Some 42s are bigger than others.
Jul. 18th, 2013 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogIn the past two days, there were no regulation games played in Major League Baseball. It's the All-Star Break, and this year, the Mets hosted the game. The biggest story to come out of it was it being the final such game for a famed Yankee relief pitcher, Mariano Rivera. He pre-announced his retirement before the season, and it has since been a Farewell Tour of observances, and lovely parting gifts, presented by the owners and players for the very teams he's been torturing with his pitching for the past two decades.
The All-Star appearance, though, was the ultimate piece of stage. Instead of his team taking the field for the bottom of the 8th inning, all players remained in their dugouts, the PA blared his entrance music, and he jogged out from the outfield bullpen to the mound to the most thunderous applause any Yankee will likely ever get in my team's ballpark. He then retired all three batters he faced, was named the game's MVP, and may have been nominated for sainthood somewhere in the process. (There were, after all, several Cardinals on the field;)
On Mo's back was a legendary number, and he will be the last to ever wear it in anger on a MLB playing field: it's 42, the number made famous by Jackie Robinson, whose accomplishments were so significant that baseball pan-retired it about a decade ago. However, they allowed the handful of players then wearing the number to keep doing so until they retired. Rivera's the last one, and he's the man of the moment, but he is not the ultimate 42.
As proof, on last night's night of baseball silence, we watched the film of that number, which tells Jack Robinson's story.
----
Okay, we began it. About an hour remains- he's just about to cross the color barrier at the major league level. But he's already endured the catcalls of racist fans, organized protest among his fellow teammates, and at least one thinly-veiled threat to his life during his first spring training.
Where was he living at the time? Sanford, Florida- the same place that would take Trayvon Martin's life some 66 years later.
The early scenes between Robinson and the brave Dodger GM Branch Rickey (played amazingly by Harrison Ford) kept evoking the same tensions between race and class and place that are still so clearly present today. Rickey didn't want a breakthrough player with the guts to stand his ground; he wanted one with the even greater quality of guts not to.
Jackie Robinson promised him those guts, and I don't need to watch the rest of the film to be sure he delivered. (I'll still finish it anyway; it's beautifully filmed and perfectly acted so far.)
Ten years later, the Dodgers were gone from Brooklyn. Twelve years after that, the Mets, who rose in their place, won their first championship on the field of Queens that had been offered to the Dodgers in place of their beloved Brooklyn. And a few years after that, Jackie passed away far too soon- but not before a member of those 1969 Mets, once who had also been trapped in the Negro Leagues for much of his early career, got to meet him at a random event and thank him for blazing the trail.
Jackie thanked him; nobody, in the twenty-plus years since 1947, had ever thanked him before for what he did.
But we do- and, I'm sure, so does Mariano Rivera.
The All-Star appearance, though, was the ultimate piece of stage. Instead of his team taking the field for the bottom of the 8th inning, all players remained in their dugouts, the PA blared his entrance music, and he jogged out from the outfield bullpen to the mound to the most thunderous applause any Yankee will likely ever get in my team's ballpark. He then retired all three batters he faced, was named the game's MVP, and may have been nominated for sainthood somewhere in the process. (There were, after all, several Cardinals on the field;)
On Mo's back was a legendary number, and he will be the last to ever wear it in anger on a MLB playing field: it's 42, the number made famous by Jackie Robinson, whose accomplishments were so significant that baseball pan-retired it about a decade ago. However, they allowed the handful of players then wearing the number to keep doing so until they retired. Rivera's the last one, and he's the man of the moment, but he is not the ultimate 42.
As proof, on last night's night of baseball silence, we watched the film of that number, which tells Jack Robinson's story.
----
Okay, we began it. About an hour remains- he's just about to cross the color barrier at the major league level. But he's already endured the catcalls of racist fans, organized protest among his fellow teammates, and at least one thinly-veiled threat to his life during his first spring training.
Where was he living at the time? Sanford, Florida- the same place that would take Trayvon Martin's life some 66 years later.
The early scenes between Robinson and the brave Dodger GM Branch Rickey (played amazingly by Harrison Ford) kept evoking the same tensions between race and class and place that are still so clearly present today. Rickey didn't want a breakthrough player with the guts to stand his ground; he wanted one with the even greater quality of guts not to.
Jackie Robinson promised him those guts, and I don't need to watch the rest of the film to be sure he delivered. (I'll still finish it anyway; it's beautifully filmed and perfectly acted so far.)
Ten years later, the Dodgers were gone from Brooklyn. Twelve years after that, the Mets, who rose in their place, won their first championship on the field of Queens that had been offered to the Dodgers in place of their beloved Brooklyn. And a few years after that, Jackie passed away far too soon- but not before a member of those 1969 Mets, once who had also been trapped in the Negro Leagues for much of his early career, got to meet him at a random event and thank him for blazing the trail.
Jackie thanked him; nobody, in the twenty-plus years since 1947, had ever thanked him before for what he did.
But we do- and, I'm sure, so does Mariano Rivera.