The View from the Bleachers

A change from the normal Saturday Classic this week. In honor of Jackie Robinson Day, here’s an excerpt from “Jackie Robinson: A Life Story.”

Any Mets fan like myself feels an real affinity towards the Brooklyn Dodgers, even if, like in my case, all we’ve seen is scratchy old newsreel on DVD. Because of this, it fills me with immense pride that it was the Dodgers that broke the color barrier, although they left Brooklyn for L.A. twenty years before I was born.

Watching the Mets tonight, our starting line-up is made up of three white Americans (just three, imagine that Jackie!), three Peurto-Ricans, two Dominicans and a Venezuelan. Even that line-up doesn’t seem that diverse nowadays, with it not having any black Americans or Asians. I think Jackie would be immensly proud of how baseball nowadays is not only a game that transcends race, but is truly a multi-national game, and how important not only black, but Asian and Hispanic players are to baseball today. Here’s to #42, a true pioneer, and a person who unfortunately died well before his time. If I had a Brooklyn Beer to hand, I would surely raise it to perhaps the bravest person ever to take the field in Major League Baseball.

I’ll leave the last words to Jackie: “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”