Number 42 and the Bus That Changed Baseball

They tell you baseball is a game of inches, but sometimes it's a matter of seats on a bus. Back in the summer of '44, a second lieutenant named Jack Roosevelt Robinson, fresh out of Officer Candidate School and assigned to a tank battalion at Fort Hood, Texas, climbed aboard an Army shuttle with a light-skinned Negro woman who happened to be the wife of a fellow officer. They sat midway back—perfectly legal under War Department rules that had quietly desegregated military buses, even if Jim Crow still ruled the surrounding countryside.

The driver, a civilian southerner with a short fuse, took one look in his mirror and barked for the lieutenant to move to the rear "where the colored sit." Robinson, who'd already stared down plenty of prejudice at UCLA and in the Negro Leagues, politely informed the man that Army regulations said otherwise. Words flew. Military police arrived. Before the night was out, Robinson found himself charged with insubordination, disrespect, and a few other things the brass tacked on for good measure.

They court-martialed him on August 2, nine white officers on the panel, four hours of testimony. The bus charges got dropped quick—too embarrassing when the regulations were read aloud—but they pressed the disrespect angle. Robinson took the stand, calm as a veteran shortstop turning two, and told his side straight. Acquitted on all counts. Honorable discharge a few months later. No overseas combat for him, but he'd fought a battle just the same.

That bus ride was no isolated scrap. It was the same fire that Branch Rickey spotted when he signed Robinson to break baseball's color line. Rickey wanted a man with guts enough not to fight back—with fists, anyway. He got one who'd already proven he could stand firm without swinging.

Come April 15, 1947, there was Jackie at Ebbets Field, wearing Dodger blue, number 42 on his back, taking first base against the Braves while half the crowd booed and the other half held its breath. Twenty-eight years old, a war veteran, a college star in four sports, fresh off a batting title in Montreal. He went 0-for-3 that day, but the deed was done. The barrier cracked wide open.

He played 10 seasons, all in Brooklyn, and what seasons they were. Rookie of the Year in '47, MVP in '49 when he hit .342, stole 37 bases, drove in 124. Lifetime .313, 200 stolen bases—19 of them home plate, the nerviest swipe in the game. Six pennants, one World Series in '55, when he stole home against the Yankees in Game 1, sliding under Yogi Berra's tag while Whitey Ford fumed on the mound.

They spiked him, beaned him, slurred him from dugouts and stands. Mailbags full of threats. He took it, year after grinding year, because Rickey asked him to, because he knew the eyes of a people were on him. And when the promise expired, he fought back—with words, with fire, with a glare that could freeze a base runner.

He wasn't the best Negro League player available—Satchel Paige might claim that, or Josh Gibson—but he was the right one. Courage under fire, the kind he'd shown on that Texas bus and in a courtroom full of brass. The Army taught him discipline; the Dodgers let him unleash the talent.

When he retired after '56, the game was changed forever. Larry Doby followed in the American League, then dozens more. Today every player wears 42 on April 15, a quiet tribute to the man who carried the load so others wouldn't have to.

Jackie Robinson died too young at 53, but he lived long enough to see schools desegregated, lunch counters opened, a nation inching toward the fairness he'd demanded first in khaki, then in flannels. Baseball gave him a stage; he gave America a mirror.Not bad for a lieutenant who simply refused to go to the back of the bus.