It is virtually impossible to overstate the impact Jackie Robinson had on baseball, American sports and society as a whole.
When Robinson broke the Major League Baseball color barrier in 1947, he paved the way for thousands of black players and minority athletes in other sports.
If not for Robinson, some of the greatest players in the history of the game might never have gotten the opportunity to play professional baseball, including Hall of Famers like Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and baseball’s first black player/manager Frank Robinson.
Aaron, who broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, called Robinson “an icon.”
“He was a pillar of strength, and he gave me a lot of inner strength,” Aaron wrote in Robinson’s autobiography, “I Never Had It Made.”
“I knew some of the things he had gone through; so, when I looked at him, I thought, not only is this man a great athlete, but he’s a great man off
