Jackie Robinson Day: Where We Are 63 Years Later

When Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers 63 years ago today, he was the first black player ever to play in the major leagues. In one of the game’s best traditions, every player will wear Jackie’s number 42 today to honor his breaking of the color barrier.

↵But while we take today to honor everything Jackie did for race relations in baseball, we also have to ask ourselves just how far the game has come in the six decades since. Jeff Passan of Yahoo! points out that while great strides have been made, the game is far from equal opportunity; especially in the minds of its black players.

↵↵And so from Jackie to Jason(Heyward) and Justin(Upton), they passed along stories. The clearest way to understand who you are is to understand who your forebearers were, which means that even men such as (Orlando)Hudson and (Torii)Hunter – ones whom the game made rich – harbor disillusionment toward their treatment. Old-timers who went through real strife remind the kids to always be wary of the establishment, and suddenly every slight – real or imagined – is real.

↵↵Passan then explains that while it is possible that racism in baseball still exists, it is the tradition passed down by the African-American players before them that makes today’s players more likely to call any mistreatment they may experience the result of racism.

↵↵It’s that every situation is unique, and though racism may not exist in baseball writ large, it could very well in small doses. Not every player in 1947 hated Jackie Robinson. Only a few tried to spike him at second base. A few is all it takes.

↵Baseball’s history of prejudice is ugly, unfathomable today, and yet modern players don’t forget, won’t forget, can’t forget. The black experience in baseball won’t let them.

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