HE’S A HIT AT 90
Negro Leagues baseball star on TV
On the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Negro Leagues — and the 90th anniversary of his birth — Jim Robinson is finally getting his turn at bat.
The Harlem native and longtime Negro Leagues player never found the fame achieved by another Robinson — Jackie, who broke the Major League Baseball color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 — but he is now getting some major play with a Toyota ad campaign.
Robinson appears in a Toyota commercial, titled “Home Team,” as the elder patriarch who joins his family for a trip down memory lane at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., where his love for the game comes to life.
“It was the first time that I had a chance to see myself in action, so I was quite pleased,” Robinson told the Daily News about the 30-second spot.
According to the museum’s president ,Bob Kendrick, the campaign is the first time Robinson — one of the last surviving players of the Negro Leagues — is featured in such a buzzed-about endeavor, and it’s long overdue.
“He’s such a beautiful human being and as you can see, soft-spoken but well-spoken, and he, to me, was the perfect player to articulate the Negro Leagues experience because these athletes were so oftentimes misportrayed as being vagabonds, tramps, hobos, illiterate,” he said.
“So it’s about helping set the record straight,” Kendrick added.
Robinson, who grew up as a fan of the Negro Leagues when games were played at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, started playing baseball on the sandlot fields of Morningside Park and continued to play in high school.
While studying at North Carolina A&T, he was scouted by Negro Leagues great Oscar Charleston, then the manager of the Philadelphia Stars, who signed him.
The first Negro League game he ever played was at Yankee Stadium, said Robinson, whose time with the team was cut short for a 21month stint in the Army during the Korean War.
After the Stars folded in the 1950s, Robinson returned to school to complete his undergraduate degree and briefly played with the Indianapolis Clowns.
Robinson later signed with the St. Louis Cardinals, but an injury prevented him from making the major leagues, he said.
He spent the last two years of his career as an infielder for the Kansas City Monarchs and speaks fondly of those who established leagues for African-American players when they were kept out of the MLB by a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement.”
“Some courageous people decided that they would have their own league and they put their money together and they accomplished it,” he said.
Life after the Negro Leagues was just as enriching for Robinson, who earned a master’s degree in social work from the City College of New York before working for NYCHA for 28 years.
Though Robinson is pleased about his newfound fame, it’s somewhat bittersweet considering his age.
“At 90 years old I’m turning down opportunities because my health is not that good and I’m just happy to still be here among the living,” said Robinson, who lives in a senior living residence in upper Manhattan.
“If there’s something I can handle, I’ll consider it,” Robinson said. “But at this point, I’m not looking for a lot more exposure. I’m just blessed to still be here.”