42 Things You Didn't Know About Jackie Robinson

There's a lot more to the legend than breaking MLB's color barrier.

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Complex Original

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You've heard of Jackie Robinson "the baseball player," but it's important to know that he was so much more than that. He almost seems like a fictionalized piece of American propaganda with all that he accomplished in his 53 years on this earth.

Robinson was a freakish athlete, a war veteran, a Hall of Famer, an actor, an announcer, a successful businessman, a writer, a family man and a leader in the Civil Rights movement. Forty years later, he's still an icon. Robinson has major motion pictures coming out about him, he has a week every year to commemorate all of his achievements, and he even got one of those Google doodles made up for what would've been his 94th birthday. 

With this compilation we pay tribute to a man who makes us all look woeful by comparison. In light of the release of 42 and the anniversary of his MLB debut just around the corner, here are 42 Things You Didn't Know About Jackie Robinson.

Written by Gavin Evans (@GavinEvans187) and Jack Erwin (@JackEComplex)

When he retired at the end of the 1956 season, three of the 16 teams in the major leagues had yet to integrate.

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He won the College "broad jump" national title.

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The Philadelphia Phillies pointed bats at him like guns.

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He was the subject of a song that made the Top 15.

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He went to the same high school as Rodney King.

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He befriended heavyweight champ Joe Louis in the army.

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He dropped out of college.

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He went to jail for singing a song.

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He was at Pearl Harbor two days before it was attacked.

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He got into a rock fight with a grown man as a little kid.

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His own team tried to mutiny instead of play with him.

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He was a supporter of the war in Vietnam.

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He was traded to the New York Giants.

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He was in a gang growing up.

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He played the Chicago Bears in a 1941 All Star Game.

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He went hitless in his first five games for the Dodgers.

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The Negro Leagues collapsed shortly after Robinson left for the Dodgers

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Mariano Rivera is (and will be) the last player to wear his number.

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He threw out the first pitch at the World Series nine days before his death.

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He averaged 12 yards per rush for UCLA in 1939.

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He won the first ever Rookie of the Year Award.

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He led the Pacific Coast Conference in scoring twice.

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He only struck out 291 times in his career.

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When he was 16 months old his family moved to California.

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Robinson's Dodgers lost the World Series five times in 10 years.

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He starred as himself in the Hollywood production The Jackie Robinson Story.

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A future Hall of Famer put a seven-inch gash in his leg.

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In 1948, he made more money in Vaudeville than baseball.

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In 1949, Robinson reported to Spring Training thirty pounds overweight.

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More than half the crowd at his major league debut were African Americans.

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He campaigned for Richard Nixon in Nixon's 1960 presidential campaign against John F. Kennedy.

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Other players in the Negro Leagues were angry that Robinson got signed before them.

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After he retired from baseball, he wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column.

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He was given a phony tryout by the Boston Red Sox.

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His middle name was chosen to honor Teddy Roosevelt.

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He made a junior All Star team with future Hall of Famers.

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He was the first black vice president of a major American corporation.

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He batted .097 in his only year of college baseball.

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He faced a court martial for insubordination while serving in the Army during World War II.

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His brother, Mack, won the silver medal in the 200m at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, finishing second to Jesse Owens.

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He led the nation in punt returning two years in a row.

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He wasn't actually the first African American to play Major League Baseball.

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