On Tuesday, Major League Baseball will once again honor the player that broke the sport’s color barrier by celebrating Jackie Robinson Day. Some specially selected players will wear Robinson’s retired #42, while in other cases, the entire team will don the same jersey.

However, Torii Hunter still stands by the words he said last year, where he questioned the over-abundance of so many players wearing #42 and “watering down” the special meaning - especially on MLB teams with no black players.

Read more…

Baseball gives itself a lot of credit for pioneering integration, even though favoritism of white players continued well after Jackie Robinson’s big league debut in 1947, and other teams had grudgingly integrated their teams to keep up.

Their latest effort of patting themselves on the back, the so-called Civil Rights Game played yesterday in Memphis, was so self-congratulatory that someone could have torn a rotator cuff.

Read more…

Jackie Robinson celebrates a birthday today, and BLACK FIVES has an enlightening piece on Robinson’s little-known, but extremely successful, basketball career.

(Photo credit: BLACK FIVE)

Excerpt: “(Robinson was) A lightning dribbler and glue-fingered ball handler, his terrific speed makes it impossible for one man to hold him in check. Robinson was a tremendous leaper, who had set the collegiate broadjump record.”

The baseball pioneer with the Brooklyn Dodgers was also described as one of the first players to use the dunk as a part of his typical repertoire. Read more…