Having Enough Guts

This past weekend I went and saw the movie “42,” which chronicles the life of Jackie Robinson during his first two years as being the first African-American to play major league baseball. I’ve always been a fan of sports movies, despite the fact that actual sporting events usually bore me to death. They just always seem so inspirational to me, and 42 was no different. In fact, I think it hit home for me even more so than other sports films I’ve seen in the past.

When Robinson entered the major league in 1947, segregation was still widespread and the idea of a black man playing alongside an entirely white team was bound to spur a lot of outrage. But Mr. Branch Rickey, manager and owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was willing to raise a little hell to see a change for the better take place.   

One of my favorite moments in the film was right in the beginning when Mr. Rickey first brings Robinson into his office and tells him his proposition. Mr. Rickey laid the reality out for Robinson of what life would be like for him should he accept….and it would be far from easy. He explained that when the insults started pouring in, Robison would want to take an eye for an eye. But if he did, he would cause the plan to fail. To this Robinson replied, “You want a player who doesn’t have the guts to fight back?” And Mr. Rickey answered by saying, “No. I want a player who’s got the guts not to fight back.”

While Jackie Robinson battled against the racial barriers of his time, most of us have fought similar battles against the demons in our own lives. There is always someone, somewhere telling you that you can’t do something. There are always blockades along the path towards our dreams. And the thing is, a lot of us will let those things stop us. And we’ll instead assume the role of the victim, blaming our failure to rise to our full potential on things and people outside of ourselves. Or we’ll stoop to the low level of those who want to see us fail, which in turn not only compromises our dreams but our characters as well.

What Jackie Robinson showed the world was that it is in fact possible to enter into a battle where the odds are completely stacked against you, to fight it in your own way and win out without ever having sacrificed a piece of who you are.  But to do so takes an extraordinary amount of guts

The racial tensions in this nation didn’t end the day Jackie Robinson first stepped up to bat in front of a field of white ball players. It didn’t end the day Martin Luther King Jr. made his infamous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. And it didn’t end the day America elected its first black President. But Mr. Robinson did help spur decades of fighting for the equality of all people. And he showed just how far strong character and well-disciplined guts can take a person.

He demonstrated how to live with a little bit of grace and a little bit of grit.