Top 100 momentsNo. 3
Jackie Robinson takes the field
Robinson plays first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers and breaks Major League Baseball’s color line. American sport — and America — has to catch up.
On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson wears Dodger blue at Ebbets Field. Major League Baseball has been a whites-only operation for sixty years. Branch Rickey has been looking for a man who can play and not swing at the abuse. Robinson can do both. The abuse still comes.
He hits .297, steals 29 bases, and wins Rookie of the Year. He also sits through hotels that will not take him, pitchers who throw at his head, and a country that treats a first baseman as a referendum. The Negro Leagues had the talent. The majors had the lock. Robinson turns the lock.
Every integration fight in American sport that follows — the NFL, the NBA, college football in the South — walks through the door he opened in Brooklyn. The box score is the least of what he changed.