For Major League Baseball’s 29th Jackie Robinson Day, celebrating the American sports hero who broke the game’s color barrier 78 years ago on April 15, 1947, the New York Mets found themselves in Minnesota taking on the Twins.
Road trips on this day are nothing new to the Mets, who have played at home in Queens just three times on this date in the last 10 years despite playing in the city where Robinson broke the 63-year “gentleman’s agreement” that barred Black ballplayers from the majors — just 10 miles away from where the Brooklyn Dodgers’ home, Ebbets Field, once stood.
While the creation of the Mets in 1962 — 15 years after Robinson’s debut and six years after his retirement — was a byproduct of the Dodgers and Giants bolting out west to Los Angeles and San Francisco, they have become intertwined in the history of Jackie Robinson Day.
It was at Shea Stadium, the Mets’ former home, in 1997 when Robinson’s widow, Rachel Robinson, former MLB commissioner Bud Selig, and President Bill Clinton announced that his No. 42 would be retired throughout baseball in perpetuity and that April 15 henceforth would officially be Jackie Robinson Day.
Their current home, Citi Field, was constructed to pay homage to Ebbets Field’s facade, with its main entrance known as the Jackie Robinson rotunda, complete with an 8-foot tall 42.
Being the only National League team in New York still means something to a generation of baseball fans, even if MLB is doing everything it can to blur the lines between circuits with its ceaseless interleague play. And though the franchise is different, the Big Apple and the proper league it happened in should be given the chance to celebrate the history it hosted eight decades ago more than three times in a decade.
It is just as important as the franchise that Robinson broke through with, and the Dodgers have not played away from Los Angeles since 2014.
For more on the Mets and Jackie Robinson Day, visit AMNY.com
