Blast from the Past AGAIN: On Jackie Robinson Day

I am a serial rehasher of things I have written before, when they seem to somehow become relevant again.
I saw the Jackie Robinson biopic "42" with Dad this weekend. And this seems, again, relevant. 
I'll have TWO more comments at the end. 

 

Dad taught me to be who I am

News Editor

Stephen Guilfoyle

When he was born –

• a man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not yet president.

• the greatest epoch of the 20^th Century, World War II, was nine years in the future;

• a small man full of hatred was legally forbidden to speak in Germany, but Adolf Hitler, not yet elected to anything, was gaining influence and backing from powerful industrialists of that country;

• there was a 40-foot deep pit on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 32nd Street, where, 18 months later, would rise the grandest building ever built, the Empire State Building; and

• the New York Yankees were the greatest baseball team ever, with a lineup that included Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

I’m a mean kid at times and sometimes I make fun of my dad for being old.

But I look back on the world into which he was born and I realize that he has indeed somehow, behind my back, really gotten old.

I’ve never much written about my dad because it’s more fun to make fun of Mom, because her sense of humor is always taxed.

I often wonder why someone like Dad, who always jokes, ended up with Mom, who almost never does.

Dad and I go to movies. That’s what we do. We talk football now.

I am whatever kind of man one might think I am because of what I learn from him.

But I learn not from him telling me what he wants to teach, but from my watching what he

does.

I picked the historical markers, because they all have some significance to either his life or my

view of it.

Roosevelt, well, that’s my joke. “Geez, Dad, you were born before Roosevelt was President.”

And Roosevelt was president for a long time.

The Empire State Building, well, I connect that with Dad because he’s always seemed to

me a New Yorker. He’s settled down fine in South Carolina these past 20 years, but it’s just not his natural place.

If someone were to put him in an alien zoo and were to create his natural habitat, there would have to be canyons made of concrete and glass and subways.

Hitler is not included because Dad was a tyrant. Dad is a gentle man. But Dad took a little trip to Ireland when he was a youth and got stuck there for years because of World War II.

He was raised over there by his aunt.

It shaped him to be a very different sort from his brother and his sister.

I include the Yankees because, despite being born in the Bronx, the Yankees were never his team.

But it is important to note that the greatest team of all time was the Yankees of the ’30s.

When my father was born in 1930, those Yankees were a segregated team, white men only need apply.

One of the most important lessons I learned from my father, and about my father, came unspoken

but etched in deep.

My father’s favorite baseball team was dem Bums, the Brooklyn Dodgers. His favorite player

was Jackie Robinson.

My father loved Jackie Robinson’s ability to make a play out of nothing, score a run after getting

walked to first base.

It taught me all I ever needed to know about race relations and how to judge people. You judge a man by his ability, not by the color of his skin.

What a fabulous teacher he was. I gained a core belief in justice and fair play and fundamental human equality, just because Dad said, “Jackie Robinson was my favorite baseball player.”

So my Dad turned 70 Tuesday.

I wish there were someway to stop it, but I can’t. Instead, I’ll remember again all that he’s taught me. .

And I’ll feel humbled, because I’m not half the man he is, but I’ll feel lucky that I know to keep trying to measure up.

P.S. Dad liked the movie. But he doesn't like it as much as he liked "The Jackie Robinson Story." It's probably because Jackie Robinson played Jackie Robinson. (And Pee Wee Reese played Pee Wee Reese, for that matter.) Thought it was good. But it's no Jackie Robinson.
P.P.S. Dad would absolutely have loved the PBS miniseries on Jackie by Ken Burns. I know I did.