At 86-years-young, Jim Robinson remains a passionate storyteller, vividly sharing narratives and anecdotes from many decades past.
His recollection and grasp of events both experiential and observed, encompassing sports, politics and culture, paints a rich, glowing picture of this country’s history dating to the early 1900s.
He laughs when remembering how his former high school, Commerce High, was razed to make room for the construction of the social and cultural edifice Lincoln Center or his many days as a young boy spent at the Harlem YMCA, not far from his childhood apartment on 112th Street between Seventh and St. Nicholas avenues, where he would later meet two of his idols, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella.
As fate would have it, Campanella, to whom Robinson was introduced in 1948 by Wardy Davis, his basketball coach at the YMCA, had a considerable impact on the trajectory of the then 18-year-old’s life. Robinson’s relationship with Campanella ultimately steered him to North Carolina A&T, to which he was awarded a full baseball scholarship.
Their relationship is chronicled in a recent issue of Memories and Dreams, the official magazine of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. “It’s funny,” Robinson said to this writer during a conversation via cellphone earlier this week, “but I was a big Yankees fan growing up. I loved Joe DiMaggio.
But when Jackie (Robinson) was called up to the Brooklyn Dodgers (April 15, 1947), it seemed as if everybody in Harlem became Dodgers fans. Me rooting for the Yankees wasn’t very popular.” Robinson went on to graduate from North Carolina A&T and later earn a master’s degree in social work from The City University of New York. “Baseball was the foundation of my education,” he emphasized.
Indeed, of all the accomplishments in his long and prosperous life, including reviving the baseball program at South Carolina State, where he was the head coach from 1990 to 1993, it is his time playing in the Negro Leagues that perhaps defines Robinson’s journey as a race man.
Of the many years this writer has known Robinson, it is the times we have spent together at Negro League celebrations and gatherings, engaging with legendary figures such as the late, great Buck O’Neil and the late Larry Doby, the first Black ballplayer to play in the American League, where he has exhibited unbridled passion and reflection.
Attending college in the Jim Crow South, Robinson saw that baseball, specifically the Negro Leagues, “provided many Black communities an identity and a sense of pride.” He said, “The Negro Leagues really flourished in the 1930s and 40s, it brought people together, showed many Black people that we were equal to anyone, not just in baseball, but so many other aspects of life.”
Robinson played for the Philadelphia Stars in 1952 before a brief stint in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. He later manned third base, second base and shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs from 1956 to 1958, during which he was named to the Negro League All-Star team each year.
“When I grew up, baseball was a big deal to Blacks” said Robinson. “Not anymore.” MLB has roughly 8 percent Black players. Only a little more than 3 percent of all pitchers are Black.
“Basketball has taken over our kids’ interest,” said Robinson, who today resides on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, less than 2 miles from his childhood neighborhood. “I don’t have the answers in how to get them back into baseball.”
No one does. But Robinson will continue trying as he talks to numerous Black youth on his daily travels. He will make every effort to ensure the Negro Leagues flame forever burns brightly.
