HOUSTON – In proudly showing off his Jackie Robinson wristbands Friday afternoon, Astros manager Dusty Baker was honored to pay tribute to the man who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947 by having Robinson's likeness on his arms and by wearing his No. 42 jersey.
“I’ve got a Jackie Robinson wall at my house,” Baker said. “It keeps me motivated, keeps me grounded and keeps me pushing forward.”
Baker and the Astros decided to wait until Saturday to celebrate Jackie Robinson Day after the Astros and A’s elected not to play Friday night at Minute Maid Park. Because the Astros were off Wednesday and Thursday with Hurricane Laura approaching, they couldn’t join the other 20 teams who didn’t play on Wednesday and Thursday in the wake of Sunday's police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.
The Astros and A’s will wear their No. 42 jerseys during Game 1 of Saturday’s doubleheader, which begins at 3:10 p.m. CT.
Baker credits his late father, Johnnie B. Baker Sr., with first teaching him about Robinson’s humility, a lesson young Dusty had to be reminded of many times.
“Every time I used to get out of line or I’d get blamed or get in a fight ... my dad would remind me, ‘What would Jack Robinson do?’ Quite frankly, I used to get tired of hearing that,” Baker said. “I wasn’t a turn-the-cheek person, but once I got to know [former Brooklyn Dodgers] Jim Gilliam, Joe Black, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, that played with Jackie, he wasn’t a turn-the-other-cheek dude, either. That made me feel a lot better and keeps me striving forward.”
Major League Baseball chose to celebrate Jackie Robinson Day on Aug. 28 for two reasons. It’s the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, which the Robinson family attended, and it also is the date in 1945 when Robinson and Branch Rickey met to discuss his future as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
In conjunction with the celebration, MLB announced a partnership extension with the JRF Scholarship Program, the Jackie Robinson Museum and the annual JRF ROBIE Awards. The extension is through 2023 and includes a $3.5 million commitment on behalf of MLB.
At Minute Maid Park before the postponement, the Astros recognized Jackie Robinson Day by having special assistant to the general manager and former player Enos Cabell announce “play ball” pregame. Cabell and kids from the Astros Youth Academy were set to express some thoughts on Robinson during a pregame video. What’s more, cardboard cutouts of former African American Astros players from the franchise’s early years were placed behind the Astros dugout, and Jeanette Sparks – wife of former Astros pitcher and scout Scipio Spinks -- performed the anthem.
In recent days, Baker was paying close attention to what young players throughout sport were saying with their words and actions.
“Everybody talks about the future and how the young people aren’t this and aren’t that; well, I’ve got a young man that’s 21 years old,” Baker said of his son, Darren. “He’s one of them, just like the kids that are out there. These kids are really pretty hip and not naive like we were as kids coming up. We need to listen to these young people some more. It’s going to be their world and it is their world, but it’s up to us to kind of direct them so that the world is better for them than it is for me, which wasn’t bad, and my world was better than my dad’s, and my dad’s was better than his dad.”