Musings About 42, The Jackie Robinson Story

I am one of those people who love baseball. I don’t know everything about the game, in fact, I probably know very little. But I do know that I am thrilled to watch it; read about it and learn as much as I can, as the game rolls on; which brings me to 42: The Jackie Robinson Story. This film received very positive reviews, so I am in the minority when I say, I have trouble with the Hollywood movie version of the story. In a word, the movie is sanitized. It’s an abridged history. The rough edges have been smoothed over, the glaring blemishes polished out; the rhetoric and language buffed into something more pleasing to our ears; (save the scene in which Philadelphia Phillies manager Ben Chapman climbs out of the dugout and spews venomous racist slurs at Brooklyn Dodgers rookie Jackie Robinson). Overall though, we are presented with a purified and less contaminated version of the past; a version that, if not pardons, at least glosses over our yesteryear’s.

As we all know Jackie Robinson is credited with breaking the color barrier of our American pastime, baseball in 1947, when he became the first African-American to play in the Major Leagues for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The cast is great with Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey and John C. McGinley as Red Barber. Chadwick Boseman is fabulous as Jackie and believable as a baseball player. I loved Nicole Beharie as Mrs. Robinson–(and currently in Sleepy Hollow) and was truly taken in with the way the ball parks were recreated.

The story, as presented by the filmmakers, is pretty simple: Black man wants to play baseball, is not able to due to the color of his skin, rises above prejudice, perseveres and is triumphant. A nice formulaic story, that is sure to please the ‘underdog’ loving American appetite. This works, because there is the basic assumption from the filmmakers, that the movie going audience doesn’t know the story of Jackie Robinson. It seems they were correct. After digesting and considering the film, which gnawed at me for reasons I couldn’t quite discern, I realized that for me, the heart of the problem lies; not in the story, but in who is telling the story. The familiar adage of ‘winners tell history’ or ‘the victorious write the history’ is all too evident in this film and in large part, why it feels ‘sanitized’.

• Why is Branch Rickey given sole credit for the idea of integration, when in fact, press and government* had been pressuring baseball, military and other industries to integrate as early as 1943?

• Jackie Robinson was great, but did not—(I am sad to tell you) clinch the 1947 pennant for the Dodgers with a home run in Pittsburgh. If I am mistaken, please tell me.

• And why is Jackie watching the home run from the batter’s box in 1947?

• Did Pee-Wee Reese ever put his arm around Jackie on the field in Cincinnati? I’m sure something happened, but there is no photograph of such a moment, I have read no teammate report of it and at the time and in their retirements, Robinson and Reese never mentioned an embrace. In Arnold Rampersad’s biography, “Jackie Robinson,” Robinson recalled a moment but not an embrace: “Pee Wee kind of sensed the sort of helpless, dead feeling in me and came over and stood beside me for a while. He didn’t say a word, but he looked over at the chaps who were yelling at me and just stared. He was standing by me, I could tell you that.”

Despite historical inaccuracies and whitewashing, the film is entertaining and it started a dialogue; a dialogue that includes such questions as ‘what’s colored’, ‘what’s Jim Crow’, ‘what’s a Negro’? People seem to forget—(or perhaps they don’t know), that Jackie Robinson went on to become a civil rights leader. Of course, the filmmakers have two hours to tell a story, and necessarily, have to make choices and leave some things out. I have read that the game of baseball broke his heart. I just don’t think it was as easy for Jackie Robinson as the film might suggest. At the very end, after the closing credits, the following disclaimer runs….

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