Rollins: It’s more than just one thing
two superstars on the same dominant team should’ve been endless.
“You need space to play baseball,” he said. “You don’t have that in a lot of places. In the country, you can find a field. In the city, kids aren’t playing stickball. A basketball, you could pick up and dribble. It’s easier to find a court. You don’t have to field nine guys to play basketball. You can play one-on-one. The expense, you need the tools, you’ve got to pay for travel teams. In other sports, we know it’s been well documented. They get sponsored and those things don’t happen in baseball.
“Also, you look at how baseball’s traditionally passed down from the dad to son. If your father isn’t around, the chances of you being exposed to baseball because it’s more of a team sport, it’s probably less likely to happen.”
Rollins recently hosted a special series for Bleacher Report about being Black in major league baseball. The first part debuted Thursday in honor of Jackie Robinson Day and featured Rollins chatting with Howard, Dwight Gooden and 2020 Rookie of the Year Award winners Kyle Lewis of the Seattle Mariners and Devin Williams of the Milwaukee Brewers.
Lewis and Williams were the first Black ballplayers to sweep the rookie honors since Gooden and Alvin Davis in 1984, three years before the BBWAA renamed the award in honor of the man who broke baseball’s color barrier.
“Jackie was the man to go through all the fire, face all the criticism, hear all the nasty words and things that were coming his way and still go out there and perform and perform well enough to win rookie of the year,” Rollins said. “But outside of baseball, it was just a reflection of what America needed to do, and that was become more inclusive.
“We know about baseball but his activism and his fight for civil rights, it didn’t just start on the field, it was already happening. We got to see it in uniform. Then he continued to press forward off the field and fight for the rights to basically be a human being, to be a man, to be respected, to be seen. I think people need to realize that he isn’t just Jackie Robinson the baseball player, there was more to his life as a man.”