Today is Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball. As is customary, every player on every team will wear number 42, with no name on his jersey, in honor of the only man whose number has been retired in perpetuity throughout the sport. It was on this date in 1997, at New York’s Shea Stadium, following the fifth inning of a game between the Mets and the Dodgers, that MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, flanked by President Clinton and Robinson’s widow, Rachel, announced to the world that no one (other than players like Mo Vaughn and Mariano Rivera who were wearing it at the time) would ever wear #42 again, a tribute to the only man, according to Selig that night, who is “bigger than baseball” itself.
Think of that. Jackie Robinson — not Babe Ruth — is the only player in history who is “bigger than baseball.” He remains the only MLB player to have his number retired by every team, and worn by every player once a year in his honor.
Ten years ago, I was at a Mets game at Shea Stadium, with a group of students from the Brooklyn high school where I was teaching at the time. Citi Field, which had been rising beyond the outfield wall for two years, was nearing completion, and it had already been announced that the new ballpark’s main entrance would be called the "Jackie Robinson Rotunda."
During the game, by sheer coincidence, I ran into a friend who was sitting in the same section of Shea’s vast upper deck, and went to sit with him and his friends for an inning or two. The conversation soon turned to the new ballpark, its name, what some of us thought its name should have been, its intended resemblance to Ebbets Field, and of course, its main entrance rotunda named for a player who had taken the field at that long-lost, lamented ballpark so many decades before.
One of my friend's friends was bitterly perturbed about the fact that the rotunda was being named for someone who never actually played for the Mets. No amount of explanation from me about, inter alia, who Robinson was, why he was so important to baseball in general and to New York baseball in particular, how the Mets didn’t exist during his tenure and were created to carry on the legacy of National League baseball in this City, &c., could move this person away from his sole point, that Robinson was not a Met, so the Mets shouldn't be honoring him thusly.
Eventually this individual said something to the effect, "What if I go to a game over there with my kids someday, and they see them honoring a guy who played for the Dodgers and not the Mets? What am I supposed to tell them?"
I replied: "Oh, heaven forbid you should have to tell your children about Jackie Robinson."
That's where the conversation, thankfully, mercifully, ended.
I’m reminded of that conversation every year on this date. It wasn’t the dumbest thing anyone has ever said or argued to me, but it’s up there.
Enjoy the games today. Root, root, root for the home team (especially if it’s the Mets). And tell your children about Jackie Robinson.