April marks the beginning of the baseball season. I like the term opening day. Openness implies inclusion. Spring conjures up images of new life and possibilities. Hope springs eternal. Opening day didn’t always hold possibilities and hope for everyone.

That changed forever on Opening Day 1947 when Jackie Robinson took his position at first
base for Branch Rickey’s Brooklyn Dodgers. It was ten years before I was born and eleven years before the Dodgers would start playing baseball very close to where I was born. Jackie was a Dodger and this fact has always made me proud to be a Dodger fan.

The shame that integration didn’t happen in the “national” pastime on opening day much sooner can’t be denied either. For a boy growing up in Southern California in the 1960’s none of this made any sense. I’m an adult and it still doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t matter when you were born or where you were born it should never make sense…ever. I heard stories of Satchel Paige and thought surely some team in the majors could have benefited from his services.

Either you can play or you can’t. Our society should be based on the same principles. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I like baseball and blues music so much. These two institutions, baseball and blues music, are more democratic than most things in American life. They are traditions that are as American as anything this country has ever produced. They embody all that makes this country great and sometimes the things that make us less than great.

In the field of music it could be said that Benny Goodman was the Branch Rickey and Charlie Christian was the Jackie Robinson. There were many pioneers in the fields of jazz and blues music who had to endure unspeakable prejudice, humiliation and just plain inconvenience to integrate their bands. The players who played in integrated bands back in the day probably didn’t think of themselves as being heroic. They were just trying to make a living and get their sound together despite the narrow minded thinking foisted upon them by ignorant thought. Maybe Charlie Parker was Branch Rickey and Red Rodney was Jackie Robison in a way. You can either play or you can’t. The best player gets the gig.

Jackie Robinson could play. His performance on the field in his first year in the major leagues is one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of sports.

The attention, the pressure and the burden that was placed on this man’s shoulders is almost unfathomable. Baseball is the type of sport where distraction, added pressure and anger almost never add to a player’s performance. Jackie had all of these things. He overcame these obstacles and was an instant success. He was the National League’s Rookie of the Year and Dodger attendance soared. As it turned out Branch Rickey’s experiment was good for business.

Robinson did not come west to Los Angeles with the Dodgers. He retired in 1957. I read
about him and was proud he grew up in nearby Pasadena. He is still the only man to letter in four sports at UCLA. He has always been one of my biggest heroes inside or outside the arena of sport.

By the 1947 baseball season, we were less than two years removed from World War II. America was still aglow with what many consider our nation’s finest hour. The U.S. defeated Nazis, fascists and imperialists all over the globe. Returning G.I’s of every race however began looking at the absurdity of America’s racial policies and attitudes through a more worldly perspective.

Jackie Robinson was a monumental figure in the civil rights movement. This is because there wasn’t a civil rights movement when Jackie dug his spikes in the dirt at home plate in 1947. Some heroes become symbolic figures over time or after their death. Jackie Robinson was a symbolic figure in his time, day after day in front of thousands of people. He represented the hopes of every American who believed in liberty and justice. He needed to be a symbolic figure who could hit a curveball and field blistering line drives.

Jackie was a catalyst for change not just in terms of race relations but in terms of the fortunes of the Dodgers. “Dem Bums in Brooklyn” became pennant winners and contenders in the years following that heroic opening day in 1947. The Dodgers finally beat the Yankees
and won their first World Series in 1955. Regardless of Robinson’s achievements and that of his team there were still some people who were not comfortable with a black man of dignity, accomplishment and stature. Sound familiar?

To assume progress will occur in due course and all on its own, is foolish and misguided thinking. There are still people who will never be ready to accept a black man of dignity, achievement or stature under any circumstance.

In 1987, on opening day, long time Dodger General Manager, former roommate of Jackie Robinson and the man responsible for more minority hirings in baseball than anyone, Al Campanis spoke to Ted Koppel on Nightline. On this national television broadcast Campanis fielded questions related to minority hiring and recruitment in baseball’s front offices. During this discussion, Capanis let loose a series of asinine comments that were laced with racial prejudice. The Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley fired Campanis on the spot.

We too can all summon enough courage to not tolerate the racial slurs we overhear in public from time to time. We can challenge those people to not engage in that kind of discourse out loud. It is offensive and wrong. We can remind them that words often become actions. We can change hearts and minds. We can be like the Dodgers were on opening day in 1947 and again in 1987. We can be like Branch Rickey and Peter O’Malley and act courageously, swiftly and decisively when racism raises its ugly head. We should be intolerant of intolerance.

The baseball and blues festival seasons begin each April almost simultaneously. These two passages of spring are a welcome diversion from a troubled world. They can also be an example of what makes America great. Integration, tolerance, acceptance, teamwork and cooperation are core American values. So is having a good time.

Let’s play ball and let’s dance. After all, hope springs eternal.

-David Mac