Professional Baseball And Jackie Robinson's Influence In Baseball

Ever since the creation of Major League Baseball (MLB), baseball has always been considered part of America’s pastime. A crucial role of American society was also included in baseball, segregation. The color barrier in baseball was broken on April 15, 1947 by the Brooklyn Dodgers when Jackie Robinson stepped on the field for his first at bat. With such a large part of American society now becoming integrated, many Americans were questioning their emotions, some were inspired by such an act of courage and others were filled with hatred towards a minority. “Professional baseball has become the laboratory to test American principles of equality and fairness.” , with this being said, baseball was a way for American’s to test the limits and their

Army in April 1942. Since Jackie Robinson was raised in California, a state that was purely a melting pot of various minorities; experiencing Jim Crow to that extent was a very eye opening experience for him. Robinson was ultimately discharged from the army on November 1944, because he refused to give up his seats when he sat next to a white woman. Although this is a bad event that did occur in Jackie’s life, situations like those helped him build a strong exterior which would ultimately help him in his integration of baseball. When Jackie was going through the legal process because of this event, he wrote a letter the Assistant Secretary of War, Truman K. Gibson. In this letter, Robinson told Gibson that he knew what had actually occurred with the woman on the bus. With this Jackie led up to him asking Gibson, on how far he should go with the legal process. Johnson being able to write to such a high official and his race not playing such a large roll is very progressive compared to what could of happened if this exact situation happened but in

Rickey was a general manager, president, and eventually a 1/3 owner of the Dodgers in 1942. Many saw him as an eccentric man, he was known for being a Methodist man. Branch had been keeping an eye out for a “perfect” candidate to integrate baseball. In the movie 42, they show the process of choosing the perfect candidate that would be used to integrate baseball, they saw Jackie Robinson and they his record and that he knew when to not talk, when to defend himself, and that he had previously played on an integrated team, USC football. Branch felt as if those were the necessary qualities, which the person who would break the baseball color line needed. Many rumors have spread about why Branch Rickey decided to break the color barrier, one of the most well-known one is that financially, the Brooklyn Dodgers were not financially well