60 Fun Facts About Jackie Robinson

At which ballpark did Jackie Robinson make his major league debut on April 15, 1947?

Ebbets Field held 26,623 fans that day, an estimated 14,000 of them Black, and Robinson went hitless yet scored the winning run as Brooklyn beat the Boston Braves 5–3.

In which Southern state was Jackie Robinson born to a family of sharecroppers in 1919?

Georgia was home only briefly: in 1920 his mother Mallie took her five children by train to Pasadena, California, where she worked as a maid to support them.

Robinson's middle name honoured which president, who died 25 days before Jackie was born?

Theodore Roosevelt died on January 6, 1919, and the baby became Jack Roosevelt Robinson; his father walked out while he was still an infant, leaving Mallie to raise five children alone.

Robinson's older brother Mack won Olympic silver in 1936, finishing behind Jesse Owens in which event?

The 200 metres final in Berlin saw Mack Robinson finish 0.4 seconds behind Jesse Owens; back in Pasadena, he was the big brother who pushed Jackie towards sport.

Robinson became the first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports at which university?

UCLA saw him star in football, basketball and track, yet baseball, the sport that made him famous, was reckoned his weakest of the four.

In which event did Robinson win the 1940 NCAA championship?

The long jump ran in the family: at junior college he had already broken a national record held by his older brother Mack.

Which civil rights leader called Robinson "a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before the Freedom Rides"?

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the tribute in a 1962 newspaper column on Robinson's Hall of Fame induction; five years later Robinson publicly challenged King's opposition to the Vietnam War.

Which boxer, stationed at Fort Riley with Jackie Robinson, stepped in to get Black soldiers into officer school?

Joe Louis, then world heavyweight champion, took the stalled applications to a War Department aide, and Robinson was commissioned a second lieutenant in January 1943.

Robinson was court-martialled in 1944 after refusing to do what?

Ordered to move to the back of an Army bus at Fort Hood, Robinson refused; nine officers acquitted him of every charge, but his tank battalion left for Europe without him.

Robinson's Army unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, was nicknamed what?

The Black Panthers, who wore a panther's head on their patches, went on to fight 183 straight days in Europe under Patton, though Robinson never saw combat.

Which Negro league team did Robinson sign with in 1945, for $400 a month?

The Kansas City Monarchs had Robinson for less than a season of wearying bus rides; Rickey then signed him without paying the club a cent, arguing that Negro league contracts were not binding.

Which team gave Robinson a sham tryout in 1945, then became the last in the majors to integrate in 1959?

The Boston Red Sox staged the Fenway Park tryout under pressure from a city councilman, watched three Negro league players for ninety minutes, and signed none of them.

Who was the last Black major leaguer before the colour line that Robinson broke?

Moses Fleetwood Walker caught for Toledo in 1884, after which an unwritten agreement among club owners kept Black players out of the National and American Leagues until 1947.

Before signing him in 1945, Branch Rickey made Robinson promise to meet racial abuse in which way?

Turn the other cheek was the promise: when Robinson asked if Rickey wanted a player afraid to fight back, Rickey said he wanted one "with guts enough not to fight back".

To spare Robinson the segregated South, where did Branch Rickey hold the Dodgers' spring training in 1947?

Havana was Rickey's answer to the spring of 1946, when Florida towns such as Jacksonville and Sanford refused to let Robinson take the field.

Which Pittsburgh Courier sportswriter recommended Robinson to Branch Rickey, then travelled with him through 1946 and 1947?

Wendell Smith did not rate Robinson the best player in the Negro leagues; he backed him as a college man and former Army officer who could take the pressure.

Which future Hall of Fame catcher became Robinson's Dodgers teammate in 1948, a year after he broke the colour line?

Roy Campanella was sent to the minors that May, where he became the American Association's first Black player, and came back in early July as Brooklyn's regular catcher.

With which minor league club, the Dodgers' International League affiliate, did Robinson spend 1946?

The Montreal Royals won the pennant and the Little World Series with Robinson batting a league-best .349, and more than a million fans paid to watch his games that year.

Where did Robinson make his minor league debut on April 18, 1946?

Jersey City's ballpark was packed for the opener, and Robinson answered with four hits, a three-run homer and four runs scored in a 14–1 win.

Why did Robinson, a natural middle infielder, play first base as a 1947 rookie?

Second base was already taken by Eddie Stanky, so the rookie spent the spring learning first; Stanky was traded to the Boston Braves in 1948 and Robinson moved across.

Which Dodgers manager called a midnight meeting to crush a players' petition against Robinson, then was suspended for all of 1947?

Leo Durocher is quoted telling the rebels he did not care if Robinson was "yellow or black" or striped "like a zebra"; soon afterwards the commissioner banned him for the season.

Which team did a New York newspaper report in 1947 to be plotting a strike rather than face Robinson?

The St. Louis Cardinals never walked out: league president Ford Frick let it be known that any player who struck would be suspended.

Which Phillies manager's dugout abuse of rookie Robinson did Rickey later credit with uniting the Dodgers?

Ben Chapman's taunts drew such a backlash that weeks later he and Robinson posed for a photograph together to quiet it.

Which Dodger is said to have put his arm around Robinson as fans jeered, a moment now honoured by a statue?

Pee Wee Reese, a white Kentuckian, is said to have quietened the crowd with the gesture, yet no report from the time records it, and tellings differ on the year and the city.

Which Jewish slugger whispered encouragement to Robinson after a collision at first base?

Hank Greenberg, then with Pittsburgh, had endured years of antisemitic taunts himself, and told the rookie he knew how tough it was and to stay in there.

Who broke the American League colour line with Cleveland just 11 weeks after Robinson?

Larry Doby went straight from the Newark Eagles to Cleveland on July 5, 1947, with no season in the minors to ease him in.

Robinson led the National League in which category as a 1947 rookie?

Stolen bases were his signature: 29 led the league in 1947, and over his career he revived the lost art of stealing home, doing it 19 times.

What set Robinson's 1947 Rookie of the Year Award apart from the ones presented today?

It covered both leagues, a single award for all of baseball until 1949, and since 1987 the trophy in each league has carried Jackie Robinson's name.

Which Hall of Famer and Dodgers scout coached Robinson's hitting in spring 1949, when his average jumped from .296 to .342?

George Sisler had played college ball for Branch Rickey at Michigan; decades on, as Rickey's scout, he taught Robinson to stop lunging and hit to right field.

In 1949, Robinson became the first Black winner of which National League award?

Most Valuable Player was his reward for a .342 season that won the batting title and carried Brooklyn to the pennant by a single game.

Which bandleader's 1949 recording of "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?" became the best-known version of the song?

Count Basie cut his version in July 1949, but the song was written by bandleader Buddy Johnson, whose own record peaked at number 13 that August.

Robinson reluctantly testified before HUAC about statements by which Black actor and singer?

Paul Robeson was reported to have said Black Americans would not fight the Soviet Union; Robinson disagreed before Congress, then wrote in 1972 that he would refuse such an invitation now.

Which actress played Rachel Robinson in the 1950 biopic The Jackie Robinson Story?

Ruby Dee starred opposite Robinson, who played himself, and forty years later she returned to the story as his mother in The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson.

Which Dodgers owner, never close to Robinson, forced Branch Rickey out of the Brooklyn front office in 1950?

Walter O'Malley bought Rickey's quarter share and with it control of the club; Robinson never warmed to him, and in 1957 O'Malley took the Dodgers away from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

After the 1951 "Shot Heard 'Round the World", Robinson stayed on the field to check that which batter touched every base?

Bobby Thomson's home run had just cost Brooklyn the pennant, and while his teammates trudged off, Robinson stood alone behind second base, hands on hips, watching him all the way to the plate.

Which baseball commissioner, newly in office in 1945, let Robinson's contract stand when he had the power to void it?

Happy Chandler, a former governor of Kentucky, said little in public but backed the signing through his actions; under his predecessor, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the colour line had stood for 24 years.

Robinson's Dodgers beat which team to win the 1955 World Series?

The Yankees had beaten Brooklyn in 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953; when the Dodgers finally won in 1955, Robinson, in the worst season of his career, sat out the deciding game.

Which blunt title did Robinson give the autobiography published in October 1972, the month he died?

I Never Had It Made covers his career, his activism and his troubled relationship with his son Jackie Jr., who had beaten a drug addiction only to die in a car crash in 1971.

How did Robinson's playing career end in Game 7 of the 1956 World Series?

He struck out, but the catcher dropped the third strike, so Robinson's last act as a player was a dash for first base, where the throw beat him.

Which company made Robinson vice president for personnel, the first black VP of a major US corporation?

Chock full o'Nuts, a New York coffee and restaurant chain, had quietly agreed terms with Robinson before his playing days were over, so he retired to an office rather than report to a new club.

Which documentary maker directed the 2016 film Jackie Robinson, with Jamie Foxx voicing Robinson's own words?

Ken Burns's two-part film follows Robinson past baseball into the years when illness wore him down and a more militant generation set the pace in civil rights.

Which pitcher who doubted Robinson could hit joined him in the Hall of Fame's 1962 class?

Bob Feller had called Robinson too muscle-bound, with "football shoulders", to handle big-league pitching; in 1962 they became the first players in over twenty years elected at the first attempt.

Robinson helped found which Harlem-based, black-owned lender in 1964 and served as its first chairman?

Freedom National Bank was set up to lend to Black customers whom established banks largely ignored; Robinson chaired its board until his death, and it served Harlem until 1990.

Whose 1964 Republican presidential nomination angered Robinson, who had campaigned for a rival?

Barry Goldwater had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Robinson, who had worked for Nelson Rockefeller's rival campaign, said he left knowing better how it felt to be a Jew in Hitler's Germany.

Which slugger became the American and National Leagues' first Black manager two years after Jackie Robinson publicly pleaded for one?

Frank Robinson, no relation, got the Cleveland job in 1974; Jackie had told a World Series crowd, nine days before he died, that he longed to see a Black face managing in baseball.

Which civil rights leader delivered the eulogy at Robinson's funeral in 1972?

Jesse Jackson spoke to a packed Riverside Church, and tens of thousands more lined the streets as the procession carried Robinson, dead of a heart attack at 53, to his grave in Brooklyn.

Which president joined Rachel Robinson at Shea Stadium when baseball retired number 42 for every team?

Bill Clinton came for the 50th anniversary of the debut; the handful of players already wearing 42 were allowed to keep it.

Who was the last player to wear number 42 under the grandfather clause, retiring in 2013?

Mariano Rivera had just become New York's closer when baseball retired 42; in his final season his own club retired the number a second time, for him.

Whose idea was it for players to wear number 42 on Jackie Robinson Day, first done in 2007?

Ken Griffey Jr. asked the commissioner and Rachel Robinson for permission to wear it himself; the invitation was then opened to everyone, and from 2009 everyone in uniform wore 42 on the day.

Who played Robinson in the 2013 film 42?

It was Chadwick Boseman's breakout role: he studied Robinson's mannerisms, met Rachel Robinson, and came out of it a Hollywood star.

The Jackie Robinson Rotunda is the main entrance of which ballpark?

Citi Field's entrance was the wish of Brooklyn-born Mets owner Fred Wilpon: it is modelled on the front of the Dodgers' old ballpark, and a giant freestanding 42 stands inside.

Who was the first baseball player to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, before Jackie Robinson in 2005?

Roberto Clemente died on a relief flight to earthquake-hit Nicaragua just ten weeks after Robinson's own death, and Congress voted him the medal the following year.

Which Florida city let Robinson play in spring 1946 after Jacksonville and Sanford shut their ballparks to him?

Daytona Beach staged his first game for a Dodgers farm club on March 17, 1946, and the ballpark where he played it now carries his name.

Which Hollywood star hid under a fat suit and prosthetics to play Branch Rickey in the 2013 film 42?

Harrison Ford had to talk his way into the part: the director wanted a character actor rather than a movie star, until Ford arrived with Rickey's growl already worked out.

In 1936 Robinson won a junior singles title in which sport at the Pacific Coast Negro tournament?

Tennis was never among the four sports he lettered in, yet he won that title and later reached the semi-finals of the national Negro tournament.

In the fall of 1941 Robinson played semi-pro football for the racially integrated Bears of which city?

Honolulu was two days behind him when Pearl Harbor was attacked: his season with the Bears over, he was on his way home to California.

Rachel Robinson built her own career after Jackie retired, becoming an assistant professor at Yale in which field?

Nursing was her profession from the day she graduated in 1945; after Jackie's death she founded the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which funds college scholarships in his name.

After the 1956 season, the Dodgers tried to trade Robinson to which National League team, only for him to retire instead?

The New York Giants were Brooklyn's bitterest rivals, and the deal for pitcher Dick Littlefield and cash was void once Robinson, who had secretly lined up a business career, announced his retirement.

Robinson's retirement was announced through which magazine, to which he had sold the story rights?

Look held the exclusive, so Robinson could say nothing even when the Dodgers traded him; when the story ran, a Dodgers executive suggested he was only angling for a better contract.

Which comedian played Robinson in The First, a 1981 Broadway musical?

Robinson had played himself in the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story.