Beyond Home Plate: Jackie Robinson on Life After Baseball

Drawing almost entirely from the legendary ballplayer's columns in the New York Post and New York Amsterdam News that spanned the volatile years from 1959 to 1968, Long (musicology, SUNY at Buffalo) offers a terrific, even invaluable collection. Those syndicated columns, and a sprinkling of earlier pieces, offer the ex-Brooklyn Dodger great's often astute reflections on a broad range of issues pertaining to civil rights, foreign affairs, and, of course, baseball. Robinson expressed great affection for the man who signed him to his first major league contract, Branch Rickey; disputed Bill Veeck's assertion that the sport's first black major leaguer in the 20th century would have to rein himself in to serve as a coach or a manager; and lauded "the kind of courage" displayed by teammate Pee Wee Reese amid racial epithets. Robinson referred to his wife, Rachel, as an equal partner, deemed Martin Luther King Jr. the greatest leader of the century, and extolled nonviolent activists, while admitting that he would be unable to turn his cheek if threatened with violence. Movingly, Robinson insisted that even well-known, comfortable African Americans should never be altogether comfortable "until the most underprivileged Negro enjoys his rights as a free man."