Jackie Robinson

Geppi's Entertainment Museum was packed with guests of all ages at the VIP Cool Kids Campaign party. In fact, "cool" was also a good word to describe the evening in general. First, there had been that cool ice skating show at the 1st Mariner Arena, "Kimmie's Angels On Ice," put together by Maryland's own Olympic skater, Kimmie Meissner, to benefit the organization that helps children with cancer and their families. "This was the first skate show my daughter has ever been to, and she loved it," said guest Lyn Boone.

THE END OF the World Series will close out the baseball season. It also will bring to a close Leonard Coleman's ten-ure as National League president. His departure from Major League Baseball will remove the game's highest-ranking African-American, further eroding the increasingly tenuous connection African-Americans have to a sport responsible for one of the most memorable and important historical symbols of black emancipation -- the signing of Jackie Robinson...

"I think 'In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson' by Bette Bias Lord is a good book. I like it because I never knew that Jackie Robinson was the first African American to ever play baseball. I also like it because a girl named Shirley Temple Wong had moved from China and at first she had friends, but then she didn't have any (except for Mabel and Emily). Another reason I liked it is because Shirley moved from China to Brooklyn, N.Y. The last reason I liked it was because it was a very emotionalbook."

It is spring training 1948, and Jackie Robinson is dogging it. The Brooklyn Dodgers' Rookie of the Year arrives four days late and 15 pounds overweight, and spends much of practice joking with reporters.Sam Lacy is not among them. To the sports editor of the Baltimore Afro-American Robinson appears blase, indifferent. And fat. Disgraceful, writes Lacy, the lone scribe - black or white - to rebuke the Dodgers star for his "lackadaisical attitude" and for "laying down" on the job.Within a week, Robinson is his old self - lean, focused and bent on proving Lacy wrong.

THE MIRACLE OF Sam Lacy isn't his age, which is 95, or his sports column in the Afro-American newspaper, which has been running since the Roosevelt years, or the delight Lacy takes in showing up for work in the pre-dawn darkness, writing his piece, and then heading out to the links for nine holes of golf.It's his new autobiography, "Fighting for Fairness," and the remarkable tone that reflects Lacy exactly: He gives us the facts, and his own cool logic, and leaves aside what must have been his own fears, and anger, and awful loneliness.

Quote: "Seven runs with no extra-base hits, that's odd. But I've never seen us score seven runs in an inning with extra-base hits." -- Phillies manager Terry Francona.It's a fact: Last night the Marlins retired uniform No. 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson. They didn't retire the number last season, the 50th anniversary of Robinson's breaking the color barrier, because Dennis Cook wore it.Who's hot: The Astros lead the NL with 32 steals, while their opponents have been successful twice in eight attempts.

Ups and downke Mussina UPTwo weeks ago, everyone was talking about Mussina's elbow. Now they're raving about his past two starts. Thursday's 1-0, three-hit, eight-inning lockdown of the White Sox was vintage Mussina. He has allowed one runner past second base in his past 15 innings.Jimmy Key UPThis guy has more career victories than Greg Maddux and pitches like an American League version of Tom Glavine. A study in professionalism.Shawn Boskie DOWNThe supposed No. 4 starter given the 15-day absence of Rocky Coppinger, Boskie found himself in a no-win situation appearing on 10 days' rest Wednesday.

When Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color line on April 15, 1947, the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper treated it as an epochal event; The Sun, as an afterthought.Typical, given the times.The Afro-American celebrated Robinson's debut in grand style: seven stories, seven photographs, an editorial and cartoon.The Baltimore Sun's coverage was scant - three paragraphs on the sports page of the morning paper and one in the evening, which mentioned Robinson in the last sentence of its baseball roundup:"Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn's Negro first baseman and first of his race to reach the majors since 1884, failed to get a hit in three official trips to the plate, but his sacrifice-error play in the seventh inning set up the subsequent tying and winning runs."

With the sun spreading its vast Technicolor glow along York Road, and with thousands streaming into the Towsontown Festival, and with the music of their laughter filling the weekend air, this kid was spotted outside the Towson Library. Immediately, he made you want to cancel spring and issue a factory recall for winter.He was maybe 14 years old and wore a black T-shirt and a smirk. The T-shirt said "Nazi Punk." The smirk said: I am a geek who thinks this is cool, and I have no idea what I am doing.

Fifty years ago today, Jackie Robinson made history. It was, on the face of it, a subversively simple act: He showed up. He walked to first base, tapped the bag with his spikes, maybe rubbed some dirt on his hands. In other words, Robinson did what baseball players had been doing for 100 years. And that was it. Instant history. A nation forever changed. The world, and not just the baseball world, turned upside down.Fifty years later, it's fair to ask how such a routine act - climbing the dugout steps, taking care to step over the foul line, pounding the glove, bending over in anticipation of a struck ball - could be such a big deal.

On May 18, 2009, JACKIE ROBINSON HAZELTON. Family and friends may visit the family-owned and operated Howell Funeral Home, 3331 Brehms Lane, on Tuesday May 26th from 3 to 8 PM. Funeral services will be held on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at New Life United Methodist Church, 4400 Parkside Drive. Wake 11 AM. Funeral services 11:30 AM. Interment King Memorial Park Cemetery.

Let's hope every play-by-play man has memorized the rosters by now. The amateur announcer is stuck Wednesday night babbling, "No. 42 lets loose a fastball to No. 42 at the plate, who pulls the ball. It's a grounder to 42 at short who whips it across the diamond to No. 42 to beat 42 at first." It's Jackie Robinson Day in baseball, which means every player, manager and coach is expected to wear No. 42 in honor of Jackie's first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers, including the Orioles in Wednesday night's series finale at Texas.

Today's date, Aug. 28, links two epic moments in American history and in the progress of African-Americans in this country: The Rev. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington in 1963 and Barack Obama's speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president tonight. That has been well-documented. The connection and importance of that date, however, is stronger than even Obama might realize. Aug. 28 is also the date, in 1945, that Jackie Robinson first met Branch Rickey and was told that he was the player chosen to break baseball's color line.

The debate rises up from the history books. The question is one of honor. And the woman at the center of it all swears she'll never stop swinging for the fences. Just like her grandfather. "I'm not going away," she says. "If they think this girl is gonna go anywhere and shut up, they're dead wrong." Linda Ruth Tosetti wants Major League Baseball to retire the number worn by her grandfather - Babe Ruth. If Tosetti gets her way, No. 3 would never be worn by another major leaguer again, similar to how baseball retired Jackie Robinson's No. 42 in 1997.

Gary Schueller was exactly 24 minutes from burning the midnight oil when he sent me this e-mail at 11:36 p.m. Monday: " ... [T]oday Major League Baseball announced that as part of a $1.2 million gift to the Jackie Robinson Foundation all teams (including the Baltimore Orioles) will be sponsoring a Jackie Robinson Foundation scholar this fall." Schueller has good reason to be excited: He's the communications manager for the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which was founded 35 years ago by the baseball great's widow, Rachel Robinson.

When Orioles manager Dave Trembley requested that Adam Jones stop by his office during the rainout in Texas last week, the young center fielder assumed that he had done something wrong. Rarely does a player receive good news in these instances. Jones was pleased and relieved to find out that Trembley wanted him to wear No. 42, with no name on the back of the jersey, for last night's game as part of Jackie Robinson Day, which honors the player who broke major league baseball's color barrier.

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Orioles executive vice president Mike Flanagan watched Brian Burres' performance on television in his Camden Yards office Tuesday and couldn't help but smile. He enjoyed Burres' dropping his arm angle and throwing a curveball to strike out David Murphy with the bases loaded in the fourth inning in the Orioles' 8-1 victory over the Texas Rangers in the series opener. But he took just as much satisfaction from the ground balls the Orioles left-hander was able to induce from the Rangers' left-handed hitters in allowing just one earned run in six-plus innings.

First Class Citizenship The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson Edited by Michael G. Long Times Books / 362 pages / $26 It is a sad irony that we tend to think of Jackie Robinson in the faded tones of old newsreel footage. Sixty years ago, he broke baseball's color barrier, pointing the way toward an integrated America in which citizens are given equal opportunity regardless of race. That episode has justifiably become a part of our folklore, even if we have failed to live up to its promise.

Geppi's Entertainment Museum was packed with guests of all ages at the VIP Cool Kids Campaign party. In fact, "cool" was also a good word to describe the evening in general. First, there had been that cool ice skating show at the 1st Mariner Arena, "Kimmie's Angels On Ice," put together by Maryland's own Olympic skater, Kimmie Meissner, to benefit the organization that helps children with cancer and their families. "This was the first skate show my daughter has ever been to, and she loved it," said guest Lyn Boone.

St. Louis // -- All the breathless debates about Michael Vick are missing the point. The bigger issue has nothing to do with whether he deserves the right of due process, or whether NFL commissioner Roger Goodell should suspend him, or whether Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank should enable him or give him tough love. It's not even about whether Nike should be launching another designer shoe with his name on it. All of those are minor distractions from a much larger and far more significant issue.