“Hurray For Jackie Robinson"

Title of the Document: “Hurray For Jackie Robinson"
One Line Summary: This is an article written in the Negro History Bulletin about Jackie Robinson’s career and his impressive accomplishments on and off the baseball field.
Author: Editors of sports magazine in The Negro History Bulletin
Date Created: January 1955
Type of Document: Newspaper Article
Transcription: “National League closely this summer you must have noticed that Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers added a new and unhappy title the many he has earned in his spectacular career: He was the most savagely booed, intensively criticized, ruthlessly libeled player in the game. Everywhere he went, from the Polo Grounds in New York to County Stadium in Milwaukee, his every appearance on the field was greeted by a storm of boos, by cat-calls, by name-calling. No matter how hard others might applaud in an effort to balance the scales, Jackie's ears were filled with the roar of the crowd getting "on" him, giving it to him,
needling him, insulting him. Only in his own ballpark, Ebbets Field, did the applause overpower the abuse, and even there it was a near thing at times. Clearly, one of the most marvelous athletes and com-pelling personalities the world of sport has known in years had fallen into public disfavor. Why? Sport , which cheerfully admits to having been in Jackie's corner from the beginning, thinks the basic answer is simple. It will be disputed, but we contend vigorously that the vast majority of the boo-birds are people who weren't happy about Robinson's penetration of the unwritten ban on Negroes in the majors, who were forced into squirming acceptance of him by the sheer strength of his performance on the field in the years from 1947 through 1952, who began to perk up and squawk at him as he began to slow up in 1953, and who gleefully let him have it with both tonsils as he clearly went back in '54. They had been waiting for the chance, hoping for it, and now that they had it, they weren't going to pass it up. Maybe Jackie will play again next year, and maybe he won't. But soon he will be out of baseball and the game is going to miss him the way it has missed Joe DiMaggio, the way it will miss Ted Williams and Bob Feller when they go. Forget about his accomplishment in paving the way for others of his race; just think of him as a ballplayer, as a daring and guileful baserunner, as a sharp and decisive hitter who was always at his best in the tightest moments, as a bold and instinctive fielder who
didn't know what it meant to give up on a ball or shy away from flying spikes on a close tag play. Above all, think of him as the very symbol of flaming spirit on the ball field, the man who couldn't be beaten because he wouldn't be beaten, the man who burned and seethed and smoked with desire to win. How many other players in the game today can match Robinson's incredible
knack for digging a little deeper and coming up with a little more in the clutch? Again and again the charge is leveled at Jackie that he has hurt himself (and his "cause") by coming out of the shell in which he played through his first couple of seasons with Montreal and Brooklyn. The
implication is that he should have kept his place, should have stayed out of arguments, should have confined himself solely to hitting the ball, running the bases and playing the field. But why should he? Isn't he as entitled as everyone else, as Enos Slaughter, for instance, or Eddie Stanky, or Ferris Fain, or Billy Martin, to be an aggressive fire brand? That's Jackie's nature. When one of the others boils over with aggressiveness, he is praised as a real old-fashioned, all-out-to-win ballplayer. But when Robinson does it, he is condemned as a "showboat." That doesn't make sense to Jackie and it doesn't make sense to us, either. The only conclusion we can draw from it is that his critics don't think Robinson ought to have the same rights other ball-players have.
We know this much about Jackie. There hasn't been a more exciting player than him since Babe Ruth. There hasn't been a more deadly competitor than him since Ty Cobb. There isn't a player in either league who has given more of his time to promoting baseball and to helping kids than Jackie has. There isn't anyone in the game who is more approachable, friendlier, more honest in his answers to the most pointed questions, than Jackie is. It's a free country. You can boo him if you want. We salute him.”
Provenance: “Hurray For Jackie Robinson,” Negro History Bulletin 18, no. 4 (1955): 93–93, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44176803.

Part of “Hurray For Jackie Robinson"