I used to tell Jackie (Robinson) sometimes when they were throwing at him, 'Jackie, they aren't throwing at you because you are black. They are throwing at you because they don't like you.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There is no question that in the '50s and '60s, black players got thrown at more. That's not a negative comment. It may come out that way, but that's the way it was. Hitting another player was part of the game; hitting a player in the head is not.
And I'd be lying if I told you that as a black man in baseball I hadn't gone through worse times than my teammates.
I was skinny and black and didn't play sports. And I was bullied.
He was a professional rugby player in the area that I played as a youngster. So a lot of people who I went to school with knew who he was and knew that he was black. So I would get racist taunts in school.
Some people would view Jackie Robinson as a very safe African-American, a docile figure who had a tendency to try to get along with everyone, and when you look at his history, you learn that he has this fire that allows him to take this punishment but also figure out savvy ways of giving it back.
A lot of black guys always ask me, 'Did Larry Bird really play that good?' I said, 'Larry Bird is so good it's frightening.'
Like, you can't tell a certain race, like, 'You're supposed to act this way, and you're not supposed to act this way because of what color you are,' like, that's just holding everybody back, you know what I'm saying?
When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.
The way I was brought up by my parents and guided through my football life by the influences of various managers means that in some ways I am black and white.
I have friends who are black whose families opened their arms to them when they came out; I have friends who were white where they were rejected.
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