Jackie Robinson played his first major league game on April 15, 1947, and received death threats before the season started. Born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, he was the youngest of five children raised by a single mother who had moved the family to Pasadena, California, to escape the rural South. Robinson was a multi-sport athlete at UCLA, the first student to letter in four sports at the university: baseball, basketball, football, and track. 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 at Fort Hood, Texas. He was acquitted. Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, recruited Robinson specifically for his ability to absorb abuse without reacting. Rickey told him he needed a player "with the guts not to fight back" for three years. Robinson agreed. The abuse was severe: teammates filed a petition against playing with him, opposing players slid into him with sharpened spikes, fans screamed racial slurs, and multiple teams threatened to forfeit rather than share a field. Robinson's response was to play exceptional baseball. His first season, he batted .297, led the league in stolen bases, and won the inaugural Rookie of the Year award. He won the National League batting title in 1949 with a .342 average and the Most Valuable Player award the same year. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. After retiring from baseball, he became a civil rights activist and business executive, serving as vice president of Chock full o'Nuts. His number, 42, was retired across all of Major League Baseball in 1997, the only number universally retired in the sport. He died on October 24, 1972, at age 53.