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1946 American Baseball Bureau Questionnaire Filled Out & Signed by Jackie Robinson....
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Description
"Ambition in Baseball: To open the door for Negroes in organized ball"
1946 American Baseball Bureau Questionnaire Filled Out & Signed
by Jackie Robinson. On Jackie Robinson's tombstone in
Brooklyn's Cypress Hills Cemetery, just five miles from where
Ebbets Field once stood, these words are engraved: "A life is not
important except in the impact it has on other lives." By that
metric, no athlete in American sporting history is more important
than the man who took the dangerous first step across baseball's
shameful color line. Though Ruth and Cobb may stand taller in the
sport's pantheon, from a purely sociological standpoint Robinson
has no challenger in significance, and it's no stretch to say that
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Barack Obama would
have been impossible without the forward momentum Robinson supplied
to the cause of racial equality.This remarkable document rates among the most significant ever to emerge from the vast archives of our national pastime, the expression of one brave young man's dream to change not only the sport of baseball, but the hearts and minds of a nation.
Exactly five months before Robinson set pen to the paper of this historic questionnaire, he'd engaged in a lengthy heart-to-heart with Brooklyn Dodgers general manager and fellow future Hall of Famer Branch Rickey, who asked him if he believed he would be able to endure the taunts and threats of segregationists without an angry response should he be given the opportunity to join the team. Robinson was disturbed by the query. "Are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?" he asked.
"No," Rickey responded. "I'm looking for one with the guts not to fight back."
And so the two men would enter into a partnership more important than any other in the history of American sports, one that would ultimately exorcise Major League Baseball of its greatest sin. Robinson would spend the impending 1946 baseball season representing the Triple-A farm club of the Dodgers in Montreal before getting called up the following year to meet his destiny in the infield dirt of Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947.
The legal-sized (14x8.5") page is date-stamped "28 Mar 1946" at upper right and provides one thrill after another, identifying Rickey as the person to whom he owes the most in his baseball career, and the Kansas City Monarchs as previous baseball experience. Even the absence of an answer to the question, "What would you consider your most interesting or unusual experience while in the [military] service?" is brimming with intrigue, as Jackie had famously fought and beaten a 1944 court martial for refusing to sit in the back of the bus eleven years before Rosa Parks gained immortality for the same principled act of civil disobedience.
Dozens of examples of "American Baseball Bureau" questionnaires have entered the collecting hobby over the past few decades, with Jimmie Foxx referencing the 1934 Tour of Japan as a memorable experience, and Pee Wee Reese selecting the winning the pennant in 1941. But certainly none other could even begin to compete with this remarkable specimen, a prayer to the baseball gods that would find its righteous answer, forever changing baseball, and America, for the better. Original mailing folds, otherwise EX-MT. Full LOA from Beckett Authentication Services. Full LOA from PSA/DNA.
Auction Info
2022 February 26 - 27 Winter Platinum Night Sports Auction #50052 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
February, 2022
26th-27th
Saturday-Sunday
Bids + Registered Phone Bidders: 14
Lot Tracking Activity: N/A
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