Jackie Robinson Day

On a night where Jose Valverde went into the 9th with a 3-run lead and came out with a loss, it's easy to get swept up in the emotions of baseball.

But 61 years ago today Jackie Robinson used baseball to literally change the course of America. 10 years before Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting on a bus, Jackie went through the same ordeal (including a court-martial for insubordination) in the Army. 7 years before Brown vs. the Board of Education, Jackie suited up in a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform and single-handedly changed how much of America saw African-Americans. He received death threats everywhere he went, fastballs to the head, spikes to the knee, tags to the mouth and not once did he fight back with anything other than courage and a high batting average and the career record for stealing home.

Jackie Robinson is the reason baseball is as integrated today as it is. The reason that kids' favorite players come from 30 different countries and almost half of minor-league baseball was born outside of the United States. Jackie Robinson sacrificed his health and what would have been a fine career in either the military or any other sport (he was UCLA's first African-American to letter in four sports) to integrate baseball and society.

Jackie Robinson did it all in the name of equality and fairness, for everybody. And he did it alone.