Are we there yet?

Along with my son and a good friend from high school, I had some time to kill in Pasadena. Well, what does a SABR member do with time on his hands and a rental car? Consult the SABR Baseball Map of course! So yeah, I probably should have done that!

Instead I went from memory that there was a Jackie Robinson statue at the Rose Bowl, which was only 3 miles from our Caltech starting point. Having grown up in Los Angeles, I knew that meant we were anywhere from 5 to 55 minutes away! Ten minutes later, there we were!

The observant baseball fan will quickly notice that the statue is of “football Jackie” rather than “baseball Jackie,” and this may be why the statue does not currently reside on our Baseball Map. What the observant football fan, my friend Abe for example, may notice is that the uniform number, 55, does not correspond to Jackie’s number as a UCLA Bruin.

In fact, 55 was Jackie’s number when he starred for Pasadena City College.

A final detail I’ll point out is the placard that stands to the right of the statue. The words read—

JACKIE ROBINSON

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

The photograph, perhaps curiously chosen, reflects Jackie as a family man. The scene itself comes from a celebration of son David’s first birthday (1953). Daughter Sharon, wife Rachel, and older son Jackie, Jr., are also shown with him.

All very cool, but as they say, “football, schmootball.” Isn’t there any cool baseball stuff around here? After grabbing a late lunch and killing an hour playing chess in the park, we made our way to Dodger Stadium where Clayton Kershaw would be taking the mound against the White Sox. Our entrance was just a stone’s throw from yet another Jackie Robinson statue, this one of the baseball variety.

Like the football statue, a famous Jackie Robinson quote is featured. This time the words hit a little harder.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

“Are we there yet?” is more or less the official question of every family road trip, baseball or otherwise, and here Jackie is telling us—unmistakably—”No. No, we’re not.”

At this point, a formerly incidental detail of the statue takes on relevance. In our mind’s eye, Jackie is scoring this run. In reality, he leans there frozen, short of his goal as if to tell us the rest is up to us.