Dave and I saw this weekends' # 1 at the box office movie, "42" yesterday. Most Americans know that the number 42 stands for the great athlete and great human being, Jackie Robinson. Even I know that. He broke the color barrier in baseball and paved the way for all kinds of athletes. Not many of us have the quiet strength to pull something like this off.
I know two Floridians who's families hosted Jackie Robinson in their homes here in Florida during those times when he wasn't allowed to stay in a hotel. Great stories about Jackie Robinson abound in Florida.
In 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to play for his Montreal farm team. What followed changed the history of baseball and helped change history for all of us.
Why did Rickey do this? Why did Robinson accept? Here's my answer. Because they were both Methodists. Rickey explains in the beginning of the movie how this works. He said that God was a Methodist as well, but I wouldn't go that far. However, he did stress to Jackie Robinson that he would have to have the quiet "turn the other cheek" strength of Jesus in order to survive. Toward the end of the movie Branch Rickey tells Robinson that he was motivated to do what he did by something that happened to him when he was a student at Ohio Wesleyan. That's a Methodist school. Just sayin'.
There are a number of vile, racist men - who lived in vile, racist towns - in this movie.
One of the towns was Sanford, Florida, right up the road from me. It's changed some, but still has a ways to go. It's the town where the unarmed young black teenager Travon Martin was shot last year.
See the movie. It will inspire you to be a better person. You don't necessarily have to be a Methodist.
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