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The Nov. 1, 1945 issue of The Sporting News devoted nearly three full pages to the delicate matter of “John Roosevelt (Jackie) Robinson, age 26, Negro,” signing a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers’ minor league affiliate in Montreal, even as writer Dan Daniel protested in the third paragraph of the lead item that it was all much ado about nothing.
“It is quite conceivable that the story has received far more attention than it is worth,” Daniel wrote, before adding in the next paragraph: “Robinson has not been signed by the Dodgers, and insofar as can be discerned, never will play for the Brooklyn club in the National League.”
Baseball establishment types quoted in that issue parroted the main talking point of the time when it came to integration: It wasn’t a question of prejudice, they claimed; Black players simply weren’t good enough to play in the majors. That assertion flew in the face of evidence plenty of fans had witnessed personally while watching barnstorming tours that occasionally pitted AL and NL stars against their Negro Leagues counterparts.
Robinson hitting a league-leading .349 for Montreal in 1946 further gave lie to that notion. It became a matter of when, not if, he would get the call to Brooklyn and change the game forever. That day arrived on April 15, 1947, when Robinson donned his No. 42 jersey and started at first base for the Dodgers against the Boston Braves, going 0 for 3 and scoring a run. He would be named Rookie of the Year at the end of the season.
“When I was in college I used to think that the time would come when Negroes would be in major league ball as they are in other sports,” he told Sporting News correspondent Ward Morehouse after his debut, “but I didn’t think it would be in my time and I never dreamed that I would be the first.”
But he was, and his courage and resolve changed the game and impacted the United States forever.
In April 1997, then-National League president Leonard Coleman wrote a piece for The Sporting News commemorating the 50th anniversary of Robinson’s debut. He noted that it came before the United States military, in which Robinson had served during World War II, was desegregated.
“It was seven years before Brown vs. the Board of Education,” Coleman wrote, “Eight years before the Montgomery bus boycott, and 17 years before the Johnson Administration passed the Civil Rights Act.”
Would all of those monumental steps on the path to equality have occurred anyway? Perhaps, but what Robinson did in not merely suiting up in the major leagues but quickly proving himself one of the game’s best players served as a high-profile rebuttal to all of the manufactured excuses that had excluded Blacks from that slice of American life for decades.
“Jackie was a true Hall of Famer. There's no question about that,” Coleman wrote. “But off the field, he was a Hall of Fame barrier-breaker because he knocked down hurdles and created opportunities for peoples in all walks of life. …
“In my opinion, Jackie Robinson provided the soul of the modern game of baseball. The Robinson ideal—leadership, competitiveness, passion, energy, a quest for justice and Jackie's challenge to a stained system—should be the foundation upon which the modern game of baseball should be played. … Jackie's spirit continues to drive us. Jackie once said, ‘A life isn't important unless it impacts another life.’”
By that measure, it’s easy to see why Jackie Robinson sits atop this list.
MORE: Back to The Sporting News' 140 Greatest Sports Moments of All Time
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