Carrying Jackie's Torch

Baseball in the USA

As a kid playing baseball with my older brothers and their friends, I could not hit, could not throw, could not catch a ball, but I sure could run. After one at bat Jackie nicknamed me Slugger. I gripped the bat, determined to hit a high fly out to left field (we were literally playing in a weedy field) heard the sweet sound of the ball connecting with the bat and swung with all my might. The ball dribbled a few feet from home plate and I made my very first base hit. That was the beginning and end of me and baseball. I would sit in the grass to watch the guys and my best girlfriend, JC, play and Jackie would yell over "Hey Slugger aren't you playing today?" causing everyone to laugh and me to scowl. This article is not about carrying my classmate and brother's friend, Jackie's torch.

This is about the book, "Carrying Jackie's Torch", subtitled "The Players Who Integrated Baseball---and America" written by Steve Jacobson. Jackie is Jackie Robinson. Like Jackie, the players who followed were not allowed to play with their teams in Southern USA states, even in Spring Training games. This book is their story.

Although I lost interest in baseball, I was surrounded by it. JC would drag me up the corner to play games with my brother's gang~they would not let her play unless she was with me~and she would prattle on about Major League baseball. Her mother was a Yankee fanatic and the game was always playing on the radio as we helped her cook dinner. Mrs. C was as noisy as my mom was quiet and she would suddenly be screaming and prancing around the kitchen when a homerun scored. I was paying about as much attention to the radio announcer as I did when I sat in the living room at home with my dad and brothers watching WPIX Yankee baseball telecasts on the tiny black and white screen.