This week’s retrograde is dedicated to Jackie Robinson as well as Larry Doby and others (including Pee Wee Reese) who paved the way for equity in baseball. I’ve always tried to imagine what that culture shock was like for Jackie Robinson, going from California to the south and then into the Negro Leagues. I think when we try and imagine being in someone else’s skin, in their shoes, we try to compare it in some way to shoes we wear in our own lives. And, while this can never replicate another’s experience, sometimes it helps us to at least connect in some way and feel united with to the universal humanness that binds us to the other.
RetrOgrAde: In Honor of Jackie
