Considering 42

I am a baseball fan. I also have a family that resembles the United Nations, or the Church Triumphant depending on your preferred metaphor.

So it made sense for me to see 42. It isn’t the Jackie Robinson story. It really is just the story of 2 years of his life.

You get very little background into his childhood, and what brought him to the point where he changed American history. All we learn is that he father left when Jack was 6 months old. Perhaps this is why he hated to depend on anyone. Just a thought. But it was that toughness it created that enabled him to be the first black player in modern Major League Baseball. As the film Jackie and Branch Rickey both note: God built him to last.

God is not absent from this film. That comment by Jackie was about the only time we see a faith in God in Jackie’s life (that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, just that the movie doesn’t show it). Rickey’s faith is much more prominent in the movie. “He’s a Methodist. I’m a Methodist. God’s a Methodist.”

Seeing Harrison Ford, an old and over-weight Harrison Ford, play a man of faith is a sight to behold. It is called acting. But Branch Rickey was not some domesticated caricature of a wimpy Christian. He smokes cigars and the occasional profanity leaves his lips. Branch and his relationship with Jackie is one of the main threads of the movie.

It begins with Branch Rickey deciding that now was the time to do what he’s always wanted to do. Over the course of the movie he is often asked “why?” and he provides a variety of answers. Near the end, during a moment alone with Jackie after getting spiked, he finally lets Jackie in on the truth. He had long seen the injustice. That injustice had stolen from him his love for baseball. Jackie gave him that love back.

The movie brings us back to a time most of us wish had never existed. It is a time I hate with just about every fiber of my being. Or at least the reality of the Jim Crowe laws and the racism that ate away at the soul of the nation in which I live.

The other key relationship is that of Jackie and his wife Rachel. She experiences culture shock the first time they go to Spring Training. She grew up in California and the stark bigotry was a shock to her. Hers is a strong character as well. When Jackie is at his weakest due to the onslaught of blatant and ugly racism, she and Branch are usually there to hold him up until he regains his bearings.

I am sure that a number of events are fictionalized, or many events combined into one event. The movie essentially focuses on a few particular events to make its points. One that stands out is when they play in Cincinnati. Pee Wee Reese grew up in nearby Louisville. A man and his young son are seen talking about Pee Wee, and how he might make them proud that day. When Jackie emerges from the dugout, the father turns rabid, unleashing racial slurs and telling him to go away. The boy is confused- perhaps he’d never seen this side of his father. You see him looking around, and reluctantly joining in to gain his father’s favor. Imagine their surprise when Pee Wee approaches Jackie to show he stands with him.

Jackie’s teammates did not accept him at first. They were threatened and fearful. Some were traded as Rickey chose Jackie over them. But over the course of the season he won many of them over. They began to stand up for him and with him.

Chadwick Boseman, who plays Jackie, reminds me of a young Denzel Washington in his acting style. Handsome, sometimes brash, intelligent and a vocal pattern that sounds like Denzel. He does a good job much of the time.

Chris Merloni appears as Leo Durocher, the fiery manager of Dem Bums from Brooklyn. His own weaknesses are used against him by the Commissioner in an attempt to stop Branch from playing Jackie Robinson. Eventually he is  replaced for the season by the unsure Burt Shotten, played by Max Gail (Wojo on Barney Miller oh so long ago).

42 is a very good movie that stirs up many emotions. Many people clapped at the end. Time has enabled us to look at the events of those few years with greater appreciation. Now we recognize how important it was, and how good it was. It reminds me that we still have quite a ways to go. I’m not sure when I’ll let my children see it. The portrayals of racism are blunt and ugly. But I will want them to know about the man who was first, and paid a terrible price so many others could partake of the same freedom to succeed or fail on their own merits instead of on the basis of the color of their skin.