Did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball?
It went zoomin' 'cross the left field wall
Yeah boy, yes, yes
Jackie hit that ball
And when he swung his bat, the crowd went wild
Because he knocked that ball a solid mile
Yeah boy, yes, yes
Jackie hit that ball
It went zoomin' 'cross the left field wall
Yeah boy, yes, yes
Jackie hit that ball
And when he swung his bat, the crowd went wild
Because he knocked that ball a solid mile
Yeah boy, yes, yes
Jackie hit that ball
—Buddy Johnson, "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?
"
"Jackie's nimble, Jackie's quick, Jackie's making the turnstiles click.
—Wendell Smith
Maybe tomorrow we'll all wear 42, so nobody can tell us apart.
—Pee Wee Reese
Jackie Robinson is the loneliest man I have ever seen in sports.
—Jimmy Cannon
Jackie Robinson was the best athlete ever to play Major League Baseball.
—Ralph Kiner
Every time I look at my pocketbook, I see Jackie Robinson.
—Willie Mays
He was the greatest competitor I've ever seen. I've seen him beat a team with his bat, his ball, his glove, his feet and, in a game in Chicago one time, with his mouth.
—Duke Snider
Robinson did not merely play at center stage. He was center stage; and wherever he walked, center stage moved with him.
—Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer
He was a therapist for the masses by succeeding, by doing it with such style, flair and drama. He helped level baseball off, to make it truly a game for black and white, with excellence the only test for success.
—Jesse Jackson
I remembered [...] something that had happened during an insignificant weekday game between the Giants and the Dodgers back in the nineteen-fifties. Robinson, by then an established star, was playing third base that afternoon, and during the game something happened that drove him suddenly and totally mad. I was sitting close to him, just behind third, but I had no idea what brought on the outburst. It might have been a remark from the stands or from one of the dugouts; it was nothing that happened on the field. Without warning, Robinson began shouting imprecations, obscenities, curses. His voice was piercing, his face distorted with passion. The players on both teams looked at each other, uncomprehending. The Giants' third-base coach walked over to murmur a question, and Robinson directed his screams at him. The umpire at third did the same thing, and then turned away with a puzzled, embarrassed shrug. In time, the outburst stopped and the game went on. It had been nothing, a moment's aberration, but it seemed to suggest what can happen to a man who has been made into a symbol and a public sacrifice. The moment became an event—something to remember along with the innumerable triumphs and the joys and the sense of pride and redress that Jackie Robinson brought to us all back then. After that moment, I knew that we had asked him to do too much for us. None of it—probably not a day of it—was ever easy for him.
—Roger Angell, "Buttercups Rampant" (The New Yorker, 1972)
