STEALING HOME . Oil on birch panel. 31 " x 33 "

"A life is not important,"Jackie Robinson once said, "except in the impact it has on other lives." By that standard, few people have influenced more lives than he has. Jackie Robinson lit the torch of racial equality for generations of African-American athletes. He was bigger than life, and had to be to deal with the social injustices of his time. He had to be bigger than the Brooklyn teammates who got up a petition to keep him off the ball club, bigger than the pitchers who threw at him, or the base runners who dug their spikes into his shin. Bigger than the bench jockeys who hollered for him to carry their bags and shine their shoes, bigger than the so-called fans who mocked him with mops on their heads and wrote him death threats. Before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, no black ball player could even hope to consider playing professional baseball. All that changed when Jackie put on number 42 and started stealing bases in a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. With him in the infield, the Dodgers won six National League pennants.

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