A Brief Biography Of Jackie Robinson

It was Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player in the major league. Many people would agree Jackie was one of the best players to ever swing a bat. However, he faced many difficulties on his journey to becoming a professional baseball player. Without Jackie playing in the pros, baseball and civil rights wouldn’t be the way it is today. Baseball may have taken a long time to not be made up of mainly white players.

In the seventh inning, Joe hit a triple and was running to third base when a fan jumped up and yelled, “You shoeless son of a gun.” He only played that one game in his stockings, but the nickname stuck with him forever. He openly admitted to not liking the nickname. In the eyes of thousands, the 1919 World Series was nothing more than eight fixed games. Nearly 100,000 dollars was paid to players, and half a million was gambled on it. “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, and the Sox allegedly accepted money from Joseph "Sport" Sullivan to lose to the Cincinnati Reds.

It was not normal for a dark skinned man to play a major league sport. When he started he had to put of with racism and discrimination. But the comments didn’t stop him from becoming the amazing ball player he had become. Jack beat many records and he had an amazing batting average, .349 and a .985 fielding percentage. That amazing first year of playing baseball he had the opportunity to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

“Hey Jackie, you should play baseball.” Jackie Robinson had no intention to play baseball. Jackie Robinson had to deal with many racial comments and put downs, but Jackie never gave up and ended up as a Major League hero. Jackie played many sports in high school and he was good at all of them. He lettered in every sport he played in high school. After high school, he didn’t have any intention to play sports anymore.

Jackie Robinson not only became the first African American baseball player, he also made the movement for the first African American president and equal rights (Bilyeu). Mr. Robinson would later sign with the Brooklyn Dodgers on October 23rd, 1945, thus becoming the first professional negro baseball player (Young). Baseball wasn’t fully ready for a colored player, so Jackie played one year for the Dodgers minor league team Montreal (Young). There he would lead the International League in hitting over all the white athletes (Bilyeu). Just before the start of the 1947 season Robinson had received a phone call on April 10th telling him that he would be on the Dodgers the upcoming season (Bilyeu).

The Man who Changed it All “In October, of 1945, Branch Ricky, then president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, singed Robinson to play for the Montreal Royals, a Brooklyn farm club in the international league. Despite several incidents in spring training in the south and many inconveniences during the season, Robinson,- the first African American ballplayer in that league- excelled as a second baseman and won the league batting crown (Jackie Robinson).” Branch Ricky took a big gamble on Robinson and it paid off big. Jackie Robinson was an amazing athlete who overcame adversity to become the first black to play in the league. Born Jack Roosevelt Robinson, Jackie grew up in California. He stood out as an athlete in high school and college (Jackie Robinson).

He was used to playing in the Negro League and the style of play; it was a hard transition for Jackie to get used to the white man league. Jackie was the main symbol of hope to millions of people. He was with the dodgers and had the number forty two. He won most of his games being on base and doing his Negro style of playing. Jackie won six pennants in 10 seasons of playing baseball.

He also added a few more things to help make baseball what it is today, including creating spring training facilities, batting cages, pitching machines, and being the first person to use statistical analysis in baseball. (CBC) After a very successful career, Branch Rickey died in Columbia, Missouri on December 09, 1965. Baseball would not be the great sport it is today without Branch Rickey’s important contributions.

In 1947 he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers. But before Jackie Robinson there was Moses Fleetwood Walker, he was the 1st African American major league baseball player to play baseball in the late 1800’s. On April 15, 1947 Jackie Robinson became the 1st African American to play major league baseball. He broke the color line, which led to many white teams playing against all black teams or interracial teams: Jackie Robinson caught many Americans attention and his story was widely retold through American culture in many different forms. Such as through movies, radio talk shows, sheet music, comic books, and sports magazines.

The reason many people had their eyes on him was, because he was the first African-American player to play in the Major Leagues. He was drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Before Robinson broke the barrier of the first African-Americans to play in the league, they were restricted to the Negro League. Then in 1950 baseball started to expand its geographic range and started getting western teams to attempt to lure teams from the eastern coast to come west or they formed a so called expansion team. An expansion team is just players that are made available by established teams.