Jackie Robinson Day 42 and

The first Jackie Robinson Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson_Day was celebrated by Major League Baseball in 2004, and was designated as a celebration annually in 2005 http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130410&content_id=44442254&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb. This year, Jackie Robinson Day is 4/15/13.  If teams do not play on 4/15/13, they celebrate the next day.  If they are not in their home stadium on 4/15/13, they honor Jackie Robinson at their next home game.

If you do not know who Jackie Robinson is, he was the first Afro-American baseball player, hand picked, to play in the major leagues.  This occurred in 1947, and frankly he faced a lot of racism as he traveled with his team and played baseball across the country. He handled the situation with courage, grace, respect, and dignity. 

His number, 42, was retired in 1997 by Major League Baseball, but Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees, whose number is 42, was allowed to continue to wear the number, as he did before the number was retired 

In 2007, Ken Griffey Jr. asked permission to wear 42 on Jackie Robinson Day in Robinson's honor.  In 2009,  all players were allowed to wear the number on Jackie Robinson Day. Now, everyone wears 42 on Jackie Robinson Day.

The movie "42 The Jackie Robinson Story"  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0453562/  has a line: "Someday everyone will wear 42."  The point is symbolic: if we are all 42 we are all the same: race, creed, color, whatever, we are all the same.  The movie was nationally released 4/12/13, timing it to coincide closely with Jackie Robinson Day 2013.

I went to see the movie today.  I wanted to get to it early in its showing in Lubbock, because Lubbock is not a baseball town, and I did not think it would stay around long.  I was surprised by the crowd, including many women, even solitary women as myself, without a companion, in the audience. During the movie, when there were good baseball plays, the audience clapped (I did) like it was a real game.

I appreciate the struggle and pain Jackie Robinson went through as the first black player in Major League Baseball. But I can not imagine what that was. 

I am glad Major League Baseball recognizes him. And, that Major League Baseball (the national past time) recognizes its role in the integration of our nation.

I have to wonder what Thomas Jefferson, Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King, Jr. would thing about Barak Obama being the President of the United States of America.

If anyone says that sports does not have an impact on our culture, they are wrong.  And, while it is not the end all and be all of integration, sports has had a very large impact on integration in this country.