This one is
arguably has more financial support than the other productions and was released
to the broadest audience. Some have praised the movie, others have panned
it. My suggestion would be to see the movie and make up your own conclusion.
My knowledge about Jackie Robinson and baseball history led
me leaving the theater wanting more. As happy as I should have been that
another movie was made about Robinson, I wondered why elements of Robinson’s
past were not mentioned and why the picture only focused on a narrow segment of
his life.
What was surprisingly refreshing was the prominent role the
movie showcased to one of my trailblazers.
Before seeing the movie with my wife and a friend of ours
someone told me there was a character in the movie that reminded them of me. The
first time I
saw Andre Holland in the film, I knew exactly what that person meant.
Wendell Smith was the first African-American accepted into
the Baseball Writers Association of America in 1948. In my career, I
have made fun of press boxes that have mice in them. Smith, meanwhile, was
not even allowed to sit in the press box during parts of his career.
As the movie wore on I was more enamored with Smith and the
bigoted baseball players as opposed to the centerpiece of the biopic. Maybe
that was the journalist in me, the journalist who admittedly would not have
lasted too long had my role with Smith been reversed.
Wendell Smith came to mind hours later when I remembered a
sobering story I was told last summer as I sat in a room filled with sports
journalists at the National Association of Black Journalists annual conference.
Rob Parker, yes, this Rob
Parker, noted how important it was for more blacks to cover baseball
because there were only 10 African-Americans in the Baseball Writers
Association of America at the time.
I’m not sure how many people are members of the association.
But there were nearly 570 ballots sent out to writers for the 2013 Baseball
Hall of Fame vote. I’m also not sure whether Parker’s number was spot on. But
the murmur of surprise that wafted through a room with more than 75 sports
journalists led me to believe there was some validity to that fact.
There are all sorts of studies and information that
chronicle and specify the lack of minorities in journalism, specifically sports
journalism. Were
it not for ESPN those figures would be worse for not only minorities, but women
as well.
So forgive me if I pay more attention to the bespectacled
man relegated to the stands in 42,
not the gentleman whose immeasurable impact has been discussed and dissected
for more than 50 years.
Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb
