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J ack Roosevelt Robinson was born on the last day of the first month of 1919, the first year that followed the First World War, when the earth was bound and weary in the utter infancy of its modernity. America had survived trench warfare and had not yet seen 150 winters. White soldiers were welcomed home to a springtime of hope and innovation. Black soldiers were welcomed home to race riots so incessant and violent they became known as the Red Summer. It was a triumphant, tenuous and treacherous time.
Robinson’s birth just predated the development of the shortwave radio. By his death the first personal computer, the Kenbak-1, had just been sold. He lived on the edges of seismic global changes that his life – a life started in the small town of Cairo, Georgia as the son of a family of sharecroppers – came to equal and possibly surpass. His face is one of the most famous faces of the modern age; like William Shakespeare’s and the Mona Lisa’s it is swollen with significance. On 24 September, Sotheby’s welcomes you to join them for Holy Grails in New York, a major auction of exquisite trading cards including Lou Gehrig, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, stars of other sports and the one and only Jackie Robinson, forever young and handsomely backgrounded by gold.
“Robinson championed racial equality throughout his life, before, during and after his baseball career.”
In April 1947, he brought baseball, the American national pastime, back to where it had not been since 1884: openly, if staggeringly, integrated. But his excellence, grace and grit on and off the diamond led the way in turning that stagger into a swagger for by the time of his retirement in 1955, over 5% of big leaguers were Black Americans; 20 years after that the number had grown to 18.5%. By then, he had already been dead for three years.
At his last public appearance, at Game 2 of the 1972 World Series on a Sunday afternoon at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium, he opened his address to the crowd with his trademark modesty, “I was just really a spoke in the wheel of the success we had some 25 years ago,” and concluded with his trademark polite directness, “I am extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon, but must admit that I am going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third-base coaching line one day and see a Black face managing in baseball. Thank you very much.”
Nine days later, while in his home in Connecticut, a heart attack carried him to the Elysian Fields. He was only 53 years. Yet he looked so much older, his body ravaged by complications of heart disease, diabetes and the incalculable weight of the duty of being Jackie Robinson. The power and glory that molded him like none other into a myth made of flesh brought with it the poisoned touch of endless obligation, endless adoration, endless antagonism and endless stress. He entitled one of his autobiographies I Never Had It Made. It was as though he needed to remind us. He prided himself on being himself, whether fashionable or unfashionable. He was not everyone’s cup of tea. He clung to his ideals the way waves cling to the surface of the sea.
“Its ethereal quality gives us the gift of radiant colors from a world we know better in black and white.”
Before his life as a baseball star began, Robinson excelled as a multisport athlete on integrated teams in both high school in Pasadena, California and in college at UCLA. During World War II, while serving as a second lieutenant, he faced court martial after refusing to surrender his seat at the front of a military bus. He successfully defended himself at the hearing and was acquitted. The skills he developed from these pivotal moments, combined with those he sharpened on the ball field, became crucial assets as he advanced, persevered and ultimately succeeded. He launched his professional baseball career with the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro American League, but shortly after, in October 1945, the skilled infielder signed with the Montreal Royals, the top farm team for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and made his historic National League debut in 1947. His dynamic and electrifying style of play drew attention, while his outstanding statistical performance underscored his substance. From the very start, he was in a league of his own.
Robinson championed racial equality throughout his life, before, during and after his baseball career. When he first joined the Dodgers, he was instructed by team executives to stay silent in the face of racism. However, he eventually chose to speak out forcefully against the injustices he faced. This commitment to standing up for what was right extended far beyond his playing days, as he passionately advocated for others long after retiring from the game. Leveraging his status as a celebrated athlete, he dedicated himself to improving race relations and supporting Black communities. Jackie Robinson remains a celebrated and iconic figure in both popular culture and in the American consciousness. In recognition of his remarkable achievements, his uniform number 42 is retired across Major League Baseball, except for April 15 each year – Jackie Robinson Day – when every player wears it in his honor.
Beginnings and ends, highpoints and nadirs, these are the markers by which we tend to measure a life. 1919, 1947, 1955, 1972: we make no exception here. But maybe we should. Spare a moment for the story immediately after the hero’s origin story, the second movement that comes after the remarkable, when the extraordinary and the consequential become an essential but familiar part of our everyday life. One of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most quoted lines is “There are no second acts in American lives.” The quote is often misinterpreted as an indictment against the possibility of second chances. But he refers to instead is the abandonment of the classical three-act structure in favor of a simplistic two-step view of things – those beginnings and ends, highpoints and nadirs. Fitzgerald’s view, then, suggests that an American culture leaps from the initial act – the setup or exposition – directly to the third act, the denouement, skipping the crucial second act where true development and action unfold.
And where is the Jackie Robinson of 1948 if not at the opening of his second act. In the dawn of those days, he is already an icon like none other but also suddenly a ballplayer like any other. When you google “Jackie Robinson 1947” you are almost exclusively given the story of his historical reintegration of baseball. When you google “Jackie Robinson 1948” you are almost exclusively given his 1948 Leaf baseball card, one of the most iconic baseball cards of all time. And in that change from history to totem, we are offered something impossibly large that we can hold in our hands. The card. That card that, in its quiet way, pays homage to Robinson’s shattering of baseball’s longstanding racial barriers, his 1947 Rookie of the Year accolade and the great second act of his 1948 season. The back of the card reminds us of Robinson’s excellent statistical output, but it leaves out that he led the National League in one statistic and one alone that year: the number of times he was hit by pitches. That fact gets buried somewhere in the bright hues and remarkable image of Robinson on the card. Nevertheless, its ethereal quality gives us the gift of radiant colors from a world we know better in black and white. Imagine what it must be like to hold this card. The man, myth and legend gazing out at us from a golden sea, a gold bright, strong and shining, a gold that gives the powerless back their strength, a gold of the stone and of the lion, of courage and of honor, there he is, smiling at us, real and redolent in that golden haze as though a necessary angel emerging from the center of the sun.
