LOS ANGELES — Jackie Robinson was the first to break baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers 78 years ago Tuesday. His legacy continues to inspire people inside the major leagues — and outside, too.
Players and staff from the Dodgers, including Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and rookie Roki Sasaki, and the Colorado Rockies surrounded Robinson’s statue in Centerfield Plaza hours before game time at Dodger Stadium on Jackie Robinson Day around the major leagues.
They were joined by Basketball Hall of Fame player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who turns 78 on Wednesday. He recalled wearing a Brooklyn baseball cap while growing up in the neighboring borough of Manhattan.
“I’d get in fights with people from the Giants, the Yankees, pretty often,” he said, “but I kept my cap on and nobody was able to knock it off. I was so tall.”
Abdul-Jabbar, then known as Lew Alcindor, followed in Robinson’s footsteps as a sports star at UCLA, where he won three national championships under Hall of Fame coach John Wooden.
Robinson has continued to be a lifelong inspiration for Abdul-Jabbar.
“He meant excellence, giving your all, giving your best,” Abdul-Jabbar said, “and for all the detractors that are out there, just ignore them and keep on.”
Every team playing Tuesday wore No. 42 jerseys. It’s the only number universally retired in the majors.
“It’s not just a one-off day,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We understand what this man did for our world, our country. This is how you go about life. This is something for me, keeping his legacy burning.”
Roberts and Ron Washington of the Los Angeles Angels are only Black managers currently in the majors.
“One of the things Jackie obviously nailed is he realized from an early time that life was going to be hard,” Roberts said. “He was special and he was put in this certain position to rise above and know that it’s not just about the game of baseball. It’s bigger than him.”
The Dodgers and Rockies were joined by Sonya Pankey Robinson, the oldest grandchild of Jackie and Rachel Robinson and the only child of Jackie Jr., who was killed in a car accident in 1971 at age 24. Granddaughter Ayo Robinson, whose father is David Robinson, was also on hand.
“He was so progressive in so many ways,” Pankey Robinson said of her grandfather. “When I think about him fondly, I just think about all of his contributions to society and to us as a family. I feel a real responsibility to uphold his values and I take that job very seriously.”
Robinson’s 102-year-old widow marked the anniversary at the Jackie Robinson Museum in Brooklyn with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred.
“She is out looking great and greeting everyone,” said Pankey Robinson, who threw out the ceremonial first pitch Tuesday. “Not only did she instill the values that she knows my grandfather would expect us to uphold, but she had her own values and her own expectations of us early on to set goals for ourselves in life.”
Pankey Robinson lives near her grandmother in New York, saying, “We keep it close and tight.”
Jackie Robinson was in the news last month when a Defense Department page describing his military service was restored after being removed. The department has been removing content highlighting contributions by women and minority groups as part of a directive for President Donald Trump’s administration to delete material promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
“Disheartening but not discouraged because I think what he’s done is etched in history and it’s not anyone else’s place to remove that,” Pankey Robinson said after the ceremony. “His impact is large and we feel good knowing, that while disappointed, what he did mattered.”
The Angels’ Washington learned about Robinson when he bought a book about him during a bus stop in Waterloo, Iowa, on a minor league trip in 1972.
“It impacted me tremendously to find out what he had to go through just to play the game of baseball,” Washington said, “and then you look back and say, ‘Wow, in this period could I have done that?’ I want to think I could, but I don’t know if I could.”
New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone called Robinson “one of the most important figures in American history.”
“Obviously, he was part of integrating our sport, but part of further integrating America, and other sports. It’s so cool what we get to do today, and everyone wearing 42, bringing attention to it and just honoring what’s an amazing legacy.”
