Robinson was the major leagues’ first black manager. It is a persistent blemish on the sport that more have not been given their chance.
So the mighty Frank Robinson is dead at 83.
As a young kid, I was struck by the man, tall, strong, so coolly menacing at the plate, and the statistics and awards that underlined all that the eye took in: those 586 pre-steroidal home runs and the only man who won the Most Valuable Player Award in both leagues.
And there were all those times he was knocked down and dusted himself off and hit a home run on the next pitch. He practically sneered as he trotted around the bases.
As Sports Illustrated wrote in the 1960s, pitchers figured “the only way to deal with Robinson is to hit him before he hits you.”
He was also the first black manager in baseball. He was given a crappy team, of course, an old Buick station wagon of a Cleveland Indians squad. You thought white owners would give the first black manager the keys to a Mercedes? He played designated hitter on that team and at age 39 hit nine home runs with a.508 slugging percentage in 118 at-bats.
On opening day of that year, 1975, Robinson the player hit a home run for Robinson the manager.
And as with all things African-American and Major League Baseball, Robinson looms as a figure out of the Mesozoic Age. Less than 8 percent of major league players are African-American, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, down from a high of more than 18 percent. More damning still, there is but one manager who could be classified as African-American.
