What I Learned from Jackie Robinson: A Teammate's Reflections on and off the Field by Carl Erskine, Duke Snider, Burton Rocks

Synopsis

AN INTIMATE LOOK AT JACKIE ROBINSON'S FIGHT FOR EQUALITY, FROM FORMER TEAMMATE AND LONGTIME FRIEND CARL ERSKINE

"Jackie needed to quell his anger the first couple of years, a task which only someone of this inner strength and vision could have coped with at that moment. When I reflect and wonder what it must have been like for a man who should have been at the happiest of moments in his life, to still have to deal with racial indignities on a daily basis, it is mind-boggling. Most mortal men would have cracked."--Carl Erskine, from the book

Jackie Robinson changed the game of baseball forever when he paved the way for equality in sports. In What I Learned from Jackie Robinson, former teammate and friend Carl Erskine shares his memories of Jackie's crusade in a loving social memoir.

Written with New York Times bestselling coauthor Burton Rocks and filled with personal photos, this moving portrait of friendship takes readers for the first time inside the locker room, inside the soul of Jackie, and inside the hearts of his friends, teammates, and oppressors. As a former Dodger, with access to the important people from Jackie's life, Erskine talks with Robinson's widow and also shares memories about:

Yogi Berra

Whitey Ford

Sandy Koufax

Stan Musial

Pee Wee Reese

Roy Campanella

Don Drysdale

Billy Martin

and many other players, coaches, sportswriters, and entertainers who remembered Jackie on and off the field. A retrospective on a man who fought for his cause until death, this memoir is a testament to the man and the game that brought the world together when it was fallingapart.

Carl Erskine played twelve seasons with the Dodgers. Following his retirement in 1960, he returned to Anderson College in Indiana to coach baseball for twelve seasons, during which time his teams won four Hoosier College Conference championships and earned an appearance in the NAIA College World Series. He continues to be a community leader, participating in numerous organizations and businesses.

Burton Rocks is the coauthor, with former New York Yankee Paul O'Neill, of the New York Times bestseller Me and My Dad.

Library Journal

Having twirled a pair of no-hitters, been a 20-game winner, and set a World Series single-game strikeout record, Erskine became one of the greatest of the Boys of Summer, the Brooklyn Dodgers team that dominated the National League from the late 1940s until the final season at Ebbets Field in 1957. Here, Erskine praises Dodger teammate Jackie Robinson unreservedly, highlighting his impact on organized baseball and his challenge to color barriers and racial stereotypes in postwar America. It was Robinson's example, Erskine says, that allowed his own son Jimmy, born with Down syndrome, to confront "the bitterness of rejection." For general libraries. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Biography

Carl Erskine played twelve seasons with the Dodgers. Following his retirement in 1960, he returned to Anderson College in Indiana to coach baseball for twelve seasons, during which time his teams won four Hoosier College Conference championships and earned an appearance in the NAIA College World Series. He continues to be a community leader, participating in numerous organizations and businesses.

Burton Rocks is the coauthor, with former New York Yankee Paul O'Neill, of the New York Times bestseller Me and My Dad.