Jackie Robinson

AS AMERICA celebrates the 50th anniversary of Negro baseball player Jackie Robinson's being allowed to play in the lily-white major leagues, I think back, too.Not to 1947. I'm not quite that old. But to 1986. That's when my 5-year-old son began playing T-ball. Baseball has been his preferred sport ever since, which is not typical of today's basketball-oriented African-American children.My own fond childhood memories of baseball are not as a participant. I was always the boy who got chosen with a moan when there was no one else left to select for a playground game.

Sharing images clear as day, Ernest A. Burke seemed to have nothing but good memories of being a Negro Leagues baseball pitcher from 1946 to 1949, playing for the Baltimore Elite Giants. Burke, 77, spoke yesterday near an exhibit on the Negro Leagues at the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, a display often on loan throughout the year, museum officials said. "We want to make sure [segregation] never happens again," said John Ziemann, the museum's community outreach coordinator. Burke's conversation cut through his athletic career including the rough patches and the chuckles over techniques for throwing knuckleballs, palmballs, sliders and forkballs.

Orioles relief pitcher Alan Mills scrambled to find a new baseball and rushed across the visitors clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium the other day. Former Negro leagues star Buck O'Neil was there, and Mills just couldn't let him get away without signing a baseball.How many more opportunities like that would there be?O'Neil has become much more of a celebrity in his old age than he was in his prime, thanks to the Ken Burns documentary "Baseball" and the renewed interest in the Negro leagues that has coincided with the 50th anniversary celebration of Jackie Robinson's entrance into the majors.

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.

The greatest movie ever, a pair of key figures in the civil rights movement, the greatest soul singer of his generation what a night for superlatives. Oh, yeah, and Miss U.S.A. too.* "Miss U.S.A. Pageant" (9 p.m.-about 11 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Sorry, there's no telephone number to call to vote yea or nay on swimsuits; you'll just have to silently put up with a bunch of women parading around in bikinis. There are also evening gown and personality competitions, thank goodness. CBS.* "A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom (9 p.m.-10:30 p.m., MPT, Channels 22 and 67)

IN FOUR GLORIOUS days, Tiger Woods forever changed the face of golf. Exclusive country clubs and white-dominated PGA tournaments had stigmatized golf as a sport that minorities had no reason to embrace. Golf was much like tennis a generation ago, before young Arthur Ashe stunned the world with his Wimbledon victory.Plenty of African-Americans swing tennis raquets now and, no doubt, people of African and Asian descent will find golf less restrictive because of this 21-year-old phenom who embodies American multiculturalism.

Branch Rickey asked,Can you take it?I've got to,Whispered Jackie Robinson.Did he have the ability? How would he behave?These questions magnified the meaning ofHis every move,On the field and off it, that first year.For he was being asked nothing less than this:To represent his whole race in a public testing ofAbility, will and character, to be the very living symbol ofWhat might beA coming social revolution.Black people knew that if Number 42 made itOthers would follow him,And not into baseball alone . . .And knew too that if he maintainedHis quiet dignity and lonely courageIn the face of the racial taunts, beanballs and death threatsThat a loud and ugly minority of bigots hurled his wayAs he traveled from city to city,Sympathy and support would swing his way,And theirs.

WASHINGTON -- When Rachel Robinson was asked at the National Press Club last week what she thought of the young black ballplayers who said they hadn't heard about the struggles of her late husband, Jackie Robinson, her response was quick and to the point.''Well, they can't say that now,'' she said.Probably not, in light of the explosion of publicity and commemorative gestures that have accompanied the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking baseball's color barrier.Still, it is sad that so many younger people, not just baseball players, are, as Mrs. Robinson puts it, so ''disassociated from anything historic.

An attorney for Michael Austin convinced a judge yesterday that enough questions about his murder conviction are unresolved that a thorough review of old evidence and new should determine whether he was wrongly convicted. "I think it's safe to say there is enough information presented to the court to warrant continued judicial attention," Judge John Carroll Byrnes said during a hearing in Baltimore City Circuit Court. "I intend to give it just that." Austin, who was led into the courtroom with hands cuffed behind his back, was convicted of felony murder in 1975 and is serving a life term at the Maryland House of Correction.

MIAMI -- It is, at the very least, a lead that gets your attention. "For the past year and a half," it says, "I have been having an affair with a pro baseball player from a major-league East Coast franchise, not his team's biggest star but a very recognizable media figure all the same." Brendan Lemon wrote those words. He's the editor of Out, one of the nation's most widely read gay-interest magazines, and that's how he begins his column in the May issue. Mr. Lemon's unidentified friend is apparently so deep in the closet he sleeps on a hanger.