May 2007

Baseball Great Frank Robinson Earns GW Jackie Robinson Award

By Jamie L. Freedman

Baseball fever permeated the Jack Morton Auditorium the evening of April 12, as the GW community gathered to pay tribute to two legendary Robinsons: Frank and Jackie.

The festive event, commemorating the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s landmark integration of Major League Baseball, featured the return to Washington of Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, who received the inaugural GW Jackie Robinson Society Community Recognition Award. Major League Baseball’s first African American manager and the first manager of the Washington Nationals, Frank Robinson delighted the crowd with stories of his 51-year baseball odyssey.

“I always gave baseball my best, and that’s what I expected from my players,” said Robinson, who was awarded an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from GW in May 2006. “By breaking the color barrier in baseball, Jackie Robinson gave me the opportunity to play the game I love in the big leagues.”

Robinson recalled meeting with Jackie Robinson in 1956 and 1957. “I told him how much I admired, respected, and appreciated him for opening up baseball,” he reflected. Jackie Robinson, in turn, instructed him to be the best person he could be in society, as well as on the playing field. “He told me to keep my nose clean and to keep the cause going.”

Robinson took the words to heart, racking up countless honors in his two decades
as a player and three decades as a manager, including winning baseball’s Triple Crown in 1966 and becoming the only player in baseball history to be named Most Valuable Player in both the American and National Leagues.

Robinson also reflected on his childhood in Oakland, Calif., praising his mother, who raised 10 children while working, as his hero. He went on to talk about the “rude awakening” of playing baseball in the South in the 1950s, where he was confronted for the first time by racial slurs and discrimination. Bringing baseball back to Washington in 2005 was memorable, he said, thanks to the “outpouring of love” displayed by Nationals fans during his two years as skipper of the team.

Another highlight of the evening was a passionate keynote speech by famed sportswriter Roger Kahn, author of The Boys of Summer, a bestselling memoir of Jackie Robinson’s Brooklyn Dodgers. Kahn talked about his friendship with Robinson, as well as about racism, which he said “permeated society and baseball” during the Robinson era. “I had a special relationship with Jackie Robinson, because I was the only person covering the Dodgers who despised bigotry as much as Jackie did,” he stated. “Having friends like that makes life sweet.”

In his opening remarks, Richard Zamoff, faculty adviser for GW’s Jackie Robinson Society and adjunct associate professor of sociology, called the event “a celebration of the legacy of two magnificent men who both happen to be baseball players.” He stated: “Jackie Robinson was a voice for human dignity and a symbol of courage, who showed us how sport can be a catalyst for meaningful societal change. He challenged the United States to be a better, more just, and equal society.”

Also addressing the crowd was W. Russell Ramsey, B.B.A. ’81, chairman-elect
of the GW Board of Trustees and a former star of GW’s baseball team, who presented the award to Robinson. “We’re in the presence of one of the greatest baseball players of our generation,” he exclaimed, calling Robinson his hero.

The day’s events also included an afternoon program on Jackie Robinson’s contributions at the Marvin Center’s Marc C. Abrams Great Hall and an exhibition of Jackie Robinson memorabilia on the first floor of GW’s Media and Public Affairs Building, which will remain on display through the summer.

In addition, both Frank Robinson and Roger Kahn guest lectured in Vice President of Communications Michael Freedman’s journalism class on the relationship between athletes and the press.

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