primeideal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
primeideal) wrote2022-04-16 08:52 pm
primeideal) wrote2022-04-16 08:52 pm
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Here's to you, Mr. Robinson
Yesterday was Jackie Robinson Day, in fact, the 75th anniversary of Robinson's debut with the Dodgers. Now, in sticking with this baseball history as sprawling and wide-reaching much like...any other type of history, I was bracing for some amount of "unthinking holiday ritual" or "insufferable revisionism." But actually, I felt like the Cubs broadcast did a pretty good job discussing different aspects of the commemoration!
-recognizing Fleet Walker's career in the pre-segregation major leagues
-third base coach Willie Harris is from Cairo, Georgia, the same town as Jackie Robinson, but apparently had never heard of the local connection (or maybe Robinson at all??) until he got a suggestion to do a book report on him at age seventeen?? I find this hard to fathom but I guess it goes to show how what was once-historic can become taken for granted??
-Marcus Stroman, the Cubs' starting pitcher yesterday, has a tattoo of Robinson (among many others)
-the broadcast crew has been doing history flashes this year on lesser-known Cubs, like Claude Passeau, who I know less for his appearances as a Cub and more for his appearance in this bop. Yesterday was Gene Baker, Ernie Banks' double play partner.
-the MLB "flashback" commercial breaks celebrated Ken Griffey Jr., who pioneered the idea of wearing 42 on April 15 and then bringing it out of retirement (for everyone) after it was universally-retired.
-speculation on what Jackie Robinson Day means to someone like Seiya Suzuki, who joined the Cubs from the Hiroshima Toyo Carp this spring. On the one hand, as they pointed out, if Willie Harris can go seventeen years without hearing about Jackie Robinson, Suzuki's perspective is probably even more foreign. On the other hand, Ichiro Suzuki (no relation) was very affected by his visit to the Negro Leagues museum in Kansas City and made an extremely generous donation there (he's the first chapter in Posnanski's book!)
So it's easy to be facile and dismiss seventy-five years of change as "okay, nice round number, let's move on" or "progress is impossible, the world sucks, everything is still terrible," but I thought they did a good job engaging with it!
-recognizing Fleet Walker's career in the pre-segregation major leagues
-third base coach Willie Harris is from Cairo, Georgia, the same town as Jackie Robinson, but apparently had never heard of the local connection (or maybe Robinson at all??) until he got a suggestion to do a book report on him at age seventeen?? I find this hard to fathom but I guess it goes to show how what was once-historic can become taken for granted??
-Marcus Stroman, the Cubs' starting pitcher yesterday, has a tattoo of Robinson (among many others)
-the broadcast crew has been doing history flashes this year on lesser-known Cubs, like Claude Passeau, who I know less for his appearances as a Cub and more for his appearance in this bop. Yesterday was Gene Baker, Ernie Banks' double play partner.
-the MLB "flashback" commercial breaks celebrated Ken Griffey Jr., who pioneered the idea of wearing 42 on April 15 and then bringing it out of retirement (for everyone) after it was universally-retired.
-speculation on what Jackie Robinson Day means to someone like Seiya Suzuki, who joined the Cubs from the Hiroshima Toyo Carp this spring. On the one hand, as they pointed out, if Willie Harris can go seventeen years without hearing about Jackie Robinson, Suzuki's perspective is probably even more foreign. On the other hand, Ichiro Suzuki (no relation) was very affected by his visit to the Negro Leagues museum in Kansas City and made an extremely generous donation there (he's the first chapter in Posnanski's book!)
So it's easy to be facile and dismiss seventy-five years of change as "okay, nice round number, let's move on" or "progress is impossible, the world sucks, everything is still terrible," but I thought they did a good job engaging with it!