This Day in History

 

Jackie Robinson famously broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947 when on April 15 of that year he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. All well and good, but professional baseball has a farm system. Before one can break the color barrier in the majors, someone first has to break it in the...

...minors.

Robinson did just that when he made his (non-exhibition game) debut with the Class AAA Montreal Royals on April 18, 1946, in an away game at Roosevelt Stadium against the Jersey City Giants. Robinson's first hit was a three-run home run in the game's third inning. He went on to score four more runs, drive in three, and steal two bases in a Royals 14-1 victory. And that was just the beginning. Robinson went on to lead the International League with a .349 batting average and .985 fielding percentage and was named the league's Most Valuable Player by season's end. By the next season's beginning, he was playing for the Dodgers.

Now, I don't want any of this to sound too rosy. As Pro Baseball's first African American player, Robinson had to put up with a lot of shit, to which, per Dodgers owner Branch Rickey's instructions, he turned the other cheek. There were hotels that his teammates stayed at that he couldn't. An exhibition game in racially segregated Jacksonville, Florida had to be canceled when the stadium was ordered padlocked by the city's Park and Public Property director on the day of the game. Other games were mysteriously canceled as well. 

OK, that was the Jim Crow South, but Jackie Robinson's home team in the minors was above the Mason-Dixon line. For that matter, it was above the United States' northern border. What did Canadians think of Robinson?

They seemed to like him. 

Graphic Grandeur (Lip Service Edition)

 

If Penguin sez it's a classic I guess it must be, though I confess I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I did see this Nick Anderson cartoon:

 That should tide me over until I can find time for Niccolo.

Quips and Quotations (Price of Admission Edition)

 

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.
--Oscar Wilde
The theater is a communal event, like church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is really just the longings of one heart.
--Marsha Norman
By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.
--Arthur Miller
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.
--Thornton Wilder

The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job.

--Tennessee Williams

 

Vital Viewing (Falling Debris Edition)

 

500 meteors a year make their way past the Earth's atmosphere. This is a story of one of them:

I happen to live in the area where that meteor fell, but didn't see it because I was inside, and didn't hear the BOOM because I was in a noisy environment at the time, noisy enough that it even drowned out a meteorite. I didn't know anything about it until much later when I was scrolling through the news on my phone. I feel deprived. I didn't get to hear the BOOM. Where is my BOOM? I want to hear a BOOM!

So, by way of compensation:

Call out the National Guard!

Quips and Quotations (Frames of Reverence Edition)

 

They cheer me because they understand me, and they cheer you because no one understands you.

--Charlie Chaplin, upon meeting Albert Einstein.

Graphic Grandeur (Asymmetrical Warfare Edition)

 

The question must be asked:

Cartoon by Clay Jones.

Vital Viewing (Lost Causes Edition)

 

There's nothing worse than the end of a romance.

Except for maybe war, debilitating illnesses, natural disasters, famine, molestation, homelessness, political corruption, environmental destruction, genocide, etc.

But I digress:

Oh, so sad! Is there any way a positive spin can be put on this?

Tomorrow is another day.

1939-2026