Major League Baseball will conduct its ninth annual Civil Rights Game tonight at Dodger Stadium, coinciding with Jackie Robinson Day for the first time.
Robinson’s widow, Rachel, will play a central role in the first pitch ceremony before the Los Angeles Dodgers-Seattle Mariners interleague game.
Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, former Brooklyn Dodger pitching star Don Newcombe, Joni Campanella, the daughter of the late Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella, and scholars from the Jackie Robinson Foundation will also be featured in the ceremony.
Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez, Basketball Hall of Fame member and Dodger part-owner Magic Johnson, and Hall of Famer Frank Robinson also will be recognized during pre-game ceremonies.
Huerta and Johnson will receive the 2015 MLB Beacon Awards, which recognize individuals whose lives and actions have been emblematic of the spirit of the civil rights movement. Frank Robinson will receive a special award in recognition of the 40th anniversary of his becoming Major League Baseball’s first black manager.
In connection with the Civil Rights Game, a roundtable discussion will be held this afternoon at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel on the role baseball played in the civil rights movement.
The the panelists will be Johnson; Huerta; Frank Robinson; Sharon Robinson, Major League Baseball’s educational programming consultant and the daughter of Jackie Robinson; Billy Bean, Major League Baseball’s ambassador for inclusion; and Brian Woodward, a doctoral student in the Urban Schooling division of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. The discussion will be moderated by Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti will make introductory remarks before the discussion. The discussion will be streamed on MLB.com and Dodgers.com before the Civil Rights Game.
Major League Baseball’s Civil Rights Game was initially held as an exhibition in Memphis, Tennessee, the site of the National Civil Rights Museum, in 2007 and 2008, as a way for Major League Baseball to honor the civil rights movement and baseball’s role in it “and to pay tribute to individuals outside of baseball who embodied its spirit through their actions,” Steven Arocho, Major League Baseball’s director of business communications, told City News Service.
It was switched to a regular-season game in 2009 “because Major League Baseball recognized that clubs, and the cities that house them, have their own civil rights stories to tell and the most appropriate way to do so was to host the event at their ballparks during the clubs’ prime timefame, the regular season,” Arocho said.
The game was played in Cincinnati in 2009 and 2010, Atlanta in 2011 and 2012, Chicago in 2013 and Houston in 2014.
Los Angeles was chosen as the site of this year’s game in part because Jackie Robinson was raised in Pasadena, was a multi-sports star at UCLA and met his wife there and played his entire Major League Baseball career with the Dodgers, Arocho said.
The game is being played on Jackie Robinson Day “as we felt this would serve as yet another opportunity to enhance our league’s efforts in honoring Jackie Robinson for everything he did for our sport and our country,” Arocho said.
Major League Baseball is hoping this year’s Civil Rights Game makes “fans understand the importance” of the civil rights era in American history, baseball’s role in its progress and “make sure we educate our fans, especially the younger generation, of how great these men and women truly were,” Arocho said.
Since 2004, Major League Baseball has annually marked the anniversary of Robinson’s breaking baseball’s color line by holding Jackie Robinson Day.
This will be the seventh consecutive year that all on-field personnel will have worn Robinson’s number, 42, on Jackie Robinson Day. The number 42 was retired throughout Major League Baseball in 1997, on the 50th anniversary of Robinson’s April 15, 1947 debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
“I’ve often said that baseball’s proudest moment and its most powerful social statement came when Jackie Robinson first set foot on a Major League Baseball field,” then-Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said in 2004 in connection with Major League Baseball’s first leaguewide Jackie Robinson Day.
Robinson helped lead the Dodgers to six National League championships during his 10 seasons, and, in 1955, their only World Series championship in Brooklyn.
Robinson’s successful integration of Major League Baseball is credited with helping change Americans’ attitudes toward blacks and being a catalyst for later civil rights advances.
