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BreakPoint: The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story
“42 Faith”
by: Eric Metaxas & Roberto Rivera
Major league baseball celebrated Jackie Robinson Day on the day before Easter. It’s a fitting coincidence.
April 15th marked the seventieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color line in major league baseball. Very few, if any, sporting events have ramifications that transcend the playing field, but this one did.
As George Will wrote on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Robinson’s debut, “[Babe] Ruth reshaped baseball; Jackie Robinson’s life still reverberates through all of American life.” Martin Luther King Jr. said of him, “Robinson was ‘a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.’”
It’s a history-altering story—and one that has Christianity at its center.
I’ve told Robinson’s story before, most notably in my book “Seven Men.” But a new book “42 Faith: The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story,” by Ed Henry of Fox News, and more importantly, of Astoria, New York (which is where I’m from!), fills in the details in a way that reinforces the central role of Christian faith in this story.
As Henry told me on the “Eric Metaxas Show,” the book had an unlikely origin involving an embassy dinner with terrible food and overly long after-dinner remarks. Having had enough, Henry excused himself to the woman seated next to him and told her that he was going home to watch the World Series, to which she replied “my late father-in-law played a role in Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color line.”
Curious, Henry sat back down and listened as she told him that her father-in-law, a pastor in Brooklyn, heard a knock on the door late one night in 1945. A man walked in and paced back and forth not saying much. Finally, he announced “I’m going to sign Jackie Robinson.”
The rest of the very interesting piece here:
http://breakpoint.org/2017/04/breakpoint-the-rest-of-the-jackie-robinson-story/
“42 Faith”
by: Eric Metaxas & Roberto Rivera
Major league baseball celebrated Jackie Robinson Day on the day before Easter. It’s a fitting coincidence.
April 15th marked the seventieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color line in major league baseball. Very few, if any, sporting events have ramifications that transcend the playing field, but this one did.
As George Will wrote on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Robinson’s debut, “[Babe] Ruth reshaped baseball; Jackie Robinson’s life still reverberates through all of American life.” Martin Luther King Jr. said of him, “Robinson was ‘a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.’”
It’s a history-altering story—and one that has Christianity at its center.
I’ve told Robinson’s story before, most notably in my book “Seven Men.” But a new book “42 Faith: The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story,” by Ed Henry of Fox News, and more importantly, of Astoria, New York (which is where I’m from!), fills in the details in a way that reinforces the central role of Christian faith in this story.
As Henry told me on the “Eric Metaxas Show,” the book had an unlikely origin involving an embassy dinner with terrible food and overly long after-dinner remarks. Having had enough, Henry excused himself to the woman seated next to him and told her that he was going home to watch the World Series, to which she replied “my late father-in-law played a role in Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color line.”
Curious, Henry sat back down and listened as she told him that her father-in-law, a pastor in Brooklyn, heard a knock on the door late one night in 1945. A man walked in and paced back and forth not saying much. Finally, he announced “I’m going to sign Jackie Robinson.”
The rest of the very interesting piece here:
http://breakpoint.org/2017/04/breakpoint-the-rest-of-the-jackie-robinson-story/
