It would be churlish to describe as yet another exercise in political correctness last week’s strikes in which professional athletes, by refusing to play scheduled games, tried to signal their desire to be part of “social justice” reform in the United States. Pro athletes are not automatons. They have convictions and passions. And as the late Jackie Robinson made abundantly clear, they can help rouse a nation’s conscience and spur it to make real the promise in the Pledge of Allegiance: liberty and justice for all.
The difference, however, is that the Brooklyn Dodgers’ immortal No. 42 had real skin in the game: skin that was spiked by racists; skin that was beaned; skin that was bruised by his slashing style of base-running, an expression of his courageous determination to embody black excellence in an arena where a baseball-smitten America had to pay attention. Like Branch Rickey, the man who hired him to break the game’s infamous color line, Jackie Robinson knew American hearts had to be changed before American customs and laws changed; a change in culture, not “social justice” sloganeering, was essential, and that meant putting skin in the game.
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