Jackie Robinson Dies: The Man Who Broke Baseball's Color Line

Jackie Robinson's contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers did not just break baseball's color barrier. It broke Branch Rickey's unspoken rule about how to do it. Rickey, the Dodgers' general manager, told Robinson he needed a man brave enough not to fight back. For three seasons Robinson absorbed everything: spikings, beanings, death threats, hotels that would not let him stay with his teammates, and teammates who signed a petition refusing to play alongside him. He batted .297 in his rookie year, won Rookie of the Year in 1947, and stole home plate with a frequency that unnerved pitchers and delighted crowds. Born in Cairo, Georgia, in 1919, and raised in Pasadena, California, he was a four-sport star at UCLA, the first athlete in the university's history to letter in baseball, basketball, football, and track in the same year. He served as a second lieutenant in the Army during World War II and was court-martialed for refusing to move to the back of a military bus. He was acquitted. Rickey signed him in 1945, and Robinson spent a year with the Montreal Royals before being called up to Brooklyn. In 1949 he won the National League MVP award, batting .342, and stopped holding back. He argued with umpires, challenged opposing pitchers, and played with the aggressive intelligence that had been his natural style before Rickey asked him to suppress it. He retired in 1956, ten years after he started, with a lifetime batting average of .311. He died on October 24, 1972, at fifty-three, of heart disease accelerated by diabetes. His number 42 was retired across all of Major League Baseball in 1997, the only number ever universally retired in professional sports.