PHILADELPHIA — On April 15, 1947 in Brooklyn, Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier — and completed a harrowing journey from player to pioneer, fighting a battle for racial equality.
Seventy-six years later to the day, it’s a battle America is still fighting.
And that fact wasn’t lost on all parties involved Saturday in Game 1 of the first-round playoff series between Brooklyn and Philadelphia, won 121-101 by the Sixers, including the two black men and longtime friends who were coaching the teams, largely comprised of more black men.
“It’s pretty incredible for that debut to happen for the Brooklyn Dodgers, I see the connection there,” Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn said. “And then the other connection: Jackie Robinson went to John Muir High School [in Pasadena, Calif.], the same high school I graduated from.
“So on this day to have two African-American coaches from different areas as former players, Doc [Rivers, the 76ers coach] has paved the way for me to sit here because of his success and his ability to carry himself in a way that people appreciate, and to be a father. That means a lot. So Jackie Robinson Day is extremely important because of his sacrifice for me to be here in a setting like this.”
Before Robinson, Major League Baseball had been segregated for more than a half-century, very much a microcosm of the racism in the American consciousness, and not just in the Jim Crow south.
The late Robinson broke the color barrier playing for the Dodgers at Ebbets Field, and a flagpole from the since-demolished stadium now stands at the front entrance of Barclays Center, the Nets’ home on the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues.
A plaque honoring the Dodgers’ history sits along the copper-top white flagpole’s gray base.
Robinson passed away in 1972, but if you’re looking for his monument, just look around the court at the superstars that have followed in the path he blazed for them.
“It means a lot. He’s going to be cemented in history of breaking the barrier, so that right there, that helps everyone,” Nets guard Edmond Sumner said. “For someone to have the courage to be like, ‘OK, no matter what, I’m going to stick this out so I can help the future.’ That’s amazing. That set the stone for everything. So it means the world.
“Now I’m older and you see how much it really means and how much he changed and the sacrifices he had to do just to play baseball. That was amazing. I try to put myself in his shoes, and I don’t personally think I’d be able to withstand all those things that he had to. I can’t imagine, things we don’t even know that he had to go through to even continue to play and overcome all that adversity. I’m an adversity guy, I’ve been through my own, but I can’t imagine being through anything like that. So that means a lot.”
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Over the past few years, both the Nets and 76ers have become examples of modern player empowerment.
But none of the players or coaches have lost sight of the sacrifices Robinson went through to help create a world in which they could excel.
Rivers pointed out how vital it was that the history was taught — in its brutal entirety — even in an era when that appears to be happening less and less.
“Him, Arthur Ashe, I got the pleasure of living near when I played for the Knicks in Connecticut, we all kind of lived in the same area. Not with Jackie, but with Rachel,” Rivers said of Robinson’s now-100-year-old widow, who lives in Salem, Conn. “He’s a pioneer. I still don’t think we all know the story of what he actually had to go through, but we know he had to go through a lot. Oscar Robertson, that whole group to me, basketball-wise, still we don’t talk about that enough.
“I love that we celebrate this, and I’m trying to stay away from politics [Saturday] since I have a basketball game. But we do live in a time where it just seems like we’re trying not to teach history anymore. You can’t whitewash history, you have to teach it for us to be a better people, a better country. I think baseball has done that. I think basketball has done that as well. Sports has done that a lot. So I think it’s just important that we do study history.”
Vaughn played for Rivers with the Magic in 2002-03 and still cites the 76ers coach as a guiding force in his career, and someone who paved the way for him.
But it was Robinson who cleared the dangerous path generations before.
Vaughn not only learned about it attending Robinson’s alma mater, but also was inspired by it — even though he’s acutely aware of just how much work there remains to be done.
“There was definitely an understanding, whether it was walking the halls and seeing his picture,” Vaughn said. “The park that I played at various times was Jackie Robinson Park.
“A lot of reminders, and I think as I got older, you learn the significance and what he had to go through and that we’ve come a long ways, but we’ve still got some ways to go. So the progress and to be somehow connected on a day like today. I get to do this for a living. Man, pretty cool.”
