Jackie Robinson Steps onto Ebbets Field

The box score offers an oddly quiet introduction to a famous day. On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson went hitless as the Brooklyn Dodgers opened their season at Ebbets Field. He played first base, reached on an error and scored in a Brooklyn victory. Nothing about that ordinary sequence explains why the game is remembered. The extraordinary part was that Robinson was in the lineup at all.

For decades, organized white baseball had maintained a racial barrier. Black players built careers and institutions in the Negro leagues, but their talent did not bring admission to the American or National League. Robinson was not the first Black man ever to play professional baseball, nor the first in nineteenth-century major-league history. His debut broke the modern color line in those two leagues, a distinction worth keeping when the milestone is celebrated.