ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 15, 1997 TAG: 9704150070
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Clinton will lead a New York tribute to baseball's first African-American player.
With symmetry so perfect it almost seemed planned, the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's major-league debut will be celebrated today, two days after Tiger Woods became the first African-American to win the Masters golf championship.
Robinson would have gotten a kick out of Woods' trailblazing triumph because he loved golf and cherished equality.
And 50 years after he pushed baseball into racial reality, a season of tributes reaches its apex at Shea Stadium when tonight's game between the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers is halted in the fifth inning for ceremonies led by President Clinton.
In a letter to readers of the New York Daily News, Clinton saluted baseball's first African-American player.
``With grace and steely determination, he pushed open a door that should never have been closed and held it open for the countless talented young men and women who followed him,'' the president wrote.
Hank Aaron, baseball's home run king, who suffered much of the racial abuse as he pursued Babe Ruth's record that Robinson faced before him, put it more simply:
``Without Jackie Robinson,'' he said, ``there wouldn't have been any Hank Aaron.''
Or Willie Mays. Or Bob Gibson. Or Ernie Banks. Or any of the scores of other African-American stars who changed the pace and pulse of the game after Robinson led the way.
On Monday, a five-mile stretch of New York City's Interboro Parkway that runs past Cypress Hills Cemetery, where Robinson is buried, was to be renamed for the pioneer who integrated baseball a half-century ago. A proposal to rename Shea for Robinson will be considered by the City Council.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance is presenting an exhibit honoring Robinson that will tour stadiums starting at Shea today and will be at the All-Star Game in Cleveland in July.
The first pitch tonight will be thrown out by Jesse Simms, Robinson's grandson, who will play football at UCLA in the fall, as his grandfather did before revolutionizing baseball.
On Monday, the Mets presented Simms with a No.42 jersey. He said he planned to wear his old high school No. 31 at UCLA.
``My grandfather wore 28 there,'' he said. ``What I strive for is to carry on his legacy and his leadership values.''
Acting commissioner Bud Selig and Rachel Robinson, Jackie's widow, will join Clinton at the ceremonies. Earlier this month, Rachel Robinson was at Long Island University's three-day symposium in tribute to her husband and expressed some concerns.
``As people discuss Jack, it's often as a martyr,'' she said. ``They overlook the joys he had, the exhilaration of winning, the joys of his children and his home. Think of the total man, not just in terms of integrating sports.''
The total man was why Branch Rickey chose Robinson as the centerpiece of his plan to change the face of baseball.
Robinson's debut April 15, 1947, was nondescript. He was 0-for-3, struggling against the curve balls of Boston's Johnny Sain. He reached base on an error, scored a run and handled 11 chances at first base flawlessly. And he was pretty much ignored in press reports of the Dodgers' 5-3 victory over the Braves.
It didn't stay that way long.
Bigotry surfaced in short order. An anti-Robinson petition in his own clubhouse was crushed in spring training. But all around the league, there was ugly bench jockeying spiced by racial epithets, a shower of abuse made all the worse because of Robinson's pledge to Rickey that he would not answer it.
He replied on the field with a fiery game that drove other teams to distraction. He ran the bases with abandon, a first-to-third machine. He danced on the basepaths with a hop, skip and jump that maddened pitchers. He stole home 20 times, and that doesn't include the times he trotted in when pitchers lost their concentration and threw the ball past the catcher.
He was a handful.
``I remember, when Jackie was on base the guys in the dugout all wanted to watch,'' said Clyde King, a Dodgers pitcher in 1947. ``I remember Gil Hodges pushing Eddie Miksis out of the way so he could see Jackie on third base.''
For two years, Robinson kept his vow of silence. When the restraints came off in 1949, he led the league with a .342 batting average and was the Most Valuable Player.
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. Ernest Burke, a former Negro Baseballby CNBLeague player, enjoys an exhibit honoring Jackie Robinson at the
Smithsonian. color.