For TampaJag...

[SuperHornet]

...and anyone else with perspective on this.

Please forgive me if this has been discussed before. But I guess today the baseball world is going crazy over Jackie Robinson. Don't get me wrong. He was a great player with a wonderful approach to the game, one that one rarely sees with the de-emphasis of the stolen base and hit and run in favor of the boring wait-for-the-jack. But I REALLY don't understand the veneration he gets while Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians, who broke in at the same time and endured the same abuse Robinson did, is generally ignored.

In addition, while Robinson and Doby broke the color barrier in BASEBALL, they did NOT break the barrier in PROFESSIONAL SPORTS as is commonly believed. One year before they came in, Kenny Washington, an African American running back out of UCLA, joined the LA Rams, and several African Americans (including HoFer Marion Motley) joined the All-American Football Conference's Cleveland Browns.

So, I guess the question is, why all the attention for Robinson while these other great pioneers wallow in near anonymity?

[grizzaholic]

...and anyone else with perspective on this.

Please forgive me if this has been discussed before. But I guess today the baseball world is going crazy over Jackie Robinson. Don't get me wrong. He was a great player with a wonderful approach to the game, one that one rarely sees with the de-emphasis of the stolen base and hit and run in favor of the boring wait-for-the-jack. But I REALLY don't understand the veneration he gets while Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians, who broke in at the same time and endured the same abuse Robinson did, is generally ignored.

In addition, while Robinson and Doby broke the color barrier in BASEBALL, they did NOT break the barrier in PROFESSIONAL SPORTS as is commonly believed. One year before they came in, Kenny Washington, an African American running back out of UCLA, joined the LA Rams, and several African Americans (including HoFer Marion Motley) joined the All-American Football Conference's Cleveland Browns.

So, I guess the question is, why all the attention for Robinson while these other great pioneers wallow in near anonymity?

Because Baseball is America's sport.

[bandl]

...and anyone else with perspective on this.

Please forgive me if this has been discussed before. But I guess today the baseball world is going crazy over Jackie Robinson. Don't get me wrong. He was a great player with a wonderful approach to the game, one that one rarely sees with the de-emphasis of the stolen base and hit and run in favor of the boring wait-for-the-jack. But I REALLY don't understand the veneration he gets while Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians, who broke in at the same time and endured the same abuse Robinson did, is generally ignored.

In addition, while Robinson and Doby broke the color barrier in BASEBALL, they did NOT break the barrier in PROFESSIONAL SPORTS as is commonly believed. One year before they came in, Kenny Washington, an African American running back out of UCLA, joined the LA Rams, and several African Americans (including HoFer Marion Motley) joined the All-American Football Conference's Cleveland Browns.

So, I guess the question is, why all the attention for Robinson while these other great pioneers wallow in near anonymity?

No he didn't.

[SuperHornet]

Come on, bandl. You're going to say that 05 JUL 47 (Doby's debut) wasn't in the same season that 15 APR 47 (Robinson's debut) was? In sports terms, it's the same rookie year.

[SunCoastBlueHen]

Come on, bandl. You're going to say that 05 JUL 47 (Doby's debut) wasn't in the same season that 15 APR 47 (Robinson's debut) was? In sports terms, it's the same rookie year.

Dude, second is second. Nobody that every did anything or finished anything second gets remembered like the one who was first. That's how it is and how it should be.

[tampajag]

It's simple Jackie Robinson gets the attention because to most he was the better player. Nobody really cares about the second person they slept with, the first is the most remembered.

edit: wow, kinda disappointed to see the topic after seeing the title and the threadstarter.

[SuperHornet]

It's simple Jackie Robinson gets the attention because to most he was the better player. Nobody really cares about the second person they slept with, the first is the most remembered.

edit: wow, kinda disappointed to see the topic after seeing the title and the threadstarter.

Good enough. And probably good enough to explain why he's remembered over Washington, who really didn't do that much for the Rams. I think it was LA's SECOND group of African Americans that made an impact for them. Paul Brown must have done some better scouting, because HIS first group of African Americans on the team named for him made an impact from the get-go and were very important to their AAFC success and even after the merger.

[bandl]

Come on, bandl. You're going to say that 05 JUL 47 (Doby's debut) wasn't in the same season that 15 APR 47 (Robinson's debut) was? In sports terms, it's the same rookie year.

11 weeks

[TwinTownBisonFan]

1. SH, when posting a thread title "For TampaJag" we, the CS community have certain expectations... you have failed to live up to them. There was no sweet, delicious booty. There was no discussion of soul food. There was no "black folks acting crazy", there were no "black things that white people cannot understand and thus have to ask one of our black friends to explain". You have failed on an important level.

2. You really need to understand your American history. Before about the mid-60's there was one NATIONAL game, and it was baseball. Baseball was how every immigrant community became a part of their new country, everyone followed the game. The other sports were a sideshow compared to baseball... it wasn't even close.

3. Baseball's color line being broken was monumental not just because it was the tearing down of a disgusting and deplorable "gentleman's agreement" that had denied some of the greatest ballplayers of all time a chance to play, but because it was the first real, large and respected national institution to stand up to the American apartheid that was segregation. It's significance isn't necessarily reflected in baseball - but in the sweeping changes in our country that followed that opening salvo. (to be clear, tens of thousands of black troops distinguishing themselves fighting racist fascism in WWII was what really lit this fuse) Just over a year after Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, Harry Truman desegregated the military... those acts got the ball rolling for the entire civil rights movement that followed.

3. Jackie Robinson Day isn't about one man in many ways, it's about the actions of two men (Robinson and Rickey) and how they used baseball to change American history. No other sport can even come close to making such a claim.

[bandl]

1. SH, when posting a thread title "For TampaJag" we, the CS community have certain expectations... you have failed to live up to them. There was no sweet, delicious booty. There was no discussion of soul food. There was no "black folks acting crazy", there were no "black things that white people cannot understand and thus have to ask one of our black friends to explain". You have failed on an important level.

2. You really need to understand your American history. Before about the mid-60's there was one NATIONAL game, and it was baseball. Baseball was how every immigrant community became a part of their new country, everyone followed the game.

3. Baseball's color line being broken was monumental not just because it was the tearing down of a disgusting and deplorable "gentleman's agreement" that had denied some of the greatest ballplayers of all time a chance to play, but because it was the first national institution to stand up to the American apartheid that was segregation. It's significance isn't necessarily reflected in baseball - but in the sweeping changes in our country that followed that opening salvo. (to be clear, tens of thousands of black troops distinguishing themselves fighting racist fascism in WWII was what really lit this fuse) Just over a year after Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, Harry Truman desegregated the military... those acts got the ball rolling for the entire civil rights movement that followed.

3. Jackie Robinson Day isn't about one man in many ways, it's about the actions of two men (Robinson and Rickey) and how they used baseball to change American history. No other sport can even come close to making such a claim.

TTBF has a date with a dude this weekend....just sayin'...

[grizzaholic]

1. SH, when posting a thread title "For TampaJag" we, the CS community have certain expectations... you have failed to live up to them. There was no sweet, delicious booty. There was no discussion of soul food. There was no "black folks acting crazy", there were no "black things that white people cannot understand and thus have to ask one of our black friends to explain". You have failed on an important level.

2. You really need to understand your American history. Before about the mid-60's there was one NATIONAL game, and it was baseball. Baseball was how every immigrant community became a part of their new country, everyone followed the game.

3. Baseball's color line being broken was monumental not just because it was the tearing down of a disgusting and deplorable "gentleman's agreement" that had denied some of the greatest ballplayers of all time a chance to play, but because it was the first national institution to stand up to the American apartheid that was segregation. It's significance isn't necessarily reflected in baseball - but in the sweeping changes in our country that followed that opening salvo. (to be clear, tens of thousands of black troops distinguishing themselves fighting racist fascism in WWII was what really lit this fuse) Just over a year after Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, Harry Truman desegregated the military... those acts got the ball rolling for the entire civil rights movement that followed.

3. Jackie Robinson Day isn't about one man in many ways, it's about the actions of two men (Robinson and Rickey) and how they used baseball to change American history. No other sport can even come close to making such a claim.

TTBF has a date with a dude this weekend....just sayin'...

[TwinTownBisonFan]

TTBF has a date with a dude this weekend....just sayin'...

[SuperHornet]

You make some good points, TTBF. The debacle known as the Port Chicago Mutiny could have been prevented had Truman's action come sooner. I certainly found that by my time in the Navy, some of the best people (both in terms of competency and in terms of getting along with someone) we had in some of the most sensitive areas of the ship were African American (not to mention other ethnic groups as well).

My main beef with THIS isn't to denigrate Robinson, who went through some horrible stuff just to play the game he loved. (And, incidentally, Robinson was VERY good at baseball. I'll take his baserunning over the way the game is generally played today. He was Lou Brock and Rickey Henderson before they came along, from the reports I heard.) It's that we forget about others who endured the same stuff at about the same time. Your point #2, TTBF, is the ONLY explanation (in my mind) for ignoring the contributions of Kenny Washington and Marion Motley (a Hall of Famer who made as big an impact on his sport as Robinson did in baseball), who came BEFORE Robinson destroyed the work of that idiot racist Cap Anson. I never did understand who was behind the barrier in the NFL (who had some outstanding African American players in the '20s before they were tossed out), but there is sufficient documentation that Anson was behind the deal in baseball. TJ makes a good case, however, for why Robinson is remembered over Doby.

[SDHornet]

1. SH, when posting a thread title "For TampaJag" we, the CS community have certain expectations... you have failed to live up to them. There was no sweet, delicious booty. There was no discussion of soul food. There was no "black folks acting crazy", there were no "black things that white people cannot understand and thus have to ask one of our black friends to explain". You have failed on an important level.

[dal4018]

...and anyone else with perspective on this.

Please forgive me if this has been discussed before. But I guess today the baseball world is going crazy over Jackie Robinson. Don't get me wrong. He was a great player with a wonderful approach to the game, one that one rarely sees with the de-emphasis of the stolen base and hit and run in favor of the boring wait-for-the-jack. But I REALLY don't understand the veneration he gets while Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians, who broke in at the same time and endured the same abuse Robinson did, is generally ignored.

In addition, while Robinson and Doby broke the color barrier in BASEBALL, they did NOT break the barrier in PROFESSIONAL SPORTS as is commonly believed. One year before they came in, Kenny Washington, an African American running back out of UCLA, joined the LA Rams, and several African Americans (including HoFer Marion Motley) joined the All-American Football Conference's Cleveland Browns.

So, I guess the question is, why all the attention for Robinson while these other great pioneers wallow in near anonymity?

Thank you Super Hornet these pioneers wallow in the shadows its not fair and they weren't alone their were others as well.

[Screamin_Eagle174]

I just think it's messed up that the dude is being venerated for "stealing" and "hit and runs." This blatant racism sickens me. Fuck baseball!

[SuperHornet]

I just think it's messed up that the dude is being venerated for "stealing" and "hit and runs." This blatant racism sickens me. Fuck baseball!

Context, context, context....