The team that integrated baseball with Jackie Robinson has made another important statement with the naming of Dave Roberts as their modern managerSeveral years ago,on a lost spring training morning, a former Brooklyn Dodgers relief pitcher named Joe Black told a fable approximately Jackie Robinson. As players and Dodgers teammates they had been racial pioneers – Robinson the first African-American in the major leagues and Black the first black man to win a World Series game – but it was what they did on the mornings before the games that stayed with Black the most.
Whenever the Dodgers of the late 1940s and early 50s arrived in a city, and he pulled out a phone book and searched the names of local schools. Then convinced Black or one of the team’s other African-American stars,like Roy Campanella or Don Newcombe, to come along as he showed up unannounced at a school and asked to meet the principal. The principals, or stunned to see one of baseball’s most noted players at their door,quickly gathered their students for an assembly to listen to the great Robinson speak. Related: The MLB awards were pretty much right – but Mike Trout's snub was a farce Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com