Friday, Pasadena joins the nation to celebrate the 75th anniversary of African-American Jackie Robinson’s breaking of Major League Baseball’s color barrier when he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15,1947.
Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919. His family moved to Pasadena the following year.
The youngest of five children raised by a single mother, Robinson was a four-sport star at Pasadena Junior College, which he attended in 1938 and 1939.
In the recently released “True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson,” author Kostya Kennedy digs deep into the “overlooked” and “untold” stories in Robinson’s life.
Kennedy writes about Robinson’s first year playing in the all-white minor leagues for the Montreal Royals in 1946, the time he won Most Valuable Player Award in 1949 in his third season as a Brooklyn Dodger, his final season in Major League Baseball in 1956 and his untimely death in 1972.
“Kennedy examines each of these years through details not reported in previous biographies, bringing them to life in vivid prose and through interviews with fans and players who witnessed his impact, as well as with Robinson’s surviving family,” according to Barnes and Noble.
“These four crucial years offer a unique vision of Robinson as a player, a father and husband, and a civil rights hero.”
Kennedy explained in the first page of the book why he titled his work “True.”
“Whatever the context and circumstances, Jackie Robinson remained true — true to the effort and mission, true to his convictions and his contradictions.”
Kennedy is a former senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He has also written books about Joe DiMaggio and Pete Rose.
