Hermon 2nd-graders understand Robinson’s legacy

It was my privilege recently to spend a little time with Mrs. Holly Scott’s second-grade class at the Hermon Elementary School.

The lesson for the day was tolerance, and I had the good fortune to read author Myron Uhlberg’s timely book, “Dad, Jackie, and Me,” to her youngsters. The story of Jackie Robinson’s entry into Major League baseball in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers was a special read, for Mr. Uhlberg captures not only the spirit of the times, but also the heated atmosphere in our nation when an African-American baseball player tried to make his way into big-time sports.

Up until that day, other black athletes with professional-caliber baseball skills toiled in the relative obscurity of the old Negro Leagues, not a good venue to make money or to pursue stardom.

Jackie had been a star athlete at UCLA. Uhlberg’s story takes us back to a time in 1947 when a brave owner, Branch Rickey, and an even braver athlete, Jackie Robinson, broke the so-called color line and challenged the previously all-white league.

Consider that, then consider that our own Boston Red Sox were the last major league team to bring a non-white player into their fold.

Yes, the times were tenuous for such a major change.

But what better way to tell them than through the eyes of a small boy, who hung on every move made by his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers.

There’s something special about the relationship between baseball and kids, but there is something particularly special about fathers and sons and baseball.

Author Uhlberg captures it all.

Readers can almost feel the atmosphere of the old Ebbett’s Field, a place most of us have only seen on television clips.

But get inside the wonderfully illustrated pages – kudos to talented artist Colin Bootman – of this book, and you’re quickly transferred to New York during what is, arguably, baseball’s heyday in the city.

What better atmosphere for a baseball-loving father and son than a city with the Giants, Yankees, and the Dodgers, all fighting for fans’ attention.

Thematically, this is a powerful story because Uhlberg’s father struggled with a hearing loss that made his speech awkward in public, an issue that aligned him so vividly with the book’s main character that readers – even young ones like Holly’s second graders – are drawn to the similarities of society’s inability to cope with differences from what most people perceive to be the norm.

I asked my captive audience to speak to that issue, and with the school’s permission, and, of course, the powers that be at this newspaper, we’re including a couple of these bright young people’s perceptions here.

Like Diego, who told me that Jackie “had a good heart. He was a good sport, and he never gave up.”

Consequently, “he ignored what they [his detractors] said.”

Good job, Diego.

Or Bayleigh, who gives us this: “When Jackie was playing games at the stadium, people were yelling insulting comments. He never listened to them. He just played.”

Amen to that.

Ponder this, dear readers. Consider where baseball might be today if it were still an all-white game.

Special thanks go out to both author Uhlberg and Mrs. Scott and her kids for a lesson taught and a lesson learned.

At the book’s end, Jackie tosses a game ball into the stands for the author’s father.

Jackie knew about prejudice, and he also knew that he had a lot in common with a man who was deaf, for they both understood prejudice and how hurtful it could be.

BDN columnist Ron Brown, a retired high school basketball coach, can be reached at bdnsports@bangordailynews.net.