Centerfield

Here's to You, Jackie Robinson

Today is Jackie Robinson's birthday. Y'all know I love baseball anyway, and when it comes to Jackie Robinson, well, it gets a little bit dusty. The Boston Globe's usually loathsome ( I have an empty cross and someone's gotta go up on it) Dan Shaugnessy turns in a great tribute:

"I think it's the most powerful moment in baseball history," said commissioner Bud Selig. "It's one of the most powerful moments in the 20th century. Jackie Robinson took on pressure that no one could conceive. What if he had failed?

"I wish I had the courage of Branch Rickey. When he signed Jackie in 1945, that was before Truman integrated the Army. It was before Brown vs. the Board of Education. It was before the Civil Rights legislation was enacted."

Hyperbole? No way. Here's what Martin Luther King Jr. said on the day Jackie Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame: "Back in the days when integration wasn't fashionable, he underwent the trauma and the humiliation of loneliness which comes from being a pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road of Freedom. He was a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides."

Read it all. Jackie Robinson is an American hero whose transcendent story can inspire us all, and teach us a wealth of lessons: about history; about character; about forbearance...rising to the occasion of the role life has placed before you.

Happy Birthday, Jackie. Jackie Lives? Indeed. In my heart, one among so very many. There's that dust again...