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Jack Roosevelt Robinson was an American professional baseball player who became the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the color line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. The Dodgers signing Robinson heralded the end of racial segregation in professional baseball that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s. Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West Division. Established in 1883 in Brooklyn, New York, the team joined the NL in 1890 as the Brooklyn Bridegrooms and used several other monikers before finally settling on the name Dodgers in 1932. From the 1940s through the mid-1950s, the Dodgers developed a fierce crosstown rivalry with the New York Yankees as the two clubs faced each other in the World Series seven times, with the Dodgers losing the first five matchups before defeating them to win the franchise's first title in 1955. It was also during this period that the Dodgers made history by breaking the baseball color line in 1947 with the debut of Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play in the Major Leagues since 1884. Another major milestone was reached in 1956 when Don Newcombe became the first player ever to win both the Cy Young Award and the NL MVP in the same season.
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Brooklyn Dodgers: Ghosts of Flatbush is a 2007 documentary film produced by HBO Sports chronicling the last ten years of the Brooklyn Dodgers' tenure in the borough of churches. The film documents how in 1947 Jackie Robinson broke the baseball racial barrier in previously segregated major league, the struggles to win what seemed an unreachable World Series title in 1955, and the issues and community feelings involved in the team's sudden departure to Los Angeles after the 1957 campaign.
The 1950 Brooklyn Dodgers struggled for much of the season, but still wound up pushing the Philadelphia Phillies to the last day of the season before falling two games short. Following the season, Branch Rickey was replaced as majority owner/team president by Walter O'Malley, who promptly fired manager Burt Shotton and replaced him with Chuck Dressen. Buzzie Bavasi was also hired as the team's first independent General Manager.
On April 15, Jackie Robinson was the opening day first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first Black player in Major League Baseball. Robinson went on to bat .297, score 125 runs, steal 29 bases and win Major League Baseball's inaugural Rookie of the Year award. The Dodgers won the National League title and went on to lose to the New York Yankees in the World Series. This season was dramatized in the movie 42.
Wid Curry Matthews was an American outfielder, scout and front office executive in Major League Baseball. Matthews served as general manager of the Chicago Cubs for seven full seasons and became one of the first front-office employees in the history of the New York Mets in 1961, the year before they began play in the National League. A native of Raleigh, Illinois, Matthews stood 5 ft, 81⁄2 in (174 cm) tall and weighed 155 pounds (70 kg) in his playing days. He threw and batted left-handed.
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The US congressional testimony by Jackie Robinson, the first African-American Major League Baseball player of the modern era, against the famous entertainer and international civil rights activist Paul Robeson, was an American Cold War incident. Its events were precipitated when, at an international student peace conference held in Paris on April 20, 1949, Robeson allegedly made a speech to the effect that African Americans would not support the United States in a war with the Soviet Union, due to continued second-class citizen status under United States law. This subsequent controversy caused the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) to investigate Robeson and Robinson, as a famed African-American baseball player, was called on to impugn Robeson.
The United States League (USL), alternately called the United States Baseball League, was one of the several Negro baseball leagues created during the time organized baseball was segregated. The USL was organized as a minor league in 1945 by Branch Rickey to serve as a platform to scout black players.
John Wendell Smith was an American sportswriter and civil rights activist who was influential in the choice of Jackie Robinson's career as the first African American Major League Baseball player. Similarly, Smith was one of the first African American sport-writers to be a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, and was posthumously awarded the J. G. Taylor Spink Award by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993.
References
- ↑ Klein, Alvin (December 11, 1994). "The Stuff of Legends". The New York Times. New York. Retrieved December 11, 2016.
- ↑ Braunagel, Don (May 12, 1992). "Review: 'Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting'". Variety. New York: Penske Media Corporation . Retrieved December 11, 2016.
- ↑ Jones, Chris (January 15, 2012). "THEATER REVIEW: "Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting" at Lookingglass Theatre". Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Illinois. Archived from the original on April 19, 2013. Retrieved December 11, 2016.
- ↑ Freeman, Zach (January 16, 2012). "Review: Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting/Lookingglass Theatre Company". NewCity Stage. Chicago, Illinois. Retrieved December 11, 2016.
- ↑ "Search". Jeff Awards. The Joseph Jefferson Awards. Archived from the original on January 2, 2018. Retrieved December 11, 2016.