75 facts about Jackie Robinson on the 75th anniversary of his MLB debut (2024)

This Friday marks the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson integrating baseball on April 15, 1947. There are very few figures from the last century who had as much of an impact, created the kind of conversation and claimed the amount of attention that Robinson did.

To celebrate,The Athleticcombed through Robinson’s life to find 75 of the most interesting and, in some cases, lesser-known facts about him.

1. Jackie Roosevelt Robinson was named after President Theodore Roosevelt, who died 25 days before Robinson was born on Jan. 31, 1919, in Cairo, Ga.

2. In 1934, at age 15, he won the Pasadena (Ca.) City Ping-Pong tournament.

3. The John Muir High School baseball team in Pasadena, for which Robinson played three years of shortstop and one season at catcher from 1935-1938, became the first team with Black players invited and allowed to participate in the 1935 Pomona Tournament. This was a big deal at the time; Gov. Frank Merriam was in attendance, while comedian Joe E. Brown served as the guest speaker and Mickey Rooney tossed out the first pitch for the championship game. Every evening, however, Robinson had to return home to Pasadena, because hotels would not allow him to stay. He finished with a tournament-high 11 stolen bases.

4. The first time Robinson played in the Pacific Coast Negro Tennis Tournament, he reached the semifinals. A year later, in 1936, he took home the title for the junior boys singles championship.

5.Robinson returned to the Pomona Annual Baseball Tournament again in 1936, but this time as an All-Star team member. Fellow Hall of Famers Ted Williams (Boston Red Sox) and Bob Lemon (Cleveland Indians) also played in that game. Robinson and Pasadena Muir faced off against Williams and his San Diego Hoover squad in the championship game, which included three hits and a stolen home base from Robinson, and a towering 450-foot home run from Williams, who helped lead Hoover to an 8-7 victory.

6.The first time a newspaper mentioned Robinson’s pro prospects was in April 1936 following this game, according to historian Jim McConnell. In a recap of the game, the Pomona Progress-Bulletin’s David Meiklejohn noted how deserving the shortstop was of a major league deal, if the color of his skin had not been an impediment.

7.During the summers in high school, Robinson played a litany of other sports, including golf. The first time he set foot on Pasadena’s Brookside Park Course, he shot 90.

8.Matthew “Mack” Robinson, Jackie’s older brother, not only raced in the same 200-meter sprint as Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, but finished second to the eventual gold medalist. Despite battling a heart condition throughout his athletic career, he finished with a 21.1-second time to earn the silver, 0.4 seconds behind Owens. In the long jump, four years later, Jackie would top his brother’s record, but whether he would’ve participated in the 1940 Summer Games, we’ll never know, because it was canceled due to World War II.

9. After high school, Robinson enrolled at Pasadena Junior College to further pursue his interests in sports. In 1938, Robinson was voted the region’s Most Valuable Player and was named to the All-Southland Junior College Team for baseball.

10.That same year, PJC’s Order of the Mast and Dagger — Omicron Mu Delta — which awards students for “outstanding service to the school and whose scholastic and citizenship record is worthy of recognition,” selected Robinson and nine other students to its 1938 class.

11.One of the main motivations for Robinson to attend UCLA was to remain near his family after his older brother, Frank Robinson, died in a motorcycle accident in 1939. Robinson, 20, wanted to be close to Frank’s family so he could help them after his brother’s death.

12.Robinson played on the most integrated team in college football as a member of the 1939 UCLA Bruins’ football team. He was one of four black players — Woody Strode, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett were the others — on that undefeated squad, which went 6-0-4.

13.Washington, Robinson’s teammate in the backfield, broke the color barrier in the National Football League as the first African American to sign a contract with a team in the modern era. He signed with the Los Angeles Rams on March 21, 1946 — a little more than a year before Robinson debuted with the Dodgers. Strode was also signed by the Rams in 1946 and played for the team as well.

14.In 1940, Robinson won the NCAA Championship in the long jump with a 24-foot 10+1⁄4 in (7.58 m) result.

15. Robinson had already established himself as a successful multi-sport athlete, and he took it a step further at UCLA, becoming the first player to earn varsity letters in four sports — football (1939 and 1940), basketball (1940 and 1941), track (1940) and baseball (1940) — in a single year. In addition to that, Robinson was All-Pac 10 on the gridiron, the West Coast Conference MVP in basketball and, of course, set the long jump record.

“The first player who I ever saw dunking as part of his game was Jackie Robinson,” former New York Renassaince player John Isaacs told the Sporting News.

16.The first time Robinson played for the Bruins’ baseball team, he went 4-for-4 at the plate and stole home plate twice. He did all of this in the sport he was considered the worst at, and in that lone season he hit .097.

17.Following his final game with UCLA, Robinson didn’t play organized baseball for five years. The prime years of his athletic career were interrupted, like those of many others, due to the war and his military service. The next time he played an organized game was when he joined the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945 for his one season in the Negro Leagues.

18.Just before Robinson was set to graduate from UCLA, he decided to take a job as the assistant athletic director at the National Youth Administration. This was a part of the New Deal initiative started by the government, but it folded not that long after its inception due to the impending war.

19.“After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.” — Robinson, from his autobiography, “I Never Had it Made.”

20.Even though Robinson’s baseball career was on pause for five years, he didn’t step away from sports entirely. After the NYA ceased operations, Robinson traveled to Honolulu to play for the semi-professional and racially integrated Honolulu Bears football team on Sept. 1, 1941, and these were the first checks he ever cashed as a pro athlete. On the weekends, he’d play for the team, while during the week, Robinson worked construction near Naval Station Pearl Harbor. The 22-year-old returned to Los Angeles to play running back for the Los Angeles Bulldogs of the Pacific Coast Football League on Dec. 5, 1941, two days before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

21.Heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis and Robinson were both stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. The two met during basic training in 1942, and the Brown Bomber eventually used his good standing in the Army to help Robinson and other Black soldiers gain entrance to the Army’s Officer Candidate School. Initially, they were either denied or held in a holding pattern, but Louis’ insistence helped propel those applicants forward. This was the start of a long-term friendship between Robinson and Louis, who played golf together during their downtime. Ten years after Louis and Robinson met, in 1952, Louis broke the color barrier on the PGA Tour after being invited to play as an amateur on a sponsor’s exemption in the San Diego Open.

22.Robinson never saw combat during WWII, because he was prohibited from being deployed while battling charges stemming from an incident on July 6, 1944. On that day, Robinson got on an unsegregated military bus, but the driver demanded he sit at the back of the bus. Robinson refused. When he reached the end of his ride, Robinson was arrested by military police after a duty officer requested their assistance, and subsequently asked for Robinson to be court-martialed.

23.As it would turn out, Robinson’s former unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, became the first Black tank unit to see combat in World War II. The unit’s deployment preceded Robinson’s honorable discharge in November 1944, and the battalion ultimately suffered many casualties in the war effort.

24.Following his acquittal, Robinson was assigned to Camp Breckinridge in Union County, Ky., where he worked as an athletics coach. It was during this period that Robinson reunited with baseball thanks to a chance encounter. During his time at the camp, Robinson met Ted Alexander, a fellow soldier and pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs, who encouraged Robinson to try out. Robinson then promptly wrote to Thomas Baird, the Monarch’s co-owner, of his interest in joining the team.

25.“I was walking across the camp recreation field when a baseball arched high into the sky and was carried toward me by a strong breeze. As it hit the ground and bounced toward me I leaned over and scooped it up with one hand. I saw a player running in my direction so I pegged a perfect strike to him. As it plopped into his glove he shouted, ‘Nice throw!’ …

“He said he had heard of me as a football player and a track man,” Robinson recalled, “but not as a baseball player. Then he explained that he pitched for the Kansas City Monarchs … and that the team needed good players. He suggested that I write if I thought I could make the grade. I wrote.” — Robinson, from his 1960 autobiography, “Wait Till Next Year: The Life Story of Jackie Robinson.”

26.Rev. Karl Downs, the pastor at Scott United Methodist Church, where Robinson attended service at PJC, reached out to his mentee in late 1944 to offer him a job as Sam Huston College’s athletic director. Downs was the president of the school at the time, and wanted Robinson to come down to Austin, Texas, to help the Southwestern Athletic Conference school in its athletic endeavors, including its upstart basketball team. Robinson ended up playing in several exhibition games as a result of low numbers for the team’s tryout.

27.In February 1945, Robinson’s team, though outmanned severely, played with heart against far-superior Southern University in a tournament. The Jaguars would pay down the line, however, for humiliating Robinson’s squad. Watching in the stands that day was Langston University’s Marques “The Dribbler” Haynes, the future Harlem Globetrotter. When it was the Lions’ turn to face the Jaguars in the tournament, not only did Langston embarrass Southern, but Haynes personally showed off. Up to that point, he had kept his ability as a virtuoso dribbler under wraps, but on that day, for more than two minutes to close out the game, he showed off all of his skills. This is how Haynes began his friendship with the coach he had met earlier in the tournament.

28.That spring, Robinson finally received correspondence back from the Monarchs, who wrote to offer him a place on their team at shortstop. It came with a $400 per month deal, which Robinson accepted. He played a total of 47 games for Kansas City and recorded a batting average of .387, five home runs and 13 stolen bases.

29.On April 16, 1945, the Boston Red Sox gave a tryout to Jackie Robinson, Sammy Jethroe and Marvin Williams. Jethroe was the Negro American League batting king, while Williams was a standout second baseman for the Philadelphia Stars. Boston councilman and anti-segregationist Isadore H. Y. Muchnick had worked with Wendell Smith of the Pittsburgh Courier to come up with the three candidates to present to Red Sox general manager Eddie Collins and Boston Braves general manager John Quinn. After giving the players, Smith and Muchnick the runaround on fulfilling their promise to hold a tryout, the councilman called both organizations out for their tactics. The tryout was only ever meant to appease Muchnick, who had the power to withhold a waiver allowing the Red Sox and Braves to play on Sundays. Even though the only people in attendance for the tryout were members of the Red Sox organization, the players were still subjected to racist barbs.

30.“We can consider ourselves pioneers,” Robinson told Smith on April 21, 1945. “Even if they don’t accept us, we are at least doing our part and, if possible, making the way easier for those who follow. Some day, some Negro player or players will get a break. We want to help make that day a reality.”

31.Selected for the 1945 East-West All-Star Game, held on July 29, Robinson did an excellent job in the field, according to multiple media outlets’ recaps of the game. But he had a poor showing at the plate, going 0-for-5.

32.A little more than a month later, on Aug. 28, Robinson was sitting in the headquarters for the Brooklyn Dodgers Baseball Club at 215 Montague St. This is where he met team president and general manager Branch Rickey to sign the deal that got the ball rolling for him to become the first African American in the majors. Today, the building is a TD Bank that has a plaque commemorating the historical landmark. For almost 20 years, from 1938 to 1957, this was the headquarters for Dodgers officials, until the team’s move to Los Angeles following the 1957 season.

33.Experiencing racism from segregated Florida and future Brooklyn Dodgers teammates, some of whom threatened to sit out if they had to play with Robinson, the future big-league player gained a reprieve from civil rights activist, educator and Bethune-Cookman founder Mary McLeod Bethune. She agreed to host Robinson in Daytona, Fla., because multiple cities in Florida refused to have him. Robinson and his wife, Rachel, stayed at the home of Joe and Duff Harris during Robinson’s first spring training in 1946. Joe was a local pharmacist and Black leader in the community.

34.When Robinson stepped up to the plate against the Dodgers at Daytona Beach’s City Island Ballpark on March 17, 1946, that made him the first African Americanto play for a minor league team against a major league ballclub.

35.His official minor-league debut wouldn’t happen until a month later on April 18, 1946, at Roosevelt Stadium, when the Montreal Royals faced off against the Jersey City Giants in the season opener. Robinson broke the color barrier in the minor leagues, too.

36. Robinson actually faced a familiar opponent that game in pitcher Warren Sandel. The pair played against one another when they lived in California. Sandel’s catcher, Dick Bouknight, wanted him to bean Robinson at the plate, but Sandel refused. Instead, the pitcher was able to force the rookie into a groundout, but it was the only trip to the plate where Robinson didn’t record a hit. In fact, his first hit was a three-run shot in the third inning, and by the day’s end, Robinson scored four runs, brought in three and stole two bases in a lopsided 14-1 win.

37. While it took some time for Robinson to openly admit to it, Rachel understood the mental and emotional toll of all the abuse her husband was taking. It even contributed to a slump he experienced while he was going through spring training. “Jack was very angry in Florida, but he had to restrain himself,” Rachel told Smithsonian Magazine in 2015. “He also wasn’t eating or sleeping well, so we took time off. After he rested and reclaimed his faculties, he was fine for the rest of the season.”

38. After toiling through that slump, when Robinson did finally get a hit, which sparked a return to his usual form, Bethune sent Rachel food and other supplies to put together a celebratory dinner for Robinson.

39.Unfortunately for Robinson, one of the cruelest fan bases involved a team up north he’d see on a regular basis, the Syracuse Chiefs. Racist episodes included the team trying to take the field in blackface, heckling from both the bench and fans and catcher Dick West telling the local Post-Standard newspaper that he said to Robinson, “I don’t feel sorry for you. You can go to hell.” But one of the more notable incidents involved the players throwing a black cat on the field, and exclaiming, “Hey Jackie, there’s your cousin.” Robinson would respond with both actions and words, hitting a double and then scoring, before retorting back, “I guess my cousin’s pretty happy now.”

40.During that July game when West made the remark, Robinson displayed one of the skills for which he received less acclaim: his bunting ability. Pitcher Jim Prendergast was working on a no-hitter into the top of the ninth inning. With two outs and a man on third, Robinson stepped up to the same plate where West made his first remarks. The hitter pulled the rug from under the Chiefs defenders, who were expecting a big swing. Instead, Robinson laid down a bunt, and then showed off those exceptional track skills to quickly reach first base. West not only forgot to defend home plate against the man on third, but threw so far wide at first base that Robinson was easily able to round the bases and tag home to make it a 3-2 deficit. The Chiefs got the win, but Robinson clearly got the last laugh.

41.Two months later, in September, Robinson signed with Chet Brewer’s Kansas City Royals, an all-Black postseason barnstorming team in the California Winter League.

42.For a second consecutive offseason, Robinson did a barnstorming tour in South America. The year before, on Oct. 26, 1945, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that Robinson would fly to Miami to join both his Black and White teammates before they did a two-month stint on the continent. Within that same announcement, Robinson revealed that in January 1946, he’d marry his college sweetheart, Rachel Isum, who he met as a freshman at UCLA.

43.Also in the fall of 1946, Robinson returned back to Los Angeles to briefly play professional basketball for the independent Los Angeles Red Devils. The season started on Nov. 8, 1946, and in the Red Devils’ first two games, Robinson scored 28 points combined. On Nov. 15 and 16, Los Angeles welcomed the world champion Harlem Renaissance to Olympic Auditorium, and on a flyer advertising the event, Robinson was listed as a headliner. The Red Devils were one of the first integrated professional basketball teams. When Robinson left the team in January 1947, he received offers from several other pro basketball teams, including the Harlem Globetrotters. Their founder and owner, Abe Saperstein, reportedly offered Robinson a $10,000 contract, that included bonuses, to suit up for his squad. That would’ve been twice as much as what Robinson earned with the Dodgers — $5,000, the major-league rookie minimum — and yet, Robinson turned down the offer.

44.Among his contemporaries, Robinson was not considered the best player in the Negro Leagues, and while Black players were happy to have that door finally open, the prevailing thought was that players like Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige had overpaid their dues and deserved their chance. Both were upset that they didn’t get their shot to join the majors, even though their play clearly made them worthy candidates.

45.Gibson didn’t even get to see the color barrier broken by Robinson, as he died almost three months before the historic day. Larry Doby, who broke the color line in the American League the same year as Robinson and was one of his close friends, said that “one of the things that was disappointing and disheartening to a lot of the black players at the time was that Jack was not the best player. The best was Josh Gibson. I think that’s one of the reasons why Josh died so early — he was heartbroken.”

46.Robinson’s first hit when he joined the Dodgers a few months later was actually a bunt, and in his debut season he’d lead the majors with 28 sacrifice hits. In total, he finished with 46 bunts in 1947, and only four didn’t register as a base hit or sacrifice.

47.There were more than 14,000 Black spectators in the stands when Robinson made his debut on April 15, 1947, at Ebbets Field. They were the majority of a reported attendance of 26,623.

48. His first season in the league, Robinson played exclusively at first base, because veteran Eddie Stanky held second base his first season. Robinson moved over to second the following season, after Stanky was moved to the Braves in March 1948.

49.Following his rookie season, Robinson did a vaudeville tour down South, where he answered pre-planned questions about his life. The tour actually made him more money than he’d earned playing baseball, but all of that Southern hospitality did catch up with Robinson the following spring.

50.Even though he was able to replicate his numbers from his first year, he reported to spring training 25 pounds overweight in 1948. Rachel told author Arnold Rampersad, “He used to put away a pint of ice cream at one sitting. That stopped, along with the pies and cakes.”

51.“It is true that I had stored up a lot of hostility. I had been going home nights to Rachel and young Jackie, tense and irritable, keyed up because I hadn’t been able to speak out when I wanted to. In 1949 I wouldn’t have to do this. I could fight back when I wanted. That sounds as though I wanted to get even, and I’m sure that is partly true. I wouldn’t have been human otherwise. But, more than revenge, I wanted to be Jackie Robinson, and for the first time I would be justified because by 1949 the principle had been established: the major victory won. There were enough blacks on other teams to ensure that American baseball could never again turn its back on minority competitors.” -— Robinson, from his autobiography, “I Never Had it Made.”

52. Robinson returned to form the following season and came into the 1949 training camp not only in shape, but uninhibited, too, now that he didn’t have to quietly take the jeers. His batting average jumped from .296 to a career-high .342 and his 37 stolen bases also ended up being a personal best. By season’s end, he won the batting title, was voted the inaugural Most Valuable Player for the league and helped lead the Dodgers to another pennant.

53.The FBI and Cincinnati police swarmed the buildings surrounding Crosley Field after the police and Cincinnati Enquirer were sent letters on May 19, 1951, from an author calling themselves the “Three Travelers.” In this letter, the writer said that before that day’s game, they’d be stationed in a nearby building and, with a scoped rifle, would shoot Robinson once he stepped foot on the field. The writer was never discovered, and Robinson blasted a shot out of center field that day.

“I don’t believe that a guy who intended to shoot me would write a letter to the police about it in advance,” Robinson told the New York Daily News on May 21, 1951. “Although, I don’t doubt that someday some screwball might try something.

“I told the boys not to get too close to me on the field today. … The fellows were kidding me about how they’d confuse the shooter by all wearing No. 42 today. I told them, they’d have to paint their faces, too.”

54.If one looks closely at the picture following Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard ’round the world,” from the final game of the three-game, 1951 National League championship series, they’ll see Robinson’s teammates all walking off the field with heads dropped. The one man standing to watch Thomson touch each base was Robinson, who was known for his extreme competitiveness.

55. In the final three years of Robinson’s career in the majors, he became more and more of a utility player year after year. Jim Gilliam, who won the 1953 Rookie of the Year award, displaced him at second base. From there, Robinson primarily split time between third base and left field, but over the course of those final years played every position except for pitcher, catcher and center field. In his final All-Star appearance, Robinson played in left field.

In the lone World Series that Robinson won, in 1955, he didn’t see the field at all in the pivotal Game 7.

56. Rampersad, author of “Jackie Robinson: A Biography,” wrote that Robinson learned he was diabetic “about the time of his retirement,” during a routine physical. “‘He left in high spirits,’ said his friend, Jack Gordon. ‘But when he came back … he was very quiet. He said that the doctor had told him that for someone who had played sports for so long and didn’t smoke or drink, he had never seen a body so badly deteriorated. Jack found out he had diabetes. It was very, very sad.’”

57.With Branch Rickey no longer a part of the Dodgers as the general manager, Robinson was left without support in the front office of the organization. His final at-bat was a strikeout in the 1956 World Series, when he went 0-for-3 in Game 7, and the New York Yankees cruised to a 9-0 win. Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, who had called Robinson “Rickey’s prima donna,” was quick to deal the 37-year-old to the New York Giants for a pitcher and $30,000. The deal was voided, because Robinson refused to report, and instead elected to retire.

58. Unofficially, Robinson stole home 19 times. It makes him one of the all-time leaders, and he ranks first for players who debuted after 1920.

59.Martin Luther King Jr. and Robinson were awarded degrees in the same class as one another, and there are even pictures of the ceremony. On June 7, 1957, both men were awarded honorary doctorates in law from Howard University.

Five years later in September 1962, Robinson spoke to the Southern Christian Leadership Council at its annual Freedom Dinner in Birmingham, Ala., in which he levied tremendous praise on King: “People used to tell me a lot of things about Dr. King, that he was trying to take over the world, that he was making money on the civil rights issues. I didn’t believe them, of course. I knew this was a dedicated man and that he has made tremendous personal financial sacrifices in the cause. I sort of wondered why people would stoop to talk about him. Then I realized that the world has always talked against great men. The best way to keep from getting talked about is to do nothing.”

60.Part of the reason Robinson was able to walk away from the game is that he had a job lined up with Chock Full o’Nuts to become the vice president of personnel. That made him the first Black person at the president level of an American company of that size.

61. Earning 77.5 percent of the vote during his first year of eligibility for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Robinson was inducted into Cooperstown in 1962, and he became the first Black player to enter the Hall.

62. “I never thought at all that I would have this wonderful honor coming to me so early in my lifetime. And to have the writers elect me on the first time is a thrill that I shall never forget. We have been up in cloud nine since the election. I don’t ever think I’ll come down. But I want to thank all of the people throughout this country who were just so wonderful during those trying days. I appreciate it at no end. It’s the greatest honor any person could have and I only hope that I’ll be able to live up to this tremendously fine honor. It’s something that I think those of us who are fortunate, again, must use in order to help others — because it’s such a tremendous honor that we should be able to go out and do things to help,” Jackie Robinson, Hall of Fame speech, July 23, 1962

63.Alongside businessman Dunbar McLaurin, Robinson co-founded the Black-owned and operated Freedom National Bank in 1964. He was first chairman of the Harlem, N.Y. bank, and Rachel stepped into that role until the bank shuttered in 1990. In 1965, he made history again when he joined ABC-TV Sports as the nation’s first Black baseball announcer.

64.“Jackie Robinson made my success possible. Without him, I would never have been able to do what I did,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said shortly before his assassination in 1968.

65.Ray Lamb, a pitcher called up from the minors in 1969, was the last Dodger to wear the No. 42 jersey, and expressed discomfort wearing it when he opted to give up the number at the end of the year.

66.“As long as they keep digging down and hiring guys who have already failed in one city, I’m not encouraged,” Robinson told the Baltimore Afro-American on Sept. 16, 1972. This remark was made in regard to the Hall of Famer’s level of optimism that MLB would employ a Black manager anytime in the near future. Robinson grew weary and impatient with how the sport dragged its feet on not only creating opportunities for but giving chances to those who aspired to be a skipper of a big-league team.

67.On the 25th anniversary of Robinson integrating baseball, MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn invited him to throw out the first pitch for Game 2 of the 1972 World Series. Robinson declined the offer, because he was severely disenchanted with the absence of African American managers and front office executives in the sport. Kuhn was able to talk Robinson into coming, promising that the league was working on the matter, but Robinson, as he always had, used his platform to speak out about the issue.

68.American astronomer Schelte John Bus named an asteroid after Robinson, his favorite player growing up. Bus made the discovery of asteroid “4319 Jackierobinson” while working at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia, on March 1, 1981.

69. Fifty years after Robinson integrated baseball, MLB retired his No. 42 jersey for the entire league, making it the first sports league to do so. At the time this was announced, there were 14 players sporting No. 42. The last player to wear the number? Yankees closer Mariano Rivera wore the jersey until he retired from the league in 2013. He told Barry Bloom, formerly of MLB.com: “I’m honored to wear it, to use it. It’s wonderful. As a minority, being the last one to use No. 42 is tremendous. I’m really, really proud and thankful to wear No. 42.”

The only other sport to retire a number across the league is the National Hockey League, which did so in 2000 with Wayne Gretzky’s No. 99.

70.Sixteen months before Robinson died, his eldest son, Jackie Robinson Jr., died in a car accident en route to visit his parents. He lost control of his vehicle speeding through Norwalk, Conn., ran into a fence and then crashed into the abutment near Route 123 on the Merritt Parkway, The New York Times reported. Robinson was on his way to pick up Rachel, an assistant professor at Yale School of Nursing, from a conference in Massachusetts. David Robinson, Jackie Jr.’s younger brother, was the one who identified his body at the hospital on June 17, 1971. At the time, Jackie Jr. had turned his life around after a battle with drug addiction, becoming sober and then going on to help those who also struggled with addiction. He was 24.

71.“I am extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon,” Robinson, who died nine days later, said during the World Series before 53,224 people at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati in 1972, “but must admit, I am going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at the third-base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball.” He went on to elaborate, “It is a shame baseball does not have a black manager. Frank Robinson has had managerial experience in the Caribbean. Jim Gilliam would make an ideal manager. There are Elston Howard and others.”

That was the final public appearance made by Robinson. He died on Oct. 24, 1972, in his Connecticut home.

72.“They note that the white players get jobs in the power structure when they cannot hit or run any longer, but black players like George Crowe and Gene Baker and — yes — Jackie Robinson have been allowed to drift out of baseball never to return,” wrote George Vecsey ofThe New York Times.“If blacks are good enough to sweat, then surely some of them must be smart enough to scout or manage or administer. Paid well for their bodies, they want to be loved for their brains, too.”

73.“I actually think it’s so revealing that it was Jackie Robinson calling them out, because it speaks to how Major League Baseball has and continues to rely on the symbols of racial progress in absence of racial progress,” said David J. Leonard, a professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University, in 2018. “So here we have Jackie Robinson pointing out the persistence of the color line in baseball, and he continues to be used by Major League Baseball as a symbol of change, yet he isn’t even heard. That his concerns and protests and demands weren’t heard over the last 46 years, I think it speaks to an investment in the symbolic change in absence of actual change or the embrace of a truly equitable playing field.”

“If baseball really wants to honor [Robinson], then it will look in the mirror and see how the absence of progress across the league in every aspect of its organizations needs to be rectified. What we see often is a refusal to confront this reality and excuse-making.”

74. “It was going to be part of our legacy as well,” Sharon Robinson, Jackie’s daughter, said in Biography.com’s Jackie Robinson — Last Wordssegment. “Baseball has a responsibility. They helped change America, now you just make sure that you remain active in that role and supportive in that role.”

75. “The fundamental questions that faced Jack in 1947 are abounding today,” Rachel wrote in an essay honoring her late husband. “We’ve got to go beyond celebrating the past and use our emotions, sentiments, ideas and analysis to move forward. This would be the greatest tribute to Jackie Robinson.”

(Top image: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Getty; Archive Photos, Bettmann)