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	In Memory Of Jackie Robinson

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By: Bruce Jenkins

I guess it was inevitable that I would have the pleasure of meeting Jackie Robinson. My father's music was the toast of New York City during Robinson's heyday with the Dodgers in the 1950s, and he had always spoken highly of the man's athletic ability. There's a terrific photo of them together, smiling broadly, in our family archives. But when my dad introduced me to Robinson, around the age of 12, it wasn't about Ebbets Field, Pee Wee Reese or facing off against the mighty Yankees. The real Jenkins-Robinson connection was football.

Gordon Jenkins had moved to Los Angeles in 1939, to work on film scores for Paramount, and that's when Robinson's gridiron feats captured the imagination of Southern California. It was mostly fleeting newsreel stuff for the rest of the country, but if you were there, at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, the experience stayed with you for the rest of your life. For years on end, especially after I became a sportswriter, my dad raved Robinson's talent, as well as that of Kenny Washington, Woody Strode and Ray Bartlett -- key black players on a team remarkably integrated for the times -- and how the experience attached him to football, and great running backs, for life.

We're told to stay away from the word "incredible" in the newspaper business, for if you take the word literally, it rarely applies to a hitting streak, a dunk or double-reverse. Robinson's career, I'd say, was incredible.

Right off the bat, he was the younger brother of Mack Robinson, a man few remember from the 1936 Olympics but a success story among the aficionados, having finished second to Jesse Owens in the 200-meter dash -- right there in Berlin, where Adolph Hitler recoiled at the sight of black athletes beating his hand-picked German heroes.

Jackie proved to be the family's best athlete, and one of the best this country has ever seen. He was the 1940 NCAA long-jump champion. He was an excellent competitive swimmer. In a national tennis tournament for African-Americans only, he reached the semifinals. As a basketball star at UCLA, he twice led the Southern Division of the old Pacific Coast Conference in scoring. In the 1939 football season, with my dad riveted to his every move, he led the nation's running backs in yards per carry (12) and punt returns. Later on, in the early 70s, Bill Kilmer got national attention at UCLA for having lettered in football, baseball and basketball. Robinson went him one better, adding track and field to the mix, and to this day, he's the only man to letter in four sports there.

Robinson's childhood friends, of course, knew all about it. Years ago, one of them told the story about the kids in Jackie's Pasadena neighborhood sneaking onto local golf courses to steal balls and sell them back to the golfers. "One duffer, wise to the racket, challenged Jackie to finish out the hole with him," Bob Brigham wrote on The Diamond Angle website. "Said if he could get down in fewer strokes on that hole, he could keep the ball and he'd give him an extra buck. He handed Jackie a putter and selected a 7-iron for himself. Jackie, swinging a golf club for the first time in his life, nearly holed out and ended up winning the wager."

An equally remarkable story, if you can imagine such a thing, was the time he won a track meet and a baseball game for Pasadena Junior College on the same day. The track meet was in Pomona, the baseball game in Glendale -- at least an hour's drive in those days. Despite an annoying delay when his friend's car blew a tire, Robinson sidled into the long-jump competition (it was called the "running broad jump" in those days) and not only won the event, but set a school record. Changing into his baseball uniform on the way to Glendale, Robinson found the game already in progress when he arrived -- but he still got two hits and a stolen base to seal the victory and a conference title.

Dr. John Johnson, who played on the UCLA football team with Robinson, claims the pattern continued right into major college. "The baseball field used to be next to the track," Johnson told the student newspaper at Cal State Dominguez Hills. "I threw the discus, and during meets Jackie would come to the track between innings, take one jump -- in his baseball uniform, you understand -- win it, and then go back to the ballgame."

In those days, baseball was just another sport for Robinson. In fact, he batted just .097 in his last season for the Bruins. But after World War II, in which Robinson was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, there weren't many outlets for an athlete to make money. Baseball was far and away the best option. It seems hardly a coincidence that in 1947, when Robinson broke baseball's color line, the Dodgers reached the World Series for only the second time since 1920. It's a tribute to his leadership that the Dodgers played in five more World Series over the next nine years, culminating in 1956, Robinson's last year, and that the Braves took over the National League immediately upon his retirement.

They honor a great man today. For someone who last performed 60 years ago, his legacy is fresh, relevant and alive. My only regret is that I was born too late. How I'd love to have sat in the Coliseum stands with my dad, watching Robinson evade those would-be tacklers.

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