{"id":346,"date":"2013-04-13T18:43:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-13T18:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/04\/13\/no-42s-legacy-stands-for-all-time"},"modified":"2013-04-13T18:43:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-13T18:43:00","slug":"no-42s-legacy-stands-for-all-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=346","title":{"rendered":"No. 42\u2019s legacy stands for all time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I\u2019ve listened to a lot of commentary in recent days about Jackie Robinson, the man who broke baseball\u2019s racial barrier in 1947 when he became the first African-American to suit up in the big leagues.<\/p>\n

I believe it was the Boston Celtics basketball legend Bill Russell \u2013 the first black coach in the National Basketball Association \u2013 who said it best. Robinson, he said, probably wasn\u2019t the best player in the Negro League when the big leagues were looking for a player to break that barrier. But he possessed the strength of character, the spine of steel and the resolve to withstand what everyone knew was coming: the hate-filled racial epithets that would be thrown at him.<\/p>\n

And he stood up and stood tall in the face of it all.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to see the film \u201c42\u201d later today with my wife and one of my sons. I\u2019m looking forward to seeing how Hollywood tells this compelling story. I pray the filmmakers tell the truth as I understand it, which is that Jackie Robinson was willing to pay a huge price for the chance to play against the best baseball players in the world. He didn\u2019t pay that price stoically at all times. He was hurt emotionally many times along the way. But he tried his best to show the public face of strength.<\/p>\n

Some years ago, MLB did something unprecedented. The league retired a number, 42. That was number Robinson wore on his Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. I\u2019m aware that at least one player is wearing the number today, Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees, who\u2019s going to retire at the end of this season. But the big leagues no longer will allow any team to issue that number to another player ever again.<\/p>\n

I cannot think of a player who deserves that honor more than Jackie Robinson.<\/p>\n

Robinson died in 1972 in his early 50s of diabetes-related complications. I so wish he could be here to soak up the respect and love he has engendered. Lord knows he didn\u2019t get it in 1947.<\/p>\n\n

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I\u2019ve listened to a lot of commentary in recent days about Jackie Robinson, the man who broke baseball\u2019s racial barrier in 1947 when he became the first African-American to suit up in the big leagues. I believe it was the Boston Celtics basketball legend Bill Russell \u2013 the first black coach in the National Basketball … Continue reading No. 42\u2019s legacy stands for all time<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}