Crossing The Color Line-When It
Counted-Baseball’s Jackie Robinson Story-Chadwick Boseman’s “42”-(2013)-A Film
Review
DVD Review
By Laura Perkins
42, starring Chadwick Boseman,
Harrison Ford, 2013
Although the number of female sports
reporters, including anchors and such, has grown exponentially since my
pre-Title X in college days I admit I have never been a sports fan, never
really followed, seriously followed in any case, the subject of the film under
review, 42, baseball. Except to
vicariously root for the New York Yankees whenever they raised their heads come
World Serious times since I grew up around Albany in New York (that “World
Serious” expression courtesy of Ring Larner via his You Know Me, Al stories via
Sam Lowell who was, is a baseball nut). That rooting for the Yankees a not
unimportant factor in the lives of both Sam and I since we have been long time
companions and Sam growing up in North Adamsville south of Boston a rabid Red
Sox fan which has led to many an “armed truce” come rivalry time. (I was
experienced in “armed truces” well before meeting Sam many years ago since
Albany is a “divided” city, or at least my clan was, is between loyalty to
Yankees and Sox).
Since I am not a baseball fan, as
defined by Sam and many others-meaning knowing all kinds of arcane information
about every aspect of the game how do I wind up getting this assignment. Well
let’s get back to Sam, that well-know long time companion who as film editor
here back a few years before he retired would routinely do the sport films as
they came up like the film adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s The Natural starring Robert Redford. Sam and I wound up watching
this film not under the baseball hook but under my long-time “crush” on
Harrison Ford every since early Star Wars
and my interest in seeing Chadwick Bozeman who plays Number 42, Jackie Robinson
in something other that comic book super-hero Black Panther.
After watching the film, as is our
wont, Sam’s old-time expression, we discussed the merits of the film. That is
where I made my “fatal” mistake. I told Sam who was awash in the glory of
seeing the first black man in major league baseball (not capitalizes as now)
when major league baseball really was the king of the American pastime day-and
later night when the lights came. Robinson helped integrate the sport AND help
win the National League pennant for Brooklyn in 1947 AND win Rookie of the Year
although the film was not really about baseball. Sure that was the tag line but
the real deal was how for blacks since slavery times every step forward was
something like a world-historic ordeal, was fought for with blood and guts by a
few and then carried on by many. Since Sam had been assigned the film by site
manager Greg Green (as he would have been even under recently sacked previous
site manager Allan Jackson who was a boyhood friend of Sam’s and fellow
baseball nut-Red Sox version) since he told me and Greg that he would have
concentrated on the sports angle and somewhat downplayed the racial angle to
have me to the review in order to say what I have just said above.
Greg hemmed and hawed for a while
since he also is a member in good-standing of the baseball nut fraternity and
wanted to highlight the incredible athletic ability and dedication that Jackie
Robinson had which he believed added greatly to his ability to withstand the
racial taunts and “assorted bullshit” his term, which Robinson had to withstand
that first and later seasons for those “crackers,” my term who saw the game as
another white preserve. A white preserve just as later, as today for that
matter, blacks and others of color have had to break the white preserve on
riding buses, voting, housing, employment, education you name it. All things
that whites have taken for granted and not given it another thought. I include myself
in that category as well.
I will now get off my soapbox since
I have said what I wanted to say about my angle on the film and give you as Sam
eternally said “the skinny” on the film some of which I have already
telegraphed. Branch Rickey, played by Harrison Ford old time good old boy
talking out of the side of his mouth, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, later to
be the Los Angeles Dodgers which some of the diehards in Brooklyn have never
forgotten or forgiven, for a whole series of reasons personal, professional and
business-wise which get a work out in various scenes in the film decided
baseball, or at least his team needed to be integrated to be successful and to
cater to the fair number of blacks who attended Dodger games. As in the case of
Rosa Parks later and others Rickey did not want to get just any black but one
that represented the better aspects of the black race. Up steps Jackie Robinson
who was playing excellent no money baseball in Negro League dungeons in the South
and who would have continued to do so if Rickey hadn’t given him a call. That
decision for good or evil would drive the rest of the film except for the off-hand
romance interspersed between baseball scenes between Robinson and the woman who
would become his wife and mainstay Rachel.
Obviously, Rickey, and Robinson,
knew that what they were facing was a daunting task from confronting those
white preserve crowds to fellow baseball players, teammates and opponents, who
heated the idea to fellow baseball owners to the Jim Crow conditions which
precluded blacks in the South, and in the North too but less publicly blatant from
white only facilities. The centerfold on this was Robinson’s grit on and off
the field and Rickey’s drive to do the right thing. All of that gets thoroughly
vetted throughout the film. Of course the great plays and the marching toward
the pennant get worked in as well. Despite Sam’s thrill a minute at the baseball
plays this one is a good close look at American sport in a day when football
which has replaced baseball as the American pastime is knee-deep in controversy
around black players and their allies “taking a knee” and putting a bright
spotlight on the role of the police in the black community. What else is
new.
