Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season

by Jonathan Eig (Simon and Schuster, 323 pages) - Reviewed by Robert Birnbaum

Though I am a nearly lifetime follower of baseball, I would not argue that most baseball books, including biographies, rise to the level of general interest. Not so those about Jackie Robinson.

Wall Street Journal editor Jonathan Eig's new opus (he has previously written about Lou Gehrig) accounts for Robinson's color-barrier-breaking first season in the Bigs, sixty years ago. Because of Robinson's accomplishments--and an ample dose of white guilt--Robinson's life (forgive the pun) is usually presented as a hagiographic whitewash. Eig makes clear that despite a weak arm, a gimpy ankle, a lack of experience, and being a twenty-eight-year-old rookie, Robinson's characterological gifts helped him to prevail over, if not overwhelming, then at least intimidating odds.

Additionally, Eig updates the Robinson legend/legacy by fleshing out the effect number 42 had on young blacks (and whites): Malcolm X, former Virginia governor Doug Wilder, the NAACP's Gil Jonas, and writer Robert Parker, to name a few.

This a fine and compelling narrative that, given the subject matter, easily doubles as cultural history without the droning didacticism to which such accounts are susceptible.

In Boston, where the Red Sox were the last to team to "integrate," David Ortiz was chosen to wear Robinson's number as a part of Major League baseball 60^th anniversary tribute--and, gee whiz, he has his own book, Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits (with Boston Herald sportswriter Tony Massarotti). I have been reading it to my 9-year-old son, Cuba, and it does fall into the category I mentioned above. Despite the manufactured hoopla, the irony of a racist metropolis embracing a big, very black Dominican and "Big Papi" endlessly (though not singingly) fall off the tongues of Bostonians, it's impossible to find fault with Senor Ortiz. It's beautiful thing to see character trump bullshit and other societal depredations. Me, I say, "Play ball!"

Purchase Opening Day online.