Jackie Robinson: A light on a Hill

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden." Mat 5:14

 I came to America at the age of 12.  One of the first American passions I quickly developed was the love of baseball.  Before I realized his greatness, I used to listen to the voice of the Dodgers, Vin Scully.  He is perhaps the reason I developed my baseball passion.  The year was 1958, the same year the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn. No one could paint word pictures better than Vinny.  As an example, and before I learned all the baseball lingo, when Vin would say, "sharp grounder, through the hole, into left field." I thought there must be an actual hole in the infield.  I heard Vin tell stories of the great Dodgers Brooklyn teams of the late 40s and 50s. Within a short time I had a complete history of the  of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  I idealized the Brooklyn Dodgers and thought it was a shame they moved out of there. No team has ever had a connection with the city they played in as the Brooklyn Dodgers.  I also heard many stories of the 1951 playoff against the New York Giants, when Bobby Thompson hit the historic home run to beat the Dodgers and go the World Series that year.  In 1959, a Los Angeles radio station, I believe it was KFWB, re-broadcast that game and I heard the entirety of it. Here is a six minute YouTube summary of that famous game.

The undisputed leader and the most consequential Dodger of that Brooklyn period, and perhaps the last 100 years, was the great Jackie Robinson; the first black player to play in the major leagues. There is no doubt in my mind that what Jackie did was instrumental in finally ending the vicious discrimination against black Americans years later. He paid a heavy price for it, but it was his dignity, despite brutal discrimination, that showed the world the evil of discrimination. He was the first step, followed by Martin Luther King, which eventually ended the horrors of discrimination. 

As a recent immigrant, I had no idea of the terrible discrimination American blacks were going through in other parts of the country. In Los Angeles where I lived I saw no such discrimination.  I lived in an integrated neighborhood in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles.  Jackie, on the other hand, could not stay at the same hotel or eat at such hotel as his team mates; he had to go to a private home or elsewhere. He had to put up with racial epithets and control his rage.  In Matthew 5:14 Jesus tells us believers that we are the light of the world and that we must show such light so others can see it and glorify God.  Jackie was such a light.  He should be a saint.

For a fine history of Jackie Robinson, I highly recommend a book called "True, the Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson" by Kostya Kennedy.  The book covers his rise from the Negro leagues and his hiring by Branch Ricky of the Brooklyn Dodgers, his first year in the minors in Montreal to his famed Dodger career, ending in 1956 and the period after his baseball career.  Click here to see the book.