LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jackie Robinson was the first to break baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers 78 years ago Tuesday. His legacy continues to inspire people inside the major leagues — and outside, too.
Players and staff from the Dodgers, including Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and rookie Roki Sasaki, and the Colorado Rockies surrounded Robinson’s statue in Centerfield Plaza hours before game time in Los Angeles on Jackie Robinson Day around the major leagues.
They were joined by Basketball Hall of Fame player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who turns 78 on Wednesday. He recalled wearing a Brooklyn baseball cap while growing up in the neighboring borough of Manhattan.
“I’d get in fights with people from the Giants, the Yankees, pretty often,” he said, “but I kept my cap on and nobody was able to knock it off. I was so tall.”
Abdul-Jabbar followed in Robinson’s footsteps as a sports star at UCLA, then known as Lew Alcindor, where he won three national championships under Hall of Fame coach John Wooden.