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TAKING A LITTLE TIME OUT FROM OUR RAMS’ SUPER BOWL COVERAGE TO COMMEMORATE THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF A MAN WHO MADE SUCH A GREAT IMPACT ON THIS COUNTRY

 

“Were there better athletes? Sure. But we’re there better men? No.”

–Bob Costas

 

It’s hard to believe…

The greatest UCLA Bruin of all time.

The greatest Dodger of all time.

The greatest all-around athlete that Southern California ever produced.

Undoubtedly the greatest man in sports history not only for what he did at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, NY on April 15, 1947,

But for all the racist, bigoted h**l that he went through to break that Major League Baseball color barrier and to ensure that, in the words of the narrator of Ken Burns’ classic 1994 Baseball documentary miniseries, that Major League Baseball,

“…became, in truth, what it always claimed to be – the National Pastime.”

Plus on top of his Hall of Fame career – which essentially started the Civil Rights Movement as his first game with the Dodgers was eight years before Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of that bus in Montgomery, AL,

Martin Luther King himself famously said that what he did made it easier for him to do his job.

And this man, after his baseball days were over, got so involved in the Civil Rights Movement as he marched and started businesses and banks, trying to empower African-Americans.

Is it any wonder that though I don’t really acknowledge athletes’ and sports figures’ birthdays on this blog,

I’m more than happy to make an exception in this case, being that he would have turned one hundred years old today and all.

Plus I am personally able to win any argument between me and anyone who’s not a Dodger or a UCLA fan by simply invoking his name.

So…

HAPPY 100th BIRTHDAY, JACKIE ROBINSON!