Image via Complex Original
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 42and 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.
The Phillies, Red Sox, and Tigers were the teams still holding out. The Phillies added their first black player in 1957 (John Kennedy), Ozzie Virgil, Sr. joined the Detroit TIgers in 1958, and Pumpsie Green was added to the Red Sox roster in 1959.
He won the College "broad jump" national title.
During the 1940 Men's Outdoor Track and Field Championships, Jackie lept 24'10 1/4" to win the broad jump (later renamed the long jump) national title.
The Philadelphia Phillies pointed bats at him like guns.
The Philadelphia Phillies dugout pointed their bats like guns at Robinson to mock him for the death threats he was receiving. In fact, Branch Rickey (the man who signed Robinson) credited Phillies Manager Ben Chapman with uniting their team around Robinson by heckling Jackie relentlessly throughout an early April contest during his rookie season.
The heckling was so outrageous that baseball's commissioner Happy Chandler actually threatened Chapman with disciplinary action if he couldn't control himself. Eventually the Phillies finished 62-92 that season tied for dead last with the Pirates, a whopping 32 games behind the Dodgers who won the pennant en route to the World Series. Chapman was fired halfway into the next season when his team was again in last place.
He was the subject of a song that made the Top 15.
"Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?" by Buddy Johnson made it all the way to No. 13 in 1949.
He went to the same high school as Rodney King.
A few other notable alums of John Muir High School (Pasadena, CA) are David Lee Roth (lead singer of Van Halen) and Sirhan Sirhan (the man who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy).
He befriended heavyweight champ Joe Louis in the army.
Jackie met Joe at Fort Riley, KS. While there, Jackie literally knocked the teeth out of a commanding officer for a racial epithet. He never faced disciplinary action because Joe Louis bribed the general in charge with an expensive Piaget watch and a bottle of wine.
He dropped out of college.
In 1941 Jackie dropped out of UCLA just shy of getting his degree. There are many theories about what motivated Jackie's decision, but he himself said it was a realization that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.
He went to jail for singing a song.
Jackie and one of his buddies started singing a song called "Flat Footed Floogie" while coming home from a movie in 1938. A police officer overheard the pair and (in keeping with the tradition of SoCal police) threw the two young black men in jail. A judge sentenced Robinson to 10 days but showed incredible restraint (that's sarcasm) and let him off easy with two years probation.
He was at Pearl Harbor two days before it was attacked.
Jackie was on a boat that left Pearl Harbor's shore two days before it was stealth attacked. An American tragedy that was unmatched until Ben Affleck made a movie about the event in 2001. Who knows, had Jackie been there a few days longer we might be anticipating 14 the film about Larry Doby's shattering of baseball's color barrier.
He got into a rock fight with a grown man as a little kid.
Growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood in the 1920s meant the Robinson family had to endure unsubtle racism that would make Cartman blush. In one such instance, an little girl ran up to Jackie and dropped three 'N' bombs on him. Jackie came back by calling her a "cracker" and she ran and told her dad. The father confronted him and the two exchanged rock-fire until the girl's mother broke it up. That's right, a grown man had to be convinced by his wife to stop chucking rocks at a little kid. It was a simpler time.
His own team tried to mutiny instead of play with him.
Many Dodgers initially rebelled against the prospect of playing on the same side as a black man. However, their Hall of Fame manager Leo Durocher silenced them by vouching for Robinson's talent and claiming "he could make them all rich" by getting them to the World Series. Durocher also opined that he "did not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin' zebra. I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays."
Eventually, the Dodgers came to Jackie's defense when witnessing his treatment by fans and other players. Durocher concluded his thoughts on Robinson with reflective wisdom "this guy didn't just come to play, he came to beat ya, he came to stuff the goddamn bat right up your ass."
He was a supporter of the war in Vietnam.
Jackie wrote to President Johnson to tell him Martin Luther King's anti-war stance wasn't indicative of all African Americans. In fact, his oldest son Jackie Jr. was wounded in Vietnam and returned to America addicted to drugs (which caused Jackie Sr. to oppose their usage).
He was traded to the New York Giants.
Before the 1957 season, Robinson was actually traded to the Giants in what would be their last season in New York before moving to San Francisco. However, the trade was never finalized as Robinson had secretly retired. The reason the Dodgers were caught off guard by Robinson's sudden retirement was because he'd agreed to exclusively reveal his resignation through, the now defunct, Look Magazine.
He was in a gang growing up.
Jackie joined the Pepper Street Gang, a bunch of hooligans on his street, but was persuaded by a friend to leave and focus on sports instead. Good call.
He played the Chicago Bears in a 1941 All Star Game.
The matchup was an annual competition between the strongest team in the NFL versus a squad of college all stars. The Bears romped the preps 37-13, but Robinson earned the respect of the Monsters of the Midway. Defensive End Dick Plasman called Robinson, "the fastest man I've ever seen in uniform" and further, "the only time I was worried about the game was when Robinson was in there."
He went hitless in his first five games for the Dodgers.
This couldn't have helped much to ease tensions, but he still finished the season with a batting average of .297. He led the National League in 1949 in the category (hitting .342) and finished his career at a clip of .311, which ranks him above several legends including: Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Pete Rose.
The Negro Leagues collapsed shortly after Robinson left for the Dodgers
The Negro National League went extinct one year after Robinson left because top players were aiming for the majors and those left behind weren't talented enough to hold fan's interest. The Negro American League managed to survive a dozen more years until 1960.
Mariano Rivera is (and will be) the last player to wear his number.
Rivera has said he'll retire after this season, meaning the jersey No. 42 will be gone forever. That is except for Jackie Robinson day (every April 15) where every player's wears No. 42 to commemorate Mr. Robinson.
He threw out the first pitch at the World Series nine days before his death.
Before Game 2 of the 1972 World Series between the Oakland A's and the Cincinnati Reds, Jackie threw out the first pitch in his final public appearance. Nine days later he passed away from a heart attack brought about by diabetes.
He averaged 12 yards per rush for UCLA in 1939.
Jackie was in the backfield with two other African Americans, making UCLA the most integrated team in the country. The Bruins went 6-0-4 that season (technically undefeated) and finished ranked seventh in the country.
He won the first ever Rookie of the Year Award.
From 1940-1946 there was technically a rookie of the year, but it was controlled by a chapter of Chicago baseball writers. In 1947 the award was nationalized and Robinson was the inaugural recipient. In 1987 it was renamed the Jackie Robinson Award.
He led the Pacific Coast Conference in scoring twice.
Jackie was accomplished at every sport he tried. As a basketball player in 1940 and again in 1941, Jackie led the conference (which today you know as the 'Pac12') in scoring.
He only struck out 291 times in his career.
That's only 68 more than the current single-season record set by Mark Reynolds in 2009. Did we mention Robinson played an entire decade?
When he was 16 months old his family moved to California.
Seeking a more accepting community, the Robinson family moved from Georgia to Pasadena. Neighbors wasted no time in making them feel at home by burning a cross in their yard and circulating a petition to get them to leave. SMH.
Robinson's Dodgers lost the World Series five times in 10 years.
We should mention that all five losses were to the Yankees. Robinson's sole World Series Championship came in 1955 when the Dodgers won in seven games over—you guessed it—the Yankees. No wonder everybody hates them.
He starred as himself in the Hollywood production The Jackie Robinson Story.
The movie was delayed because its producers refused to give into studios that pressured them to show Robinson being tutored by a white man. Fortunately, today we don't have such problems. Instead, we just have Sandra Bullock teaching a future first-round pick how to block.
A future Hall of Famer put a seven-inch gash in his leg.
Enos Slaughter of the St. Louis Cardinals, intentionally trying to injure Robinson, put a seven-inch gash in his thigh while Jackie was playing first base.
In 1948, he made more money in Vaudeville than baseball.
Jackie made $13,000 (over $110,000 at the time) doing a Vaudeville tour in the offseason where he answered preset questions about baseball.
In 1949, Robinson reported to Spring Training thirty pounds overweight.
Since Jackie was doing <em>Vaudeville</em>, he had little time to stay in physical shape and began spring training carrying a gut. But hey, it happens.
More than half the crowd at his major league debut were African Americans.
Jackie made his major league debut on April 15, 1947 at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, in front of almost 15,000 black fans. Jackie went hitless but did reach on an error and scored the game-winning run.
He campaigned for Richard Nixon in Nixon's 1960 presidential campaign against John F. Kennedy.
Jackie did however grow to appreciate Kennedy's civil rights effots. In 1968, he flipped the tables and endorsed Hubert Humphrey over Nixon (obviously Robinson's picks lost both times).
Other players in the Negro Leagues were angry that Robinson got signed before them.
Namely Josh Gibson (the black Babe Ruth) and Satchel Paige. Gibson never got to play in the big leagues, in fact, he died a few months before Robinson's first game. Paige however did, although he may have been 50 at the time (spotty birth records couldn't pinpoint his age).
After he retired from baseball, he wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column.
From 1959-1960, Robinson wrote a nationally syndicated column for the New York Post. He was the first black writer to have a nationally syndicated column for a white-owned publication. After he was let go by the Post (due to his support for Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, according to Robinson), Robinson wrote for the black-owned New York Amsterdam News from 1962-68. His Post columns were entitled "Jackie Robinson;" his Amsterdam News column eventually went by "Home Plate." The columns covered a variety of topics, from baseball to race relations to politics to golf to parenting. They're compiled in the recently published Beyond Home Plate.
He was given a phony tryout by the Boston Red Sox.
In 1945 Jackie was given a tryout by the Boston Red Sox to appease a city councilman. During the tryout he was racially taunted by management and left. Later, the Red Sox decided to pass on Willie Mays because he "couldn't hit a curveball."
Perhaps instead of a "curse," Red Sox fans should've blamed their own lousy management for failing to win a championship over the course of 86 years. Eventually, 14 years after the Robinson incident, the Red Sox became the last team to begrudgingly accept integration by signing Pumpsie Green who abandoned the club midseason, in the middle of a traffic jam, and tried to board a plane to Israel without luggage or a passport.
His middle name was chosen to honor Teddy Roosevelt.
Roosevelt was Jackie's middle name in order to give credit to the 26th president for speaking out against lynchings, peonage (indentured servants), and racism in general.
He made a junior All Star team with future Hall of Famers.
In 1936, Jackie was a catcher for his high school Muir Technical during a prestigious annual contest called the Ponoma Tournament. Jackie led the event in stolen bases and played well enough to be honored on the All-Tournament team which included future legends Bob Lemon and Ted Williams.
He was the first black vice president of a major American corporation.
After he retired as a player, Jackie hoped to coach in the majors, unfortunately no black managers would be hired for 15 more years. Instead, the coffee company Chock full o'Nuts hired Robinson as their vice president and director of personnel even before his baseball career had officially ended. In 1964 he resigned from the company to work for Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who had ironically sued Chock full o'Nuts in the past for their advertising jingle.
He batted .097 in his only year of college baseball.
Although he did steal home twice in his first game, Robinson still had a batting average that would make national league pitchers laugh.
He faced a court martial for insubordination while serving in the Army during World War II.
Almost a dozen years before Rosa Parks famously refused her seat to a white man, Jackie did the same thing on an Army bus. This didn't result in any sort of moment for the civil rights movement to coalesce around; instead it led to Jackie being court martialed and prevented him from fighting overseas (which is kind of a silver lining). Instead, Jackie spent the rest of his army days coaching athletics, where he met a former Negro Leaguer who encouraged him to resurrect his baseball career.
His brother, Mack, won the silver medal in the 200m at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, finishing second to Jesse Owens.
The Berlin Olympics are largely famous for Jesse Owens winning four golds and humbling Hitler (or, at least he would've been humbled if he wasn't Hitler). But Jackie's older brother Mack won a silver in the men's 200 meters during the same Olympics (behind Owens).
He led the nation in punt returning two years in a row.
Jackie only played two seasons of college football at UCLA; but in both 1939 (averaged 16.5 yards) and 1940 (averaged 21 yards) he led the country in punt return average.
He wasn't actually the first African American to play Major League Baseball.
That would actually be Moses Fleetwood Walker. Both he and his brother Welday played for the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884. Moses was a catcher before they had gloves, if that wasn't hard enough; he had to deal with his own pitcher (Tony Mullane) disregarding his signs in an attempt to injure him, at one point breaking one of his ribs. When asked later what he thought of Walker, Mullane responded, "he was the best catcher I ever worked with."
