All I knew about Jackie Robinson was as a baseball star who broke the colour barrier in the major leagues, and his connection with Montreal (first ever professional game). Imagine our amazement when we walked into the Jackie Robinson Baseball Park and Museum on our morning discovery walk. What a story, what an inspiration.
Jackie Robinson was a champion athlete at UCLA in basketball, football, track, and lastly ---baseball. He was a US Army veteran in WWII. He was a star in the Negro Leagues of baseball. But legendary owner Branch Rickey, seeking to integrate the game, put him on the Brooklyn Dodgers farm team in Montreal. The first black player, he took spring training in the south but could not enter the motels or restaurants of the rest of his team. Jacksonville and other cities made sure he did not play in their town by locking the stadium or saying the electricity was out!
But thanks to a Daytona civil rights activist Mary Bethune, Jackie played his first real exhibition game 65 years ago today, March 17 1946. The local stadium is named after him, and the "museum" is a really an outdoor creative interactive funplace. You can run the 90 feet from home plate to first base. You can try to match his 26-foot college record long jump. You can measure your highest leap towards a basketball hoop. And you can read about those whom he inspired to be first in other sports, such as Althea Gibson(Wimbledon) and Willie O'Ree (Boston Bruins, 1958).
And just our luck, we bumped into Doc Graham, an All-Star player in the Negro leagues himself! He was being photographed with his baseball card(very valuable but I couldn't get him to trade for an Al Kaline rookie card). Now 81, he was befriended by Jackie and his wife so long ago. Today he makes his annual pilgrimage to remember Mr. Robinson and the game he changed forever.
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