cur-mud-geon:
anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
This is the anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first game in the “big leagues” as a Brooklyn Dodger.
I was five years old and living with my mom and dad in a small town in western Wisconsin. I was a Dodgers fan from the first recollection I have of liking a baseball team. I don’t know when or why the Dodgers became my favorite team. Maybe there was much “to do” about Jackie Robinson. I heard the Dodger name enough to think they were very special.
And special they were, given that this was the first major league team to break the vaunted color barrier, as it was called then. I read this morning that Bud Selig views this date and that moment as the greatest in baseball history. Bud has his fans and his enemies, but he is a real student and historian of baseball.
As kids in Viroqua, we had no clue as to the importance of a Jackie Robinson from the perspective of race. None of us knew there were differences then. I just loved my Dodgers and names like Robinson, Campanella and Reese. They were my guys and I didn’t know there were differences.
Reflecting back, after living many more years and having had many more life experiences, I never really gave any thought to a color barrier. Even though I grew up in a community that knew when the “gypsies” were close to town, or when the “carnies” came along with the County fair.
During basic training at Ft. Knox, there were nine of us from the same small town thrown together with another 200 or more strangers with our hair shaved off. Our Saturday afternoons were often spent wrestling with a group of Texans between our two barracks. I don’t recall thinking about race, but I sure wasn’t fond of those darned cowboys.
As a National Guardsman on the streets of Milwaukee during our riots, I was concerned for the troops under my command, but I honestly don’t recall harboring any thoughts about race; there were bad guys and good guys; no races. Maybe we were all too scared to think about anything but getting through the experience.
So, I reflect on Jackie Robinson and it reminds me of the “good old days”. They really were good old days; filled with summer and winter fun, teachers throwing erasers to wake sleeping students, writing repentance on the blackboard with chalk after school, and an English teacher that I nicknamed the “purple eagle” for her fierce stare and color-rinsed hair.
Jackie Robinson was simply one of my favorite Dodgers!
