"Let's TRULY Honor Jackie's Legacy"

Yesterday was Jackie Robinson Day, celebrating the day he broke baseball's color barrier over 70 years ago.  And even though no baseball games are being played at the moment due to the Coronavirus, some have suggested that we honor the day ANYway....which is a first  (In fact, ONE sports writer asserted that MORE has to be done to honor Jackie's achievement than we ALREADY do!!) Now, hey, I understand that, without any new GAMES to write about this man needs to write about SOMEthing to fill his column, but it's getting ridiculous, people.

This is NOT to minimize Jackie's achievement or Jackie HIMSELF (though any "knee-jerkers" who read this will interpret it that way, and probably call me "racist.")  I only wish to point out that the ESCALATING attention given to his achievement is not doing us good anymore...it's HARMING us as a nation. In the early 1960s, I was a fan of the most integrated team in baseball...the San Francisco Giants. And MOST of the players on my first team couldn't have even PLAYED in the majors if not for Jackie's bravery.  I'm writing a book about that team which mentions how the players of color, though ALLOWED to play, were still minimized by white writers and announcers using NICKNAMES.  For example, the St. Louis Cardinals' white star was dubbed "Stan THE MAN Musial" while Willie Mays was "The Say Hey KID" and Orlando Cepeda was "The BABY Bull" (Mays and Cepeda are men of color and were mature MEN at that time.) There were subtle ways that players of color were made to feel inferior by those whites now "forced" to accept their presence, you see.

But after all of these years, the tide has turned and I see WHITE players being minimized. Topps, the baseball card company, has put out a new series of cards where contemporary artists have "re-imagined" classic cards and I can't help noticing that WHITE players are made to look absolutely GOOFY .Here are three examples...

If you look up the "Topps 2020" series online, you'll see that players of color are rendered much more respectfully by these "artists" than the WHITE guys are!! At least they all have FACES, Lol!! And, my opinion of THESE "contemporary artists" is as follows....let's cut it down to "CON artists" and hope that their art careers ARE only "temporary."

But, back to my point.

The perpetual, never-ending and growing idolatry of Jackie Robinson is creating a REVERSE racism...the pendulum IS swinging the other way, there IS a backlash.  And, though it satisfies the cravings of white people who have White Guilt and of those who like to MILK it, this does NOT honor Jackie's legacy.  Jackie BROKE DOWN barriers....I don't think he wanted to just SWITCH them.

Jackie's goal is being DEFEATED...in my opinion, when the images of great white players are DEFACED. It's a case of those who DO know history that ARE repeating it....either through anger, shame or a desire for revenge of some sort.  But two wrongs don't make a right, as they say.  Let's play ball again, so that I can root for my PRESENT team...the New York Yankees...THE most integrated team there is and let's only see the UNIFORMS of our teams, not the colors of the guys INSIDE of them.

Let's TRULY honor Jackie's legacy.