Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait

There's a mythical character to the story of Jackie Robinson's life and his integration of major league baseball in 1947 that still inspires and amazes. No other professional athlete has combined such excellence and daring on the field with such a fiercely courageous social commitment off it. His wife's straightforward portrait of her life with Jackie, written with freelancer Daniels, has much the same effect--one can't help but admire the both of them. She met Robinson at UCLA in 1939 (""He was very impressive""), where he starred in baseball, football and track; she recounts his army career and his acquittal on drunk and disorderly charges, after a confrontation with racist military police, in a notorious court martial. She happily contrasts the warm embrace of the Canadian fans after Jackie joined the Brooklyn Dodgers top farm club, the Montreal Royals, with the racist harassment the couple experienced in Florida during that first spring training in 1946. And while she writes with the gentle, nostalgic voice of a wife and mother, Rachel Robinson has been a heroine in her own right and she notes her own formidable achievements: she was present at the strategy sessions of Robinson and Brooklyn Dodger president Branch Rickey; she runs the Jackie Robinson Development Corporation, which builds low- and moderate-income housing; and she launched the Robinson Foundation scholarship fund for minority youth after her husband's death in 1972. There is much about their family life and 310 b&w photographs in this quietly informative and often charming retelling of a great American story. (Oct.)