This week, the Department of Defense essentially did what the military and America couldn’t do to Jackie Robinson.
The DoD’s removal of a bio of Robinson’s military service on its website was temporary yet massive in symbolism. It erased Robinson. In particular, it erased a significant part of his very existence. And it’s precisely why Major League Baseball must be a fierce protector of a man who altered the course of history playing its game.
Robinson revealed in his 1972 landmark autobiography, I Never Had It Made, that he left Honolulu, Hawaii — he was stationed there on a construction project — on Dec. 5, 1941. Two days later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, promptly entering the United States into World War II. It was then that Robinson knew his time in the military had begun.
“When we arrived home, I knew realistically that I wouldn’t be there long. Being drafted was an immediate possibility,” wrote Robinson, “and like all men in those days, I was willing to do my part.”
This was still America — in the 1940s, at that. That part was soon tested. Speaking to a provost marshal named Major Hafner about the lack of seating for Black people, Robinson was told the request was pointless. Hafner assumed Robinson was white. Then, he asked him a question that sent Robinson into a blind rage.
“Lieutenant, let me put it to you this way. How would you like to have your wife sitting next to a n—–?” Hafner asked, according to Robinson.
There’s more to the story’s fallout, and Robinson tells it in far more detail and emotion. In 1944, Robinson was court-martialed for refusing to give up his seat and move to the back of an Army bus. He was acquitted and later received an honorable discharge that same year. Roughly two years after the initial incident with Hafner, Robinson — who lettered in four sports at UCLA — became the first Black player to sign with a Major League Baseball team when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers farm team in Montreal. He signed the contract in his military uniform.
One of the marquee days of baseball’s early swath of games is April 15, or Jackie Robinson Day. The annual holiday is actually quite young. The tradition began in 2004, but it wasn’t until Ken Griffey Jr. requested to wear Robinson’s No. 42 jersey for a day as a sign of respect for his achievements. Today, all teams and players take part, yet understanding the 21st anniversary of the holiday on the horizon means an acknowledgment — one that says this one comes with a different feeling.
Major League Baseball has to acknowledge the added emotional weight of the day. Simply put, Robinson’s transcendent baseball story is unfinished without the story of his military service.
What happened to Robinson’s webpage has become commonplace under Donald Trump’s administration. Earlier this year, the U.S. military reversed its decision to eliminate historical information, including the Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Airforce Service Pilots, when training new Air Force enrollees. Alongside the removal of Robinson’s page were the pages of the Navajo Code Talkers and Native American Ira Hayes, one of the six men to raise the American flag in Iwo Jima. Even Bea Arthur, the beloved Jewish Golden Girls star who served in the Marines in World War II, had her page removed.
By 1:24 p.m. ET on Wednesday, the Pentagon celebrated the move, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cited as saying, “DEI is dead at the Defense Department.” A little over an hour later, pleas were copped — somewhat.
“Everyone at the Defense Department loves Jackie Robinson, as well as the [Code Talkers], the Tuskegee Airmen, the Marines at Iwo Jima, and so many others. We salute them for their strong and, in many cases, heroic service to our country, full stop,” a statement read. “We do not view or highlight them through the prison of immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity or sex. We do so only by recognizing their patriotism and dedication to the warfighting mission like every other American who has worn the uniform.”
Major League Baseball is indebted to Jackie Robinson. He “broke baseball’s color barrier” and gave a foundation for what would become the Civil Rights Movement just years later. In 1947, being a big league baseball player was the only thing perhaps more patriotic than being an actual soldier. The thing is, Jackie was both. The thing is, too, Jackie was Black. The move to integrate baseball was called the “Noble Experiment” for a reason. Robinson wasn’t the only talented Black baseball player in America. He was, however, the only one Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey believed could handle the torture that would come his way.
“The sacrifice that he gave [is important] … that we all give when we write a blank check payable up to and in the amount of your life,” Ryan Vaughan, a Petty Officer First Class in the U.S. Navy, told Andscape. The 17-year veteran also played baseball at the historically Black institution Virginia State University in the mid-2000s. “You have to tell that story because it goes into similar circumstances to what he faced coming into the majors. He wasn’t allowed to fight alongside white officers and soldiers. And when he went to play baseball, he wasn’t allowed to go to the major leagues.”
Being Black in most spaces outside the Black community is an act of defiance. Robinson’s act of defiance altered the course of world history. Robinson – though a damn great player – is not the greatest baseball player ever, yet there is no more singularly important one than Robinson. That’s exactly why the act of internet erasure, albeit momentarily, has to matter from MLB’s perspective.
This is the story that changed the game of baseball — and, in many ways, every sport in America — and it’s one that is truly baseball’s. The Negro Leagues is immortalized through the Kansas City museum honoring and preserving the legacy, credence and purpose of those Black ballplayers. Very few buildings preserving Black history are more important in America. This is a moment for Major League Baseball to deepen its roots with a man and purpose that helps define much of its very existence.
A major critique of the game for the last generation is the percentage of Black players in the majors. Though that number has declined, an influx of foreign-born, non-white players has come to shift how the game looks and is played.
“I don’t believe that happens without Jackie Robinson,” Vaughan said. “MLB should continue to honor Jackie Robinson, and it’s even more important now.”
Next month, every MLB player will wear No. 42 jerseys in honor of Robinson. Tributes will pour in. But in light of the Department of Defense’s move, Robinson should matter much more to baseball.
It seems almost futile to expect a multibillion-dollar business like Major League Baseball to take a bold stand to protect one of its icons. Part of this boils down to the tactics used by the Trump administration to incite a reaction and flex its deepening power. Another part boils down to the administration living up to a campaign promise to, in one way or another, cripple the survival of so many stories still dependent on the medicine that is storytelling to survive.
Robinson’s webpage being taken down and later restored matters far more than a single page on the World Wide Web. This is the one-sided power to dictate, erase and rewrite history.
Robinson’s story is as linked to America’s original sin of racism as any athlete who has ever lived. Robinson was far from a perfect man, an admission he’d reveal multiple times throughout his life. He fought for equality the best way he knew how for Black Americans. He oftentimes had to publicly defend himself, a la his public and brutally personal war of words with Malcolm X in the 1960s. But his refusal to live life in America, a country he defended, as a second-class citizen all because he was Black was undeniable.
Suppose Robinson is victim to this newfound chopping block in a society where books are banned, and the Department of Education implodes in real-time. In that case, the very fabric of American history — especially Black history — has a target on its proverbial back, chest and head.
Peeling back the layers, this is what MLB has on its hands with preserving Robinson’s legacy. The sneers, jeers, death threats, pitches aimed directly at his head and spikes from cleats to the body that Robinson faced in the 194os live on in different forms.
If baseball can’t safeguard the true story of baseball, then why is baseball continuing to play baseball?
“You should never get away from honoring the people whose shoulders you stand on. We, all of us, owe a major debt of gratitude to Jackie Robinson in everything he did,” said Vaughan. “Whether it’s his military service, his route to the major leagues and what he did in the major leagues … and the life he lived afterward… it’s all such a valuable piece into the real story of this country.”
How important is Robinson’s story? His widow and civil rights titan herself, Rachel, turns 103 in July. Her husband has been gone longer than they were together. Yet, it is a direct tie to the man he is and was and how she, much like Coretta Scott King – the widow of Martin Luther King Jr. – fights for the future to remember him. Rachel Robinson still breathes. A good part of her continues to fight for the causes they knew mattered back when America told them they didn’t. She still moves on the same grounds she helped her husband change. What mattered most to Jackie Robinson wasn’t about being the first to do anything. It was about making sure he wasn’t the last.
No, the Department of Defense’s actions didn’t directly threaten MLB’s bottom line. And no, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and the league likely won’t, or feel like they should, directly address the Pentagon. But you want to be reminded that sports aren’t always some soulless, capitalistic bloodsport surviving on entertainment and net revenue streams. So rarely, you want to be reminded what a heartbeat looks like.
The resiliency of Robinson’s heartbeat should never be forgotten. Hopefully, MLB not only knows this, but – if it cares anything about the American history currently under assault in various forms – its actions, whatever they may be, are more protective than performative.
In the final line of the autobiography released just days after his death, Robinson eulogized himself in simple, but eloquent fashion.
“I was a Black man in a white world,” he wrote. “I never had it made.”
More than a half century later, those words are somehow more true than ever.
