Pro athletes stand against injustice and honor local giants of the past
By Mark Sovel
The worldwide field of athletic play has rarely been the venue of political demonstrations or acts of protest, but this has not been a normal year. Amid the extended COVID-19 restrictions, major league sports leagues were put into action to help a weary nation feel a sense of normalcy, but that illusion would soon vanish. Milwaukee Bucks players boycotted their NBA playoff game Aug. 26 to protest the police shooting of an African American man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and within two days nearly all of major league sports had been called off.
A notable exception was in Houston Aug. 28, where instead of postponing, the Houston Astros and Oakland Athletics did suit up and take the field. It was the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It had also been selected to be Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball.
The home team Astros took their positions on the field but refrained from the usual warmup. Right-handed starter Lance McCullers scooped up the ball off the pitcher’s mound, bent down and began to write something in the dirt with his finger.
What happened next was one of the most moving moments ever to take place on a playing field, and it was the culmination of a 100-year story that first took root in Pasadena.
It is upon the shoulders of giants such as these that today’s professional athletes are able to use their positions of prominence to affect social change.
In 1920, a mother and her 5 children moved across the country from a small town in Georgia and settled into a four-bedroom house on Pepper Street in Pasadena. That sounds like a typical story of the American dream. But for Mallie Robinson, the youngest daughter of freed slaves, buying a house in the predominantly white neighborhood at that time was an act of defiance that has rippled across a century. In that home, she raised two athletes who made a historic social and political impact during their time on the world stage of sports: Mack and Jackie Robinson. It is upon the shoulders of giants such as these that today’s professional athletes are able to use their positions of prominence to affect social change.
Mack Robinson first made his mark in the 1930s playing football at John Muir High School, and later running track at Pasadena City College, then called Pasadena Junior College. In 1936, wearing the same worn-out track shoes he had run in at PCC, Robinson paid his way to New York and earned a spot on the U.S. team for the Summer Olympics in Berlin.
The dark cloud of Nazism had engulfed Germany, and in the stadium that had been built to glorify a so-called “master race,” Robinson was among 18 Black U.S. athletes whose very presence on the field was a challenge to the misguided concept of aryan supremacy. In front of Adolf Hitler, the 22-year-old Robinson earned a silver medal in the 200-meter, finishing only 0.4 seconds behind gold medalist Jesse Owens. The Black U.S. athletes earned a combined 14 medals in Berlin.
When Robinson returned to Pasadena with his medal there was no parade, banquet or civic ceremony. He returned to a country that still had no place for him.
But when Robinson returned to Pasadena with his medal there was no parade, banquet or civic ceremony. He returned to a country that still had no place for him. Success in the international arena during the 1930s would not open the door to the segregated major league sports.
“Most of us were relegated to a fact that our career was going to end at a college level, and some of us were shooting for college scholarships,” Robinson told historian Robin D. G. Kelley. “But I think that most of us were thinking, during those days, that we would not be admitted into professional sports.”
As Mack Robinson continued his education at the University of Oregon on a track scholarship, his younger brother Jackie would follow in his footsteps at PCC, where he lettered in four varsity sports. Mack then returned from school to help support his family, but work opportunities were not what a college-educated silver medalist of today would hope to find.
“I scrounged around and asked people and talked to a few people at city hall and other friends. I got a job with the city for the first time, I worked one year with them. I cleaned the sewers of the city of Pasadena. Then they said that there was no funds appropriated for an extra person on the sewer crew, so I was terminated,” Mack Robinson told Kelley. “Then later on I got a job with the city again. I swept the streets of Pasadena for 4 ½ years from midnight ’til 8 in the morning. I did a lot of labor. I was on the road crew that built the road that leads down to the Rose Bowl on Arroyo there.”
On that road, in front of the stadium, a statue of his brother Jackie Robinson now stands. But in the early 1940s, professional sports in the U.S. was still not ready to integrate.
“Sports was not a profession for blacks, other than boxing,” Mack Robinson said. “Nothing really happened in major sports until after ’47, and that’s when Jack made a success in baseball.”
Mack Robinson would later be honored when he was invited to be one of the athletes to carry the giant Olympic flag into LA Memorial Coliseum for the opening of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Jackie Robinson’s entry into major league baseball was the crack of a door beyond which could be heard the clanging of a bell calling for racial equality.
Jackie Robinson stepped into greatness on Ebbets field April 15, 1947. As with his brother before him in Berlin, striding out onto that grass in Brooklyn was a grand act of heroism. By suiting up and taking the field in №42, as the first Black player in the modern-day major leagues, he likely knew what was riding on his shoulders.
His entry into major league baseball was the crack of a door beyond which could be heard the clanging of a bell calling for racial equality. One which has continued to be struck through the country to the present day.
Among the many historic events of this year, 2020 will be remembered as the year spectator sports came to a halt. What makes that most significant is that it wasn’t COVID-19, but rather the athletes’ call for racial and social justice that brought the leagues to a stand-still.
The pandemic had not permanently benched the major sports teams, who were managing to resume operations within their bubbles of safety. However, after the world witnessed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May it seemed a Rubicon had been crossed.
Then a video was released of 29-year-old African American Jacob Blake being shot in the back and paralyzed by Kenosha, Wisconsin police Aug. 23, followed by demonstrations during which 2 protesters were killed by semi-automatic wielding 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse. With that, the U.S. saw something that had never occurred before.
Former San Francisco 49’s quarterback Colin Kaepernick had sacrificed his NFL career when he knelt during the national anthem before games in 2016, in protest of police brutality and racial injustice in the United States. In 2020, the professional sports world would take the protest to an entirely new level.
It began the next day with the Milwaukee Bucks. Moments before they were to take the court for game 5 of their playoff series against the Orlando Magic, the players gathered in the locker room for an impromptu news conference. As the Magic were warming up on the court, the Bucks guard George Hill, not in uniform, read a statement on behalf of the Bucks players who had decided they could not and would not play that day. It was the beginning of a tidal wave that swept across the sports world.
“Over the last few days in our home state of Wisconsin, we’ve seen the horrendous video of Jacob Blake being shot in the back seven times by a police officer in Kenosha, and the additional shooting of protestors. Despite the overwhelming plea for change, there has been no action, so our focus today cannot be on basketball,” Hill said. “When we take the court and represent Milwaukee and Wisconsin, we are expected to play at a high level, give maximum effort and hold each other accountable. We hold ourselves to that standard, and in this moment, we are demanding the same from our lawmakers and law enforcement. We are calling for justice for Jacob Blake and demand the officers be held accountable.”
The surprise announcement was followed in rapid succession by the postponement of the other 2 NBA playoff games scheduled for that day. Due to the pandemic restrictions, there weren’t tens of thousands of ticket-holding fans to turn away. The teams were playing in front of “virtual fans” in empty arenas within the NBA playoff bubble in Orlando, Florida.
Also Aug. 26, the Milwaukee Brewers started the league wide wave in Major League Baseball by postponing its game that night with the Reds. Meanwhile, Major League Soccer and the Women’s National Basketball Association postponed all games scheduled that day. The Western and Southern tennis open in New York was forced to suspend play when star player Naomi Osaka announced her decision to boycott.
In Los Angeles, at a player’s meeting, Lakers star LeBron James and the Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard pressed for the rest of the NBA playoffs to be canceled. The following day the National Hockey League, a professional league with 97% white players, made the call to postpone the ongoing Stanley Cup Playoffs.
That brings us back to Houston Aug. 28, where despite the nationwide boycotts, the Astros and Oakland As showed up in uniform and took the field. But pitcher Lance McCullers, instead of tossing warmups, stooped over to write “42” in the dirt behind the rubber.
Then slowly the teams each emptied out of their dugouts, all wearing Jackie Robinson’s №42, including Astro’s veteran manager Dusty Baker. Taking their sides, the teams lined up on the first and third baselines, standing reverently wearing masks on their mouths and holding their ball caps over their hearts.
After standing for a full minute of silence, the teams lifted their caps to each other and somberly walked off the field and into their locker rooms.
Houston catcher Martín Maldonado and Oakland’s leadoff batter Marcus Semien met at the plate and each laid a №42 jersey in the batter’s boxes, and then together placed a Black Lives Matter T-shirt on home plate. After standing for a full minute of silence, the teams lifted their caps to each other and somberly walked off the field and into their locker rooms.
The moment was one of profound solemnity and beauty which the nation was in need of.
The 71-year-old Dusty Baker, as a young player on the Atlanta Braves, was mentored by former Negro League player Hank Aaron, who in the mid-1950s had played against Jackie Robinson in exhibition games between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the (then) Boston Braves. Robinson had encouraged Aaron to mentor the next generation of Black players. When the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966, the Southern city was ground zero for the civil rights movement and Aaron took on the mantle of athlete and activist.
In Aaron’s high profile lead up to overtaking Babe Ruth’s home run record, not all Atlanta fans were happy to see a Black man beat the longstanding record of Babe Ruth. In passing the once untouchable milestone with his home run №715, Aaron’s accomplishment cast a light on the highly charged racist atmosphere of the day. During his time with the Braves, remembering his promise to Jackie Robinson, Aaron pushed for the next step of breaking the color barrier with managers in the dugout and executives in the front office. Aaron would eventually join the front office of the Atlanta Braves and Baker has gone on to become one of the most successful managers in the history of the major leagues.
“I’m proud of this generation because in the ’60s, it was mostly African Americans and a few white Americans that stood up, but in this day and age, I’m seeing young people of all nationalities and all religions that are standing up together,” Baker told NBC Sports. “The young people are a voice to be heard in the country, and I’m very, very proud of the young people in this country.”
