“Jackie Robinson”
A few years ago, I wrote a song called “Jackie Robinson.” This spring, I rewrote the lyrics and recorded it — with help from Cee Goods and from Jeff Woollen, who engineered, produced, mixed and mastered the track.
The song came out yesterday, on April 15, 2021— the day that Major League Baseball has been officially celebrating as Jackie Robinson Day since 2004. Yesterday marked the 74th anniversary of Jackie’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, when he became the first Black man to play in the Major Leagues since Moses Fleetwood Walker more than 60 years earlier.
Let’s be clear: I believe in the greatness of Jackie Robinson. It is good that Major League Baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson Day every year.
But it’s hard for me to know how to celebrate Jackie on a day like today, in this time, knowing what we know.
With this song, the piano came first, and the music made me feel something — it meant something to me, for some reason — so I wanted the song that it would become to be meaningful as well. It became “Jackie Robinson.”
As a result, it took years to write the lyrics, because I didn’t have a particular story in mind. Instead, I had simply a feeling of reverence that I wanted to convey — a solemn appreciation.
In searching for the words, I came to see Jackie as a great man who had taken on an enormous burden. He gave everything he had by using his own greatest gifts in true service, and in doing so, he etched a mark in our world’s history that ran much deeper than any game ever could — even one as eternal as baseball.
And yet this gift that he gave did not always glorify him in return. He endured unspeakable things during his career, living under constant stress, scrutiny and threat of danger — while still somehow playing baseball as well as almost anybody ever has. He died of a heart attack at 53.
In some ways, I feel like Jackie gave this gift directly to my own kids. When my oldest son, Julian, was two, I gave him a Brooklyn Dodgers hat for Christmas, and he wore it for years. We have at least six kids books in the house about Jackie.
Jackie’s gift, though, is bigger than being an early hero for a young baseball fan. As a direct result of the years Jackie Robinson spent enduring unspeakable hatred on a national stage, my biracial Black kids can turn on a ballgame and see themselves in the people on the field. When I close my eyes, I can almost see the string that connects Jackie’s gift to Julian’s big league dreams.
But when I say it’s hard to know how to celebrate on a day like this — in a time like this — it’s because as much as I want to think about baseball, to revel in a hero’s accomplishments, my heart’s just not in it.
More vivid than any connection to Jackie Robinson right now is the string I can’t help but see that connects Julian, who will turn 13 this summer and start seventh grade next fall, to Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old boy was pursued, shot and killed in a dark alley in the middle of the night on March 29 by a white Chicago police officer named Eric Stillman. Adam was a seventh-grader at Gary Elementary School at the time of his murder.
Yesterday — April 15, 2021 — the bodycam video of this boy’s murder went public. I also learned yesterday that Adam’s mother had said he’d still liked to play with Hot Wheels and Legos at home.
My six-year-old, Zeke, is pictured on the “Jackie Robinson” cover walking behind home plate at Cal Anderson Park last summer when it had been liberated from the empire as part of the CHAZ/CHOP — the ‘autonomous zone’ that grew around the protests against police violence and racism in Seattle.
Zeke spent yesterday playing with Hot Wheels. Today he’s building a toy store out of Legos.
It’s too much.
And it’s also just scratching the surface.
I was born in St. Paul and lived as a baby just a few miles from where Philando Castile was shot and killed by police during a traffic stop a few years ago. Last year, of course, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by a police officer named Derek Chauvin, who is currently standing trial.
During these very days when the world is specifically hyper-aware of police violence against Black people in the Twin Cities area, a white police officer in the Twin Cities area named Kim Potter murdered a 20-years-young Black man named Daunte Wright during a traffic stop. It’s obvious, but for me, it bears mentioning that less than a year ago, Daunte was a teenager.
As a kid, I truly believed baseball was one of the most important things. In adulthood, I’ve come to understand differently.
Jackie is a fascinating historical figure, an inspiration, a courageous man whose spirit I seek to emulate.
But of genuine importance today are Adam Toledo and Daunte Wright, and the history more pressing than Jackie’s impact on baseball is the long, painful history racial violence in this country. It has taken all forms, impacted all aspects of life. The hatred and violence that Jackie faced — the interpersonal and systemic racism that pressed down on him every day of his life — persist today. We know this all too well. And so I can’t help but feel, on Jackie Robinson Day 2021, that we are walking a fine line between honoring a great man’s legacy and co-opting his story to make us all feel better.
Jackie showed us what is possible when we use our greatest gifts to their fullest extent in true service. He lived a life that is to be admired, yes, but there is also a challenge inherent in the legacy of a person who achieved true greatness. Will we rest on his laurels, or will we stand on his shoulders? Will he be a figurehead for hollow celebration, or will we see and remember his humanity and so more clearly recognize our own capacity for greatness?
In writing this song, I tried to imagine experiencing Jackie’s life as a human being who had fears and misgivings. As someone who knew his worth from a young age — knew his life mattered — but lived in a world that tended to see things differently. As someone who was presented with an intense opportunity and a hero’s burden — one that he probably often wished wasn’t his to bear, but that he carried anyway.
The deeper issue, then, for yesterday and today and every day forever and ever, is what we ourselves will do. Will we rest on our laurels, or will we courageously use our most sacred gifts and talents in the urgent service of creating a more just and radically empathetic world?
People like Jackie have shown us what’s possible. We can turn to them for inspiration, but the courage will have to be ours. I’ll see you out there.
-Matt Halvorson