Jackie Robinson, one of the two most important baseball players ever, died 40 years ago Wednesday. But it’s the 25 years before 1972 that WFAN host Tony Paige fears we’re forgetting.
Paige says he’ll talk about Robinson on his overnight WFAN (660 AM) show Wednesday.
He will also contact Rachel, Robinson’s widow and a long-time friend, to see if she’s up for talking about Robinson’s legacy on Paige’s weekend show.
David Roberts, vice president and general manager of ESPN Radio New York, says ESPN (98.7 FM) plans to remember Robinson this weekend, though it’ll reserve its more extensive coverage of Robinson’s legacy for the early months of the next baseball season.
In the general public, though, says Paige, even among sports fans, “We’ve forgotten too much of what Jackie did. People today can’t imagine what he went through. They don’t remember the impact it had on all sports, and on all our lives.”
When Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, he became the first black man to play Major League Baseball in the 20th century.
“My grandmother would take me to ball games at Shea Stadium in the 1960s,” says Paige. “One day we saw this man and she said, ‘Do you know who that is? That’s Mr. Jackie Robinson.’ She always called him ‘Mister.’
“She said he was the first colored man — those were her words — to play major league baseball.
“Well, I was 10. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘Before that, it was not allowed.’ And I said, ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’ And she said, ‘I know.’ ”
Fans and even players today, said Paige, “don’t understand how important he was. There was Babe Ruth, who made baseball popular, and there was Jackie Robinson, who paved the road we’re still on. We can’t forget.”
Source : nydailynews[dot]com
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