Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American baseball player who became the first black Major League Baseball (MLB) player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. As the first black man to play in the major leagues since the 1880s, he was instrumental in bringing an end to racial segregation in professional baseball, which had relegated black players to the Negro leagues for six decades. The example of his character and unquestionable talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation, which then marked many other aspects of American life, and contributed significantly to the Civil Rights Movement.
In addition to his cultural impact, Robinson had an exceptional baseball career. Over ten seasons, he played in six World Series and contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World Championship. He was selected for six consecutive All-Star Games from 1949 to 1954, was the recipient of the inaugural MLB Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, and won the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949—the first black player so honored. Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. In 1997, Major League Baseball retired his uniform number, 42, across all major league teams.
Plot
Biography of Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player in the 20th century. Traces his career in the negro leagues and the major leagues.
Keywords: actor-playing-himself, african-american, autobiographical, baseball, baseball-movie, black-cat, breakthrough-hero, brooklyn-dodgers, brooklyn-new-york-city, cat
You'll HIT With Him! You'll RUN With Him! You'll SLIDE With Him!
Branch Rickey, President Brooklyn Dodgers: A box score - you know a box score is really democratic, Jackie. It doesn't say how big you are or how your father voted in the last election or what church you attend. It just tells you what kind of a ballplayer you were that day.::Jackie Robinson: Well, isn't that what counts?::Branch Rickey, President Brooklyn Dodgers: It's all that ought to count, and maybe someday it's all that will count.
Branch Rickey, President Brooklyn Dodgers: We're tackling something big here, Jackie. If we fail, no one will try it again for twenty years. But if we succeed...::Clyde Sukeforth, Dodger Scout: If we succeed, Brooklyn will win a pennant.::Branch Rickey, President Brooklyn Dodgers: Yes, that too. But we're dealing with rights here. The right of any American to play baseball, the American game. You think he's our boy, Clyde?::Clyde Sukeforth, Dodger Scout: Well, he can run, he can hit, and he can field.::Branch Rickey, President Brooklyn Dodgers: But can he take it?::Clyde Sukeforth, Dodger Scout: That I don't know.::Branch Rickey, President Brooklyn Dodgers: What do you think, Jackie?::Jackie Robinson: Well, I can try.::Branch Rickey, President Brooklyn Dodgers: Think you've got guts enough to play the game no matter what happens? They'll shout insults at you. They'll come into you spikes first. They'll throw at your head.::Jackie Robinson: They've been throwing at my head for a long time, Mr. Rickey.::Branch Rickey, President Brooklyn Dodgers: Suppose I'm a player in the heat of an important game. Suppose I collide with you at second base and when I get up I say, 'You - you dirty black so-and-so!' What do you do?::Jackie Robinson: Mr. Rickey, do you want a ballplayer who's afraid to fight back?::Branch Rickey, President Brooklyn Dodgers: I want a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back. You got to do this job with base hits, stolen bases, and fielding ground balls, Jackie. Nothing else! Now I'm playing against you in a World Series and I'm hot-headed. I want to win this game. So I go into you spikes first. You jab the ball in my ribs and the umpire says, 'Out.' I flare. All I can see is your black face - that black face right over me. So I haul off and punch you right in the cheek. What do you do?::Jackie Robinson: Mr. Rickey, I've got two cheeks.::Branch Rickey, President Brooklyn Dodgers: Good.
Plot
In 1946, Jackie Robinson is a Negro League baseball player who never takes racism lying down. Branch Rickey is a Major League team executive with a bold idea. To that end, Rickey recruits Robinson to break the unspoken color line as the first modern African American Major League player. As both anticipate, this proves a major challenge for Robinson and his family as they endure unrelenting racist hostility on and off the field, from player and fan alike. As Jackie struggles against his nature to endure such abuse without complaint, he finds allies and hope where he least expects it.
Keywords: 1940s, african-american, athlete, baseball, baseball-game, baseball-hat, baseball-movie, baseball-player, baseball-star, baseball-team
In a game divided by color, he made us see greatness.
[from trailer]::Ben Chapman: Why don'tcha look in a mirror? This is a white man's game!
[from trailer]::Jackie Robinson: I'm not goin' anywhere! I'm right here!
reporter: Whatcha gonna do if one of these pitchers throws for your head?::Jackie Robinson: I'll duck.
Leo Durocher: If Robinson can help us win, then he is gonna play on this ball club!
[from trailer]::Branch Rickey: Jackie Robinson. A black man in white baseball.
Branch Rickey: Your enemy will be out in force. But you cannot meet him on his own low ground.
Jackie Robinson: You want a player who doesn't have the guts to fight back?::Branch Rickey: No. I want a player who's got the guts *not* to fight back.::Jackie Robinson: You give me a uniform, you give me a number on my back, I'll give you the guts.
Kirby Higbe: I got traded... to Pittsburg!
Ben Chapman: Hey, Stanky, what's it like bein' a nigger's nigger?::Eddie Stanky: I dunno, Chapman, what's it like bein' a redneck piece of shit?
Pee Wee Reese: Maybe tomorrow, we'll all wear 42, so nobody could tell us apart.
Plot
Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson are the greatest players in the Colored leagues, and everyone expects that one of them will make the leap to the Major Leagues, now that there is talk of integration. But, unexpectedly, it's the rookie with the army record, Jackie Robinson, that gets tapped to be the first.
Keywords: african-american, baseball, baseball-movie, birmingham-alabama, black-romance, friendship, racial
Plot
Wayne Wang's follow-up movie to Smoke presents a series of improvisational situations strung together to form a pastiche of Brooklyn's diverse ethnicity, offbeat humor, and essential humanity. Many of the same characters inhabiting Auggie Wren's Brooklyn Cigar Store in Smoke return here to expound on their philosophy of smoking, relationships, baseball, New York, and Belgian Waffles. Most of all, this is a movie about living life, off-the-cuff.
Keywords: ad-lib, brooklyn-new-york-city, cigar-shop, color-in-title, independent-film, new-york-city, red-panties, sequel
Welcome to the planet Brooklyn.
First there was "Smoke." Now there's fire. Auggie and his friends are back with more out-of-this-world tales.
Tommy: I don't eat shit. It's against my religion.::Pete: What religion is that?::Tommy: The religion of sanity, Peter. You should try it some time.::Pete: I did, but I was excommunicated.
Man with Strange Glasses: Yes, I am smoking cigarettes and some of my friends have died of them, but I am not downing a quart of Scotch in fifteen minutes. Looked at that way, cigarettes are actually a health tool!
Bob: Coffee and cigarettes. That's like the breakfast of champions.
Man with Strange Glasses: I don't know anyone in New York who doesn't say 'I'm leaving'. I've been thinking of leaving New York for... uh... thirty-five years now.
Man with Strange Glasses: I'm scared 24 hours a day, but not necessarily in New York.I actually feel pretty comfortable in New York.I get scared like in Sweden.You know, it's kind of empty. They're all drunk.Everything works.If you, you know... If you stop at a stop light and don't turn your engine off... people come over and talk to you about it.You open the medicine cabinet and there'll be a poster saying..."In case of suicide, call..."
Plot
The early life of the future baseball star is told here. Jackie Robinson was a young college student and athlete who learned never to take racist attacks lying down. This eventually gets him into trouble when he is drafted in World War II and assigned to a Texas training camp deep in the racist south. The film climaxes when Jackie Robinson must face a court-martial for insubordination when he refused to go to the back of the bus when the white bus driver ordered him, knowing that he was in his rights to do so.
Keywords: 1940s, african-american, army-life, character-name-in-title, civil-rights, court-martial, courtroom, racism, world-war-two
Jackie Robinson was a man who swung a bat
And because he was so good at it, he became much more
than that
He was the first man of color in the game
He rose from the Negro leagues in the fame
Into a world that was begging for change
..they gave him a shout out calling his name!
Chorus:
Jackie, Robinson
Jackie, Robinson
Jackie! It changed the way we play the game
The game, play ball!
Baseball, football, basketball on jumping track
He was a world class athlete, no world was gonna hold
him back
Oh, he was caught up to rise above the shame,
The slurs and the threats that she overcame.
His courage belongs in the hall of fame
And in the... they gave him a shout out calling him his
name.
Chorus:
Jackie, Robinson
Jackie, Robinson
Jackie! It changed the way we play the game
The game, play ball!
He was the first name of color in the game
He rose from the Negro leagues and the fame
Into a world that was begging for change
..they gave him a shout out calling him his name.
Chorus: (x2)
Jackie, Robinson
Jackie, Robinson
Jackie! It changed the way we play the game
Luther Jackson Green lived in the apartment above me.
We smoked cigarettes on the stairs, tell me stories that the white boys
Never hear.
Like when he found this sign, he moved North in 1949.
On his 10th birthday daddy took him to town to the Jackie Robinson play.
It was a picture perfect day, in the sunshine and the hate.
He didn't understand why all those people would say such awful things.
His daddy said pay no attention to them, turnaround and watch the man play.
The one black man in the baseball field was better in every way.
My daddy said if you wanna win in this world, you gotta beat em at the
Wrong game.
Luther Jackson Green went to law school in 1963.
In the summer between he worked in Alabama with Martin Luther King.
He met a girl on a summer night; he fell hard when they saw each other's
Eyes.
There were people in town that really didn't like that he was black and she
Was white.
They found her in the ditch, a little outside of town; some stupid man was
Blastin about it,
So Luther beat him down. He looked him in the eye, spit in his face and
Turned and walked away.
He knew he was better than all the hate!
He knew he was bigger than all the pain!
He knew that there's a time to fight and a time to walk away!
He knew until he changed the rules, ohh yeah they beat em at the wrong
Game!
He never did lose that feeling inside.
You could hear it in his voice; you could see it in his eyes.
Luther moved out West to live, when his wife passed away.
He lives right next door to his son, so he can watch his grandchild play.
Luther Jackson Green, watched election night with me.
We put a black man in the White House, a thing he never thought he'd see.
Even though he never cried, I could see tears in his eyes.
He had dreamed about this moment, every single day of his life.
Yeah Luther died that night in his sleep, but he lived long enough to see,
America become the kind of place he always wanted it to be.
He said you could never forget the day, that we beat em at the wrong game!
Yeah just like Jackie Robinson. (Just like Jackie Robinson! )
Gotta be bigger than all the hate! (Just like Jackie Robinson! )
Gotta be better than all the pain! (Just like Jackie Robinson! )
Gotta find a better way! (Just like Jackie Robinson! )
Gotta beat em at the wrong game! (Just like Jackie Robinson! )
Gotta beat em at the wrong game! (Just like Jackie Robinson! )
Gotta beat em at the wrong game! (Just like Jackie Robinson! )