Jackie Robinson Quotes

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

A life isn't significant except for its impact on other lives.

I pledge allegiance to the frog of the United States of America and to the wee public for witches hands one Asian, under God, in the vestibule with little tea and just rice for all.

One must be without error out here. Walk in single file. Work quietly. Pack an extra number 2 pencil. Make no mistakes. But you are human and you will make mistakes. You will misjudge. You will yell. You will drink too much. You will hang out with people you shouldn’t. Not all of us can always be Jackie Robinson—not even Jackie Robinson was always Jackie Robinson.

I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

Robbing the Hotel Theresa was like taking a piss on the Statue of Liberty. It was like slipping Jackie Robinson a Mickey the night before the World Series.

Imagine if instead, the story went something like this: “Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.

I asked her who he was and she said, “He was a man ahead of his time.” She actually liked Malcolm X. She put him in nearly the same category as her other civil rights heroes, Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Kennedys—any Kennedy. When Malcolm X talked about “the white devil” Mommy simply felt those references didn’t apply to her.

The story of Jackie Robinson is a classic example of how whiteness obscures racism by rendering whites, white privilege, and racist institutions invisible. Robinson is often celebrated as the first African American to break the color line and play in major-league baseball. While Robinson was certainly an amazing baseball player, this story line depicts him as racially special, a black man who broke the color line himself. The subtext is that Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete at that level. Imagine if instead, the story went something like this: “Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.” This version makes a critical distinction because no matter how fantastic a player Robinson was, he simply could not play in the major leagues if whites—who controlled the institution—did not allow it. Were he to walk onto the field before being granted permission by white owners and policy makers, the police would have removed him.

Jackie Robinson stole home and he's safe."...Nobody could hurt him again. He wouldn't hear the name-calling. He would only hear the cheers and somehow I could fantasize my own little story about where he was and how he was doing and let him rest in peace.

When you're brave and honest, you make it easier for the next person. Like Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson. Thurgood Marshall. Ruby Bridges.....Jenna Talackova. Janet Mock. Lavern Cox. Jenny Boylan...I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it's important, not only for you but for the next person.

Sometimes, sitting in the park with my boys, I imagine myself back at Ebbets Field, a young girl once more in the presence of my father, watching the players of my youth on the grassy fields below—Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges. There is magic in these moments, for when I open my eyes and see my sons in the place where my father once sat, I feel an invisible bond among our three generations, an anchor of loyalty and love linking my sons to the grandfather whose face they have never seen but whose person they have come to know through this most timeless of sports.

But you are human and you will make mistakes. You will misjudge. You will yell. You will drink too much. You will hang out with people you shouldn't. Not all of us can always be Jackie Robinson - not even Jackie Robinson was always Jackie Robinson. But the price of error is higher for you than it is for your countrymen, and so that America might justify itself, the story of a black body's destruction must always begin with his or her error, real or imagined -

But how can we tally what an achievement it was to endure what Jackie Robinson endured those first few years? It was an incalculable and heroic sacrifice that can never be reckoned or understood by any conventional standards. Robinson did what he agreed to do when he met that day with Branch Rickey, and he changed the game forever. It was a singular feat of such great moral strength that all athletic strength must pale in comparison. With God’s help, one man lifted up a whole people and pulled a whole nation into the future.

on Staten Island. The

Scottish philosopher William Drummond, read: “He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot reason is a fool; he who dares not reason is a slave.

and helped bring them a championship!

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” —Jackie Robinson

Many centuries later, Jackie Robinson would express the idea even more succinctly. “A life is not important,” his tombstone reads, “except in the impact it has on other lives.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. —Jackie Robinson

But you are human and you will make mistakes. You will misjudge. You will yell. You will drink too much. You will hang out with people you shouldn’t. Not all of us can always be Jackie Robinson—not even Jackie Robinson was always Jackie Robinson. But the price of error is higher for you than it is for your countrymen, and so that America might justify itself, the story of a black body’s destruction must always begin with his or her error, real or imagined—with Eric Garner’s anger, with Trayvon Martin’s mythical words (“You are gonna die tonight”), with Sean Bell’s mistake of running with the wrong crowd, with me standing too close to the small-eyed boy pulling out.

Imagine if instead, the story went something like this: “Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.” This version makes a critical distinction because no matter how fantastic a player Robinson was, he simply could not play in the major leagues if whites—who controlled the institution—did not allow it. Were he to walk onto the field before being granted permission by white owners and policy makers, the police would have removed him.

But Jackie Robinson was a man of faith. I do not just mean faith in God, though he was indeed a religious man. He also had extraordinary faith in himself and his destiny. He believed deeply that he was the one meant to cross baseball's color line. He believed deeply that God would not have led him down this path only to fail. That faith filled him with something more powerful that confidence. He knew that we would succeed because to do anything less would be unthinkable.

There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first world series, I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey's drama and that I was only a principal actor. As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

They were the children of the Jackie Robinson elite, whose parents rose up out of the ghettos, and the sharecropping fields, went out into the suburbs, only to find that they carried the mark with them and could not escape. Even when they succeeded, as so many of them did, they were singled out, made examples of, transfigured into parables of diversity. They were symbols and markers, never children or young adults. And so they come to Howard to be normal—and even more, to see how broad the black normal really is.

One must be without error out here. Walk in a single file. Work quietly. Pack an extra number 2 pencil. Make no mistakes. But you are human and you will make mistakes. You will misjudge. You will yell. You will drink too much. You will hang out with people you shouldn't. Not all of us can always be Jackie Robinson - not even Jackie Robinson was always Jackie Robinson. But the price of error is higher is higher for you than it is for your countrymen, and so that America might justify itself, the story of a black body's destruction must always begin with his or her error, real or imagined...

It was the America of Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers, making dreams take flight, and Jackie Robinson stealing home. It was Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday at the Village Vanguard and Johnny Cash at Folsom State Prison—all those misfits who took the scraps that others overlooked or discarded and made beauty no one had seen before.

I don’t let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand

A life has no importance except in the impact it has on other lives

Be extra good. Upon your shoulders rests the reputation of all Chinese.

It isn’t a perfect America and it isn’t run right, but it still belongs to us. As

became a swellhead, a wise guy, an “uppity” nigger. When a white player did it, he had spirit. When a black player did it, he was “ungrateful,” an upstart, a

We must have a society of conscience, not consensus.

As for the melting pot of races and ethnic groups in Brooklyn back in those days, Goren said there was a sense that nobody was better than anyone else.

Yell. Heckle. Do anything you want. We came here to play baseball.

Luck is the residue of design.

I don't like needing anyone for anything.

Next week is Negro History Week," said Simple. "And how much Negro history do you know?" "Why should I know Negro history?" I replied. "I am an American." "But you are also a black man," said Simple, "and you did not come over on the Mayflower—at least, not the same Mayflower as the rest." "What rest?" I asked. "The rest who make up the most," said Simple, "then write the history books and leave us out, or else put in the books nothing but prize fighters and ballplayers. Some folks think Negro history begins and ends with Jackie Robinson." "Not quite," I said. "Not quite is right," said Simple. "Before Jackie there was Du Bois and before him there was Booker T. Washington, and before him was Frederick Douglass and before Douglass the original Freedom Walker, Harriet Tubman, who were a lady. Before her was them great Freedom Fighters who started rebellions in the South long before the Civil War. By name they was Gabriel and Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey." "When, how, and where did you get all that information at once?" I asked. "From my wife, Joyce," said Simple. "Joyce is a fiend for history. She belongs to the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Also Joyce went to school down South. There colored teachers teach children about our history. It is not like up North where almost no teachers teach children anything about themselves and who they is and where they come from out of our great black past which were Africa in the old days.

I’m grateful for all the breaks and honors and opportunities I’ve had, but I always believe I won’t have it made until the humblest black kid in the most remote backwoods of America has it made.

My own principal yardstick for men is this: Are they content to let themselves and their world rest on past advances—or do they use each new gain as a springboard toward the next one?” wrote Robinson.24

While Robinson was certainly an amazing baseball player, this story line depicts him as racially special, a black man who broke the color line himself. The subtext is that Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete at that level. Imagine if instead, the story went something like this: “Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.

Then it dawned on him: these people were hanging around to see the man who was taking on the challenge of breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball. That settled it—he wouldn’t quit the team. He couldn’t quit the team.

That same month, Second Lieutenant Jack Roosevelt Robinson had a confrontation with a civilian bus driver in Killeen, Texas, near Camp Hood, when he refused an order to move to the back of the bus. Lieutenant Robinson faced a general court-martial over the incident but was acquitted after a full trial. Americans would come to know the young lieutenant three years later by his nickname, Jackie Robinson, when he broke the color line of Major League Baseball. As

Robinson was trying to impart what he had learned, which was that belief in God could help ease racial tensions. “If the church of the living God cannot save America in this hour of crisis,” he told the congregation, “what can save us?

There was a popular saying once that in the North the white man didn’t care how close the black man came if he didn’t climb too high, and in the South the white man didn’t care how high the black man climbed if he didn’t come too close.

It is the ministers, the church people of America, who can, almost overnight, cure the ills of our system which make so many of us commit the sin of acknowledging the Fatherhood of God on Sunday and rejecting the brotherhood of man on Monday.”11

The final question: What more does the black man want?” Robinson asked from the pulpit. “The simple answer: Everything he should have to put him on a status of equal opportunity with his white brother. He should not seek more. He cannot settle for less.”13

At the beginning, in 1947, Rickey had warned him, “They may throw at you.” “It isn’t new to me,” replied Robinson. Yet here he was, near the end of his career, and pitchers were still throwing balls at him. He was hit sixty-six times over the course of his career.

But you are human and you will make mistakes. You will misjudge. You will yell. You will drink too much. You will hang out with people you shouldn’t. Not all of us can always be Jackie Robinson - not even Jackie Robinson was always Jackie Robinson. But the price of error is higher for you than it is for your countrymen, and so that America might justify itself, the story of a black body’s destruction must always begin with his or her error, real or imagined - with Eric Garner’s anger, with Trayvon Martin’s mythical words (“You are gonna die tonight”), with Sean Bell’s mistake of running with the wrong crowd, with me standing too close to the small-eyed boy pulling out.

I believe that racial extractions and color hues and forms of worship become secondary to what a man can do,” said Rickey. “The American public is not as concerned with a first baseman’s pigmentation as it is with the power of his swing, the dexterity of his slide, the gracefulness of his fielding or the speed of his legs.” Rickey was far from finished.

Robinson is often celebrated as the first African American to break the color line and play in major-league baseball. While Robinson was certainly an amazing baseball player, this story line depicts him as racially special, a black man who broke the color line himself. The subtext is that Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete at that level. Imagine if instead, the story went something like this: “Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.” This version makes a critical distinction because no matter how fantastic a player Robinson was, he simply could not play in the major leagues if whites—who controlled the institution—did not allow it. Were he to walk onto the field before being granted permission by white owners and policy makers, the police would have removed him.

Part of their close bond came from that longstanding commonality—the fact that Robinson also believed there were similarities between sports and religion. “My concept of religion is of people having faith in God, in themselves and in each other and putting that faith into action,” Robinson wrote in his unpublished manuscript. “If you can find a better example of those four things than a team of sportsmen working as a unit, I’d like to know what it is.”2

Ladies and gentlemen, there are just too many people going around the world and about the country, in your town and in mine, in your church and in mine—too many people telling everyone who expresses an opinion, ‘You’re right,’” said Robinson. “I made up my mind a long time ago that I would rather be true to myself and to my beliefs and principles than to buy popularity at the cost of truth. When all is said and done, I’m the one who has to live with me.

For the sticks and stones of physical combat are vicious, but the stones of white backlash, the stones of ‘hate the white man propaganda,’ are more deadly weapons than any others that exist,” Robinson added. “These are the weapons which can destroy our beloved country and bring death and destruction and slavery to all Americans. For it is as true as when Mr. Lincoln said it: ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ And America, slowly but with grim certainty, is becoming a divided nation.

Since I saw them pictures a while back on the front page of The New York Times of that police dog in Birmingham biting a young black student in the stomach, I have ceased to like white folks," said Simple. "As bad as Birmingham is," I said, "surely you do not blame white people in New York or Detroit or San Francisco for that Alabama dog." "I do," said Simple, "because white folks is in the majority every-where. They control the government in Washington, and if they let such doings go on in this American country, such as has been going on in Alabama and Mississippi, I blame them all. If white folks was bit by police dogs and prodded with electric rods, you can bet your bottom dollar something would be done about it—and quick—before you could say Jackie Robinson." "You are no doubt right," I said, "but as long as they themselves are not bitten by dogs and prodded by electric rods and denied the right to march or to vote, most white folks in the North will do very little to help Southern Negroes." "And I will do very little toward loving them," said Simple.

Jackie’s path called for him to put aside both his ego and in some respects his basic sense of fairness and rights as a human being. Early in his career, the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, Ben Chapman, was particularly brutal in his taunting during a game. “They’re waiting for you in the jungles, black boy!” he yelled over and over. “We don’t want you here, nigger.” Not only did Jackie not respond—despite, as he later wrote, wanting to “grab one of those white sons of bitches and smash his teeth in with my despised black fist”—a month later he agreed to take a friendly photo with Chapman to help save the man’s job. The thought of touching, posing with such an asshole, even sixty years removed, almost turns the stomach. Robinson called it one of the most difficult things he ever did, but he was willing to because it was part of a larger plan. He understood that certain forces were trying to bait him, to ruin him. Knowing what he wanted and needed to do in baseball, it was clear what he would have to tolerate in order do it. He shouldn’t have had to, but he did. Our own path, whatever we aspire to, will in some ways be defined by the amount of nonsense we are willing to deal with. Our humiliations will pale in comparison to Robinson’s, but it will still be hard. It will still be tough to keep our self-control.

Richard Durham was a black writer whose credits in radio would run a gamut from Irna Phillips serials to prestige plays for such as The CBS Radio Workshop. But in Destination Freedom Durham wrote from the heart. Anger simmers at the foundation of these shows, rising occasionally to a wail of agony and torment. On no other show was the term “Jim Crow” used as an adjective, if at all: nowhere else could be heard the actual voices of black actors giving life to a real black environment. There were no buffoons or toadies in Durham’s plays: there were heroes and villains, girlfriends and lovers, mothers, fathers, brutes; there were kids named Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson, who bucked the tide and became kings in places named Madison Square Garden and Ebbets Field. The early historical dramas soon gave way to a more contemporary theme: the black man’s struggle in a modern racist society. Shows on Denmark Vesey, Frederick Douglass, and George Washington Carver gave way to Richard Wright’s Black Boy and the lives of Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Nat King Cole. The Tiger Hunt was a war story, of a black tank battalion; Last Letter Home told of black pilots in World War II. The stories pulled no punches in their execution of the common theme, making Destination Freedom not only the most powerful but the only show of its kind.

Fidel Castro, who always enjoyed sports, promoted programs that helped Cuba become a front-runner in Latin America. The island nation fields outstanding baseball, soccer, basketball and volleyball teams. It also excels in amateur boxing. Believing that sports should be available for everyone, not just the privileged few, the phrase “Sports for all” is a motto frequently used. When Castro took power, he abolished all professional sports. Only amateur baseball has been played in Cuba since 1961. An unexpected consequence of this initiative was that many players discovered that they could get much better deals if they left Cuba. As an attempt to prevent this, Fidel forbade players from playing abroad and if they did leave the island, he would prevent their families from joining them. Originally, many Cuban baseball players played for teams in the American Negro league. This ended when Jackie Robinson was allowed to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers during the late 1940’s. Afterwards, all Cuban baseball players played for the regular leagues regardless of their race. The Negro National League ceased after the 1948 season, and the last All-Star game was held in 1962. The Indianapolis Clowns were the last remaining Negro/Latin league team and played until 1966. Cuban players with greater skill joined the Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. If they defected to the United States directly, they had to enter the MLB Draft. However, if they first defected to another country they could become free agents. Knowing this, many came to the United States via Mexico. In all, about 84 players have defected from Cuba since the Revolution. The largest contract ever given to a defector from Cuba was to Rusney Castillo. In 2014, the outfielder negotiated a seven-year contract with the Boston Red Sox for $72.5 million. Starting in 1999, about 21 Cuban soccer players have defected to the United States. The Cuban government considers these defectors as disloyal and treats their families with disrespect, even banning them from taking part in national sports.

Hurry up!” everyone in the room seemed to shriek at the same time. It didn’t matter to us that all over Pittsburgh, in every house and in every bar, thousands of others were undoubtedly carrying out their own rituals, performing their own superstitions. Hats were turned backward and inside out, incantations spoken and sung, talismans rubbed and chewed and prayed to. People who had the bad fortune of arriving at their gathering shortly before the Orioles’ first run were treated like kryptonite and banished willingly to the silence of media-less dining rooms and bathrooms, forced to follow the game through the reactions of their friends and family. And every one of those people believed what we believed: that ours was the only one that mattered, the only one that worked. Ruthie fumbled through the pages. Johnson fouled one off. “Got it!” Ruthie called. She stood and held Dock Ellis’s picture high over her head, Shangelesa’s scribbled hearts like hundreds of clear bubbles through which her father could watch the fate of his teammates. “He’s no batter, he’s no batter!” Ruthie sang. Johnson grounded the next pitch to shortstop Jackie Hernandez, who threw to Bob Robertson at first, and the threat was over. We yelled until we were hoarse. We were raucous and ridiculous and unashamed, and I have no better childhood memory than the rest of that afternoon. Blass came back out for the ninth, heroically shrugging off his wobbly eighth and, with Ruthie still standing behind us, holding the program shakily aloft for the entirety of the inning, he induced a weak grounder from Boog Powell, an infield pop-up from Frank Robinson, and a Series-ending grounder to short from Rettenmund. For the second inning in a row, Hernandez threw to Robertson for the final out, and all of us (or those who were able) jumped from our seats just as Blass leaped into Robertson’s arms, straddling his teammate’s chest like a frightened acrobat. Any other year, Blass would have been named the Most Valuable Player, and his performance remains one of the most dominant by a pitcher in Series history: eighteen innings, two earned runs, thirteen strikeouts, just four walks, and two complete game victories. But this Series belonged to Clemente. To put what he did in perspective, no Oriole player had more than seven hits. Clemente had twelve, including two doubles, a triple and two homeruns. He was relentless and graceful and indomitable. He had, in fact, made everyone else look like minor leaguers. The rush

couldn’t care less” and “I really didn’t care” reveal something fundamental about how Jackie Robinson learned to approach risk. According to eminent Stanford professor James March, when many of us make decisions, we follow a logic of consequence: Which course of action will produce the best result? If you’re like Robinson, and you consistently challenge the status quo, you operate differently, using instead a logic of appropriateness: What does a person like me do in a situation like this? Rather than looking outward in an attempt to predict the outcome, you turn inward to your identity. You base the decision on who you are—or who you want to be.

According to eminent Stanford professor James March, when many of us make decisions, we follow a logical consequence: which course of action will produce the best result? If you’re like [Jackie] Robinson, and you consistently challenge the status quo, you operate differently, using instead of a logic of appropriateness: What does a person like me do in a situation like this? Rather than looking outward in an attempt to predict the outcome, you turn inward to your identity. You base the decision on who you are – or who you want to be. When we use the logic of consequence, we can always find reasons not to take risks. The logic of appropriateness frees us up. We think less about what will guarantee the outcome we want, and act more on a visceral sense of what someone like us ought to do.

Richard Pryor is in it, too, as Charlie Snow, whose whole deal is that he’s learning Spanish so he can sneak into the pre–Jackie Robinson major leagues as a Cuban. It’s a funny bit, and he calls himself Carlos Nevada, which is a cool name.

Probably the easiest and most efficient approach was to hate everybody. Where have you gone, Jackie Robinson?

A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives. —JACKIE ROBINSON

I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” ~ Jackie Robinson

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. —Jackie Robinson Prologue March 25, 2002 Dearest Davina, I just received the news from Dr. Holmberg that the final grafts were a success and soon you will be well enough to come home. I have a jar of calendula ready, and the colonel will

Still, Bandit dared not ask. How many times had she been told that no proper member of an upright Confucian family ever questioned the conduct of elders? Or that children must wait until invited to speak? Countless times. Only the aged were considered wise.

Father opened the bigger of the white boxes. “It’s easy. Everything needed is in here.” Eggs hung in the door, bottles with colored fluids stood on a shelf. There were beans, spinach and oranges in one drawer, slabs of meat in another.

By the time Shirley had entered the sixth-grade room at P. S. 8, she had forgotten the nightmare and, with it, her fears. At Mr. P’s Tommy O’Brien had snuck up from behind to tug a braid. “Hey, Chop Suey, how are you doey?” Grinning, he then bowed deeply. She thought it rather wonderful that he remembered something she had done so long ago.

Many centuries later, Jackie Robinson would express the idea even more succinctly. “A life is not important,” his tombstone reads, “except in the impact it has on other lives.” So it goes for the Stoics whose lives we have just detailed, men and women whose influence not only continues to this day, but shaped the lives of the other men and women in this book. Zeno, driven by shipwreck to philosophy, and thus creating a school that has stood for nearly twenty-five hundred years . . . Cleanthes, whose hard work and frugality quite literally supported Zeno and his studies . . .

Father opened the bigger of the white boxes. “It’s easy. Everything needed is in here.” Eggs hung in the door, bottles with colored fluids stood on a shelf. There were beans, spinach and oranges in one drawer, slabs of meat in another. Peeking inside, Shirley got goose bumps from the cold. But she couldn’t find the window. She tugged at Father’s coat. “I don’t see the window to the outside,” she said. Father laughed. “This, Shirley Temple Wong, is an ice box. A machine that cools food and keeps it from spoiling. In America you only have to market once a week, not every day.” “And I suppose,” Mother said, “in America the wife does that, too.” “That’s right.

Sure it's just a first step. But it's a step forward. Their actions have given all of us courage. We cannot sit back and accept injustice - Jackie Robinson

The Democrats

the boys.

XIX The Influence of Martin Luther King, Jr.

United States—and unfairly, I feel—the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.

Jim Crow

this story line depicts him as racially special, a black man who broke the color line himself. The subtext is that Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete at that level. Imagine if instead, the story went something like this: “Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.” This version makes a critical distinction because no matter how fantastic a player Robinson was, he simply could not play in the major leagues if whites—who controlled the institution—did not allow It.

For when we, as Christians or heretics, fail to speak the truth, fail to live the truth—when we lie by the words we utter and deceive by the phrases we fail to speak—we pave the way for division and hatred and strife,” he said.

Overall, laterborns were twice as likely as firstborns to champion major scientific upheavals. “The likelihood of this difference arising by chance is substantially less than one in a billion,” Sulloway observes. “Laterborns have typically been half a century ahead of firstborns in their willingness to endorse radical innovations.” Similar results emerged when he studied thirty-one political revolutions: laterborns were twice as likely as firstborns to support radical changes. As a card-carrying firstborn, I was initially dismayed by these results. But as I learned about birth-order research, I realized that none of these patterns are set in stone. We don’t need to cede originality to laterborn children. By adopting the parenting practices that are typically applied primarily to younger children, we can raise any child to become more original. This chapter examines the family roots of originality. What’s unique about being a younger child, how does family size figure in, and what are the implications for nurture? And how can we account for the cases that don’t fit these patterns—the three only children on the base-stealing list, the firstborns who rebel, and the latterborn who conform? I’ll use birth order as a launching pad for examining the impact of siblings, parents, and role models on our tendencies to take risks. To see why siblings aren’t as alike as we expect them to be, I’ll look at the upbringing of Jackie Robinson and the families of the most original comedians in America. You’ll find out what determines whether children rebel in a constructive or destructive direction, why it’s a mistake to tell children not to cheat, how we praise them ineffectively and read them the wrong books, and what we can learn from the parents of individuals who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust.

It wasn’t only benches, Charlie found, that bore names on them. There were rocks with names, buildings with names, parks with names, streets with names, even tables with names. Charlie thought it was a wildly large ask for a man to expect people to know who he was after he’d left. It’s too hard to compete with the excited men today who want to be remembered tomorrow. But no one could ever live that long. We don’t remember Lincoln every hour, or Jackie Robinson every meal. Charlie supposed the only solace a man could own is knowing he did plenty of good things in the time he had. It was all we got and a noble insufficiency was enough. He also figured if you were going to make a bench, not to inscribe your name on it, but instead something awesome like, “This Bench Was Made with One Hand.” No fool was going to remember your name, for God’s sake. But they might laugh at a spectacle such as a one-handed achievement.

Son,” he said, lowering his voice, “I got nothin’ against Robinson or any of you Negroes. Ya gotta understand, though. I come from Alabama. And where I come from, a pig and a chicken don’t live in the same pen. They’d kill each other. Ya keep everything separate and everyone’s happy. That’s just the way nature works. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the way it should be. Same thing with white folks and you Negroes. It’s nothin’ personal, mind you.

To me, the mark of a truly great sporting venue has never been what it sounds like or how it feels when the stands are packed. That's easy. Even the most generic cookie-cutter stadium or arena feels electric when the game is big, the lights are on, and the crowd is amped. The real measure of a ballpark's character is how the place feels when it's empty. When the only noises to be heard are produced by the occasional breeze that slips through the concourse. It rattles the ropes on the empty center-field flagpoles. It pushes a stray plastic cup around beneath the feet of the box seats. And if you listen closely enough, that wind carries on it the whispers of the ghosts. The athletes who played between the lines, their toes in the dirt where only those who compete are allowed to roam. During my career in sports media, I've heard their voices at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Darlington Raceway. I've heard them at Lambeau Field and the Rose Bowl. I've heard them at old Boston Garden and Augusta National. And the morning of Thursday, March 3, 1994, I heard them at McCormick Field. Cobb, Gehrig, Dizzy Dean, Hank Greenberg, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Willie Stargell. From the Hall of Famers to a thousand minor leaguers whose names no one remembers. I swear, they were all there that morning to welcome us into the little mountain ballpark that they'd helped build.