Jackie Robinson Day

April 15 is celebrated around baseball as Jackie Robinson Day, commemorating the day in 1947 that Jackie debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen a lot of insane and awful things happening in America, and I wanted to send a short post out tonight, on this very important day, to be very clear about a couple of things.

Jackie Robinson was one of the great athletes of all time, a star in four different sports, and he is rightly celebrated for his athletic accomplishments in and of themselves.

Jackie Robinson is an American icon though because, as the first Black man to play in modern Major League Baseball, through what he endured, through how he comported himself… Jackie Robinson changed the world.

As a META-SPIEL reader, you should understand where we stand around here. Diversity is what truly makes America great. Equity is one of the most important things I learned from church. Inclusion is what being human is supposed to be about. It’s not that these things are always easy: they’re not. Humanity is a set of complicated contradictions, and within those, we must strive to be better to one another.

The attempts recently to diminish Jackie Robinson - all done under the auspices of “shutting down DEI” - are reprehensible, but also in a small way helpful, in that there is no alternate way to understand these actions than for what they truly are: the actions of fascists and white supremacists.

Thankfully, we do have Jackie Robinson Day, and on broadcasts across the country, people can hear what today is about, and what the soul of America is truly about.

Let the legacy of Jackie Robinson shine across all of us today. And don’t let the bastards get you down.