JACKIE ROBINSON DAY 2008: METS VS. YANKEES?

Last night on NY1, sportscaster Tom McDonald compared how the Mets and Yankees recognized Jackie Robinson Day, which recognizes the date in 1947 when Robinson played his first Major League Game, with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Robinson's number 42 has been retired from baseball, but on April 15 all players may choose to wear it in honor of the exceptional athlete who officially broke baseball's color barrier and, as McDonald pointed out, subsequently put up with more insults and threats in one season than many people ever face in a lifetime.

McDonald noted that the Mets players went out on the field wearing 42, but that no Yankee player did so other than Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano (who was, apparently, named after Jackie Robinson), and Mariano Rivera, whose number is 42 anyway. (He has special dispensation to continue wearing the number despite its retirement.)

McDonald, a big admirer of Robinson, was very disappointed by the Yankees. I felt the same way: "What's with those Yankees...are they racists? The Mets are so much better!" But then I started thinking, which of course means big trouble. Basically, I thought about how I tend to resist uniform behavior, if you pardon the expression.

I don't like situations where people are expected to display uniformity, even when the uniformity seems to be for a good cause or at least be harmless. I look at how people in Congress wear American flag pins, and think about how Barack Obama has been criticized because he doesn't wear a pin, and I get back to basics like "You can't tell a book by its cover." People are more than what they wear. At least most of the time, right?

And isn't a big part of the Jackie Robinson story about being considered according to ability and accomplishment instead of appearance?

So I guess I'll give the Yankees a pass on this one. I'm glad the Mets fell in line with the 42 thing—and I'm glad the new Mets stadium will have a kind of shrine to Robinson—but I'll try not to make too much of the puzzling behavior of the Yankees.

Photo: David Marc Fischer