Every Major League Baseball player will wear No. 42 on Friday.
It’s Jackie Robinson Day, a day when players proudly celebrate the number of Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player of the 21st century. Robinson’s story teaches us an important lesson: Discrimination is bad for business, both in and out of baseball.
From about the 1890s to 1946, Major League Baseball didn’t have any black players. An awful, inherently racist policy prevented talented players from participating. Discrimination worsened the league’s talent pool, and teams that could have signed talented black players were worse off because they did not.
However, when the Brooklyn Dodgers put Robinson on their roster in 1947, it gave them a huge advantage. They got a talented player that racist managers and owners of other teams had overlooked. Robinson helped the Dodgers win the National League his rookie season. They then made it to the World Series but lost to the New York Yankees. Eventually, Robinson helped the Dodgers win the World Series in 1955. The roster had another black Hall of Famer on it: catcher Roy Campanella.
Players such as Robinson and Campanella were in the league because they earned the opportunity. Unfortunately, many great black players in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century never got the chance to play in the big leagues. They could have altered baseball history with just a chance at proving their skill. Maybe if the Chicago Cubs signed the best players available, regardless of race, they would not have gone 108 years between World Series wins?
By 1959, every existing MLB team had featured at least one black player on its roster. Managers and fans could not argue with the proposition that results matter more than racism.
It’s unfortunate that discrimination continues to exist in our society. Let’s work on eliminating it wherever possible.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.
