Tuesday, April 24, 2007

JACKIE ROBINSON DAY 2007.

I was childishly pleased that the official Jackie Robinson Day was rained out and moved to a day that I had tickets. This has all recently become a passion of mine, and I wanted to be there for it.

It’s not that I don’t want to know about the history of baseball. I want to know about the history of just about anything. But I kind of had my hands full over the past year learning about baseball and about the Mets. I certainly knew who Jackie Robinson was, and what he’d done, but I wouldn’t have ever told you that I knew the whole story.
But it wasn’t until about a month ago, with Jackie Robinson Day pending, that I turned to TBF and asked, “What’s a good book to read about the Dodgers?”
“That’s easy. The Boys Of Summer. Roger Kahn.”
So I ordered it online, and it sat around for a few days - I was still in the middle of my now-annual (hah) re-read of Roger Angell - until I grabbed it one morning on my way to work.

And almost missed my stop.

It helps that The Boys of Summer is, quite simply, a tremendously well-written book - one of those books where the writing is so fluid that it takes you out of yourself and to another place. And me, I’m a sucker for forgotten New York, New York of yesteryear, the missing clues and hidden gems that remind us of a city before there was an Olive Garden in Times Square. I roam the city with my camera capturing these pieces of the old New York City, and belong to flickr groups with names like “Abandoned” and “New York Shot By New Yorkers”. I resonate with people that are ecstatic over finding an old streetsign from the 60’s, original architecture still intact, a vintage wooden phone booth at the back of a dive bar. I don’t believe New York was better then by any means, but the romantic in me finds an essence that is slowly vanishing.

And now Roger Kahn is painting my brain with images of Brooklyn in the 40s and 50s and I am trying to place my father on those streets. My father, who was born in Brooklyn, who spent his early years in Flatbush, who used to cut Hebrew School to sneak into Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers, a fact I never ever would have known had I not started dating TBF, because my father regales him with these stories at every family event.  I am placing my father on the streets of Flatbush where being a Jewish kid still meant you might have to fight your way home from Hebrew School.

And while I will not attempt to even parallel that with the battles fought by Jackie Robinson, I think about that too. We’re supposed to be a progressive, more accepting city nowadays, and I gotta tell ya, I’m not so sure. I’m definitely sure that we need people like Rachel Robinson, and the Jackie Robinson Foundation, to keep reminding all of us of the past and battles fought and not nearly won well enough. The courage and the fortitude - hell, I won’t drive through certain places in the South NOW - are beyond my simple comprehension.

Some day I will talk my dad into coming to a game with us (even though he insists he doesn’t like baseball, while in the next breath talking to TBF about our starting rotation). And some day I would like to stand with him on the corner of Bedford Avenue and Sullivan Place and try to see through his eyes.

I like that Our Willie wore #42 last Friday. I like that he alone was accorded the privilege. I don’t agree, at all, with the opinion expressed in other places that it was a shame that David Wright didn’t wear #42 (not that we even know for certain that he didn’t want to). Given Jackie Robinson’s vision for more African-American managers in baseball, and Willie being a physical manifestation of that vision, I am glad he was able to have that tiny part of the spotlight on this day.