Word: robinsons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This bifurcation is exacerbated because Robinson played so long ago. Jackie Robinson the man fought for equality on and off the field. As a lieutenant in the Army, Robinson was court-martialed for refusing to relinquish his seat to a white man on a bus. He was vindicated later when he was acquitted and honorably discharged. Additionally, wherever he traveled with the Dodgers he refused to frequent segregated hotels, in many instances forcing many hotels to summarily integrate. After retiring from baseball, he founded the first African-American owned bank in New York City and served as a model...
...group that has done the least to live up to Robinson's spirit are the very people making flowery speeches about what Robinson meant to the game, namely the owners and administrators who run Major League Baseball. In Robinson's final public appearance, at the 1972 World Series, he urged baseball to allow the integration that he initiated on the field to reach the front office and the dugout. Although Robinson died without ever seeing an African-American manager, Frank Robinson became the first manager three years later...
Unfortunately, the statistics show that the job is far from finished: of the 234 managerial hirings since Frank Robinson, only ten have been African-Americans (a five percent clip). There has been only one African-American general manager in the history of the game. It is obviously not a question of quality since this general manager, Bob Watson, helped build the World Series winners in New York. Finally, there have never been any African-American owners or team presidents. What is most distressing of all is the notion, as expressed by then Dodger vice-president Al Campanis 10 years...
When President Ronald Reagan posthumously awarded Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1986, he stated that Robinson "struck a mighty blow for equality, freedom and the American way of life. Jackie Robinson was a good citizen, a great man, and a true American champion...
What Reagan neglected to mention was that in 1947, segregation, racism, and racial animosity was the "American way of life." Although today things have obviously improved on the field, baseball's management is still reflective of that "American way of life" that Reagan referred to. With people like Campanis (Robinson's former teammate and personal friend) in baseball's hierarchy still professing the genetic incapacity for African-Americans to be general managers, commissioners and coaches, baseball has not truly learned from Jackie Robinson's courage, sacrifice and legacy. I pray that baseball can take this special season and build...