Brooklyn, Baseball, and Broadway

Jackie Robinson has inspired an abundance of portrayals in popular culture, unsurprisingly.  Examples include Blair Underwood in the 1996 HBO tv-movie Soul of the Game, Chadwick Boseman in the 2013 movie 42, and the man himself in the 1950 movie The Jackie Robinson...

Jackie Robinson and the Hall of Fame

Though not technically the first black player in the major leagues—that distinction belongs to Moses Fleetwood Walker of the American Association’s Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884—Jackie Robinson destroyed the unspoken yet visible barrier constructed in the late...

Whose Life Story Is It Anyway?

The life story genre is a staple of baseball films. Fear Strikes Out depicted the anxieties of Jimmy Piersall.  William Bendix and John Goodman played Babe Ruth in The Babe Ruth Story and The Babe, respectively.  42 spotlighted Jackie Robinson’s story of...

Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey

Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson changed baseball when the former signed the latter to a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team.  They broke organized baseball’s color line that was never codified but seemingly understood Earlier this year, the movie...

Mr. Robinson and Mr. Rickey

42:  The Jackie Robinson Story opens in theatres on Friday, April 12th.  The date is appropriate — nearly 66 years to the day when Jackie Robinson made his official debut in Major League Baseball on April 15, 1947.  He played, of course, for the Brooklyn...