Remembering Robinson, Rickey, and Papini
61 years ago today (thanks, John Muether), life changed for people in this country, when Jackie Robinson first took the field for Branch Rickey’s Brooklyn Dodgers.
Praise be to God for the fortitude and restraint Robinson displayed on and off the baseball field, deflecting hate with love, overcoming evil with good.
Praise be to God for Branch Rickey’s relentless pursuit of just the right man to rise to Jesus’ challenge to turn the other cheek.
Praise be to God for Giovanni Papini’s Life of Christ, the book that gave Rickey the words with which to couch the challenge to Robinson.
This Thursday I’ll write in more detail for Glenn Lucke’s Common Grounds community about this shining moment in the history of racial reconciliation. But I just had to put up this brief tribute today.
Nice tribute Reggie, but I think you are off by a year (1947). How do you think Papini himself regarded the breaking of baseball’s color barrier?
Comment by John Muether — April 15, 2008 @ 8:51 pm
It’s always good to know a librarian/historian … Robinson indeed broke into the Majors in 1947, not 1948.
Papini, who converted in the early 1920’s to Catholic Christianity from devout atheism (at which time he wrote the Life of Christ), later became enamored with Mussolini’s fascism and its racism. I don’t know his post-WWII views on race (do you, John?), but it is altogether possible that there is no small irony in the fact that his writings on Jesus played a key role in the breaking down of the barrier of race in the U.S.
Just one more reason my life prayer has become, “Lord have mercy.”
Comment by Administrator — April 15, 2008 @ 9:49 pm