Is Racism Alive and Well in Major League Baseball?

In 1947, when Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers, he ended over 50 years of segregation and broke Major League Baseball's "color barrier".

There were other players in the Negro Leagues who were more talented than Jackie, such as Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson. Branch Rickey, the General Manager of the Dodgers, knew that the man he chose had to be special. The pressure he would face as the first African-American major leaguer in the modern baseball era would be tremendous.

So he chose 28-year old Jack Roosevelt Robinson from the Kansas City Monarchs to be that man.

Rickey made Jackie swear that he would not react to the expected criticism and hate. He wanted a player who could win over the hate with his professionalism and talent. Jackie Robinson was his man.

His own teammates threatened not to take the field; opponents did the same. Each city brought the hatred to new heights and limits, but Jackie kept playing baseball, and playing it well.

He won the Rookie of the Year award in 1947, and went on to have a Hall of Fame career. He was the league MVP in 1949 and retied with a lifetime batting average of .311.

What Jackie and Branch Rickey did in 1947 opened the door to all of the greats that followed: Satchel Paige, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, and Hank Aaron to name a few. He may not have been the best player in the Negro Leagues, but he was best man for this job.

Have the racial issues in Major League Baseball improved since that day? What happened to those that came after Jackie? Were they held to a different standard because of their race?

In 1961, when Roger Maris paved his way into the record books by breaking Babe Ruth's single season home run record of 60, he was harassed daily by the media and fans alike. The man from Hibbing, MN was not one for the spotlight; he just wanted to play baseball.

He was not harassed for being the wrong race or because he was white; he was harassed because HE was breaking the record, and not his teammate Mickey Mantle. Many did not believe Roger to be a true Yankee; and who else deserved beat that record other than a true Yankee?

But what if it would have been Willie Mays breaking that record in 1961?

I can only imagine the racial hatred that Willie would have faced if it had been him and not Maris. It was very possible for him to have done it too. He had seasons of 51, 52, 49 home runs. What kind of asterisk would have been by his name?

The decade of the 1960s marked the biggest civil-rights movement in our nation's history. This carried on into the early 1970s. The Vietnam War was in full stride, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were assassinated, and war protests and civil-rights marches ruled the land.

Baseball may have been desegregated in 1947, but the rest of the country was just getting started.

Then Hank Aaron made his assault on the career home run record of 714, set by Babe Ruth.

Hank Aaron never hit more than 47 home runs in a single season, but in 1974, he was out in front as he made his assault. Hank and his family received death threats and hate mail from those that did not want to see a black man beat the Babe's record. Members of the media who supported Aaron were threatened, too.

On April 8, 1974 he hit home run number 715, breaking the record.

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