Jackie Robinson knew that his behavior and his alone could determine for the league and for the country whether or not blacks and whites would ever be able to assemble together. He had to be unflappable.

I first met Jackie as a 13-year-old insecure kid at Grossinger's, the famous resort hotel in New York's Catskill Mountains owned by members of my family.

My wife, a career fashionista, has a name for grown men who actually appear attractive when adorned in a sports jersey. She calls them "professional athletes!"

Over time, not surprisingly, the story of Jackie Robinson, has surpassed the memory of Jackie Robinson as a player. Robinson was, however, a great player, and an unusual one.

More than two decades before the civil rights legislation of the 60s and more than ten years before the Supreme Court's 1954 decision -- a quiet drama was beginning in Brooklyn, a drama that one observer later would call "perhaps the most visible single desegregation action ever taken."

BOSTON -- Everybody in uniform at the Tampa Bay Rays game Monday against the Red Sox at Fenway Park wore the number "42" as Major League Baseball cele...

I'm glad that a whole new generation will be inspired by Robinson, who first inspired me more than 60 years ago when I was a boy heading to Ebbets Field with my father to watch the Brooklyn Dodgers face the New York Yankees in the World Series.

The kid looking at the camera, the kid Jackie Robinson seems to be looking at? Meet Eddie Dweck.

On March 4, 1946, Jackie Robinson arrived for his first day of spring training in Sanford, Florida, with the Montreal Royals, the Brooklyn Dodgers' AAA team. He was trying to become the first player in six decades to make the roster of a Major League team.