Yesterday my wife and I watched 42, something we’d intended to do for a long time but somehow never got around to. If you don’t know of it, it’s a film biography of Jackie Robinson.
IMO 42 is a very fine picture, indeed. Although, typical of biopics, it’s very hagiographic, it’s not as much a free flight of fancy as most. It succeeds at practically every level: as a biopic, as a sports movie, as a message move, just plainly as a movie. Recommended.
In watching it I realized something that had never occurred to me before. My dad was probably acquainted with Branch Rickey. Rickey was manager of the St. Louis Browns when my dad was bat boy for the team.
Now there’s an unexpected connection.
Fun Fact: Before the failure of Reconstruction, blacks played alongside and against whites in the various baseball leagues of the time. Baseball leagues started to become segregated in the 1870s to 1880s in both the South and the North.
This would also be the era where neighborhoods started to become more segregated across the country. Not saying that there was racial harmony before then, but things took a huge step backwards across the country with the failure of Reconstruction.