Cleveland, Curveballs and Common Sense Putting 2 and 2 together since 1987.

National holiday

If there’s one day that I think should be set aside and remembered, it’s today. And no, I don’t mean Tax Day.

The reason today should be remembered is because today, 62 years ago, one man changed the world.

What Jackie Robinson did for baseball is well-known – baseball already has a holiday dedicated to him. Every year, on April 15, tributes are held in ballparks all across the major leagues. The last few years, players have worn #42 as a tribute. On every day that’s not April 15, #42 is retired all across baseball and isn’t worn by anyone (except Mariano Rivera, who wore it before the number was retired and is allowed to wear it thanks to a Grandfather Clause).

Let’s not forget though, that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier 16 years before Martin Luther King, Jr. marched on Washington, 20 years before Thurgood Marshall became a Supreme Court justice, 20 years before an African-American was elected Mayor of a major city (Cleveland, oddly enough), and 61 years before the first African-American President.

Baseball is America’s game because after the color barrier was broken in baseball, the rest of the country followed. Jackie Robinson made it that way, because he was the first step in making it accessible to everyone. He was a hero not only because of the way he played (a .311 career hitter; 1518 hits in just ten years; 19 steals of home in his career, all of them straight steals; the first African-American elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame), but because of the way he carried himself on and off the field. With fans shouting racial slurs, the media scrutinizing his every move and the entire world waiting for him to mess up, he made it impossible to find anything to dislike about him. In a world of today’s high-paid, high-arrogance, high-maintenance athletes like Terrell Owens, Chad Johnson, Milton Bradley, Alex Rodriguez, etc., Jackie Robinson seems like a saint.

There aren’t many people who could have done what he did. Not only did he have a great career on and off the field, he had to have a great career on and off the field. If he hadn’t, the “experiment” would have been over as quickly as it started.

It’s for all those reasons that Jackie Robinson is my favorite baseball player of all time. He wasn’t only a great player; he was a great father, a great statesman, and a great man. He paved the way for African-Americans to play baseball, basketball, and football; he paved the way for other African-Americans to have equal rights in the United States; he paved the way for other African-Americans to lead our country. If that doesn’t deserve a national holiday, I don’t know what does.

As a final note, there’s a quote at the new Citi Field, by Jackie Robinson. (He was a Brooklyn Dodger to start, which roughly translates into the New York Mets of today.) The quote is as follows, and in my opinion, is exactly the type of life we should strive to lead and the type of life he led:

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.