42!

The Unforgettable Number!

Leo Durocher: “If Robinson can help us win, then he is gonna play on this ball club!“

Reporter: “What you gonna do if one of these pitchers throws for your head?”  Jackie Robinson: “I’ll duck.”

Wendell Smith: “You are not the only one with something at stake here. Why do you think I sit on the 3rd base line with my typewriter in my lap? Negros aren’t allowed in the Press Box.”

Branch Rickey: “The world’s not so simple anymore, I guess it never was. We ignored it, now we can’t.”

Ralph Branca: “Maybe tomorrow we’ll all wear 42” (… and now they do on Jackie Robinson Day!)

                                                                                Just an Opinion...

What Do You Think?

It is difficult to believe that unless Jackie Robinson was the super star baseball player, that Baseball would not have let him in.  Once there, Robinson was playing against a lot more than the other team--but the entire color barrier guarded by racism, including the coach who shouted the N word through one of his at-bats.  No, he did more than steal home.  He stole the heart out of the opposition by being better at the game than they were.

Which brings me to some painful commentary--just my own thoughts.  I wonder to myself...did the Negro gain stature because of his ability to fight in the civil war?  Racism certainly persisted and cut deeply into the American fabric--but the Negro was used in wartime because of utility and thereby gained rights.  I wonder about women suffrage and their place in society.  Did it come about because of two world wars in which women had to gain new places in society because the men were "over there?"  Just my idle thoughts from an addled mind perhaps--that the top dogs let the underdogs "in": out of necessity to advance their own causes???  That is my historical question and only my question.

Then I think of Jesus...the perfect nobody from society's standpoint.  Look up "One Solitary Life."  He was worthless to everyone, of no utility, until that is--he rose from the dead!  And by his grace, he still takes us, blesses us, regardless of what motives bring us to him.

From "One Solitary Life"   

When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure of the human race, the leader of mankind's progress. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on earth as much as that One Solitary Life.