By Zamboni
Major League Baseball is a mess these days, but that doesn't mean that we can't celebrate some important milestones. Seventy-five years ago, on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American player when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as an infielder/outfielder.
But he'd started his baseball career the year before as a Montreal Royal. His presence is still felt there, and the city is proud that it was chosen for Robinson's Triple-A debut because of its solid reputation for racial and ethnic tolerance.
Robinson died young, at just 53, in October 1972. He was a Republican, but even with Richard Nixon at its helm, it was a different party back then. Robinson had already become disillusioned by the stampede of whites to the GOP and Nixon's shameless Southern Strategy of appealing to their sense of grievance. Surely today's Republicans would have appalled him even more. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.
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