’s the legacy of perseverance,” said David Robinson, the youngest son of Jackie and Rachel Robinson.
Every team playing Monday wore No. 42 jerseys.
Players and staff from the Dodgers, including Shohei Ohtani, and the Washington Nationals surrounded Robinson’s statue in Centerfield Plaza hours before game time in Los Angeles.
“I can’t say enough of what Jackie Robinson’s meant to not only the Black community but the Hispanic community as well,” Nationals manager Dave Martinez told the group.