No. 42

Today is Sunday, 15 April 2007.

Only one number has ever been permanently retired by every team in major league baseball: 42.

On this day in 1947, Jackie Robinson, #42 in your program, as great as ever there was at second base, took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers, the first Black to play in major league baseball.

60 years later, and still a “race problem” in America.

“Surprise, surprise, surprise!”. --- G. Pyle.

Hell: we all know the truth: ‘tis a pigmentation problem in the minds of “white” folks. Euro-Americans, like Euro-peans of every stripe the world over, more often than not, think they are destined by “color” to be top of the heap.

Who’s kidding whom? I’m not “white”, “blanc”, I’m a fast-wrinkling shade of pink.

The pigmentation foolishness, con, wickedness, is just another pathetic rationalization for one group of humans to beat up on another.

When Jackie Robinson took the field that day, 60 years ago, he took the field for all of us, in liberation, whether we liked it or not.

We are all, like it or not, the better for it.