Thanks to Marty Chase for passing this along.

John Rabe of Southern California Public Radio did a piece on Jim Becker, the last surviving member of the press who covered Jackie Robinson’s first game in Brooklyn in 1947. He covered the game for the Associated Press.

People will get one view of history with the movie 42. Here’s another from a reporter who was there 66 years ago today:

Although he was a cub reporter, the AP assigned him to accompany a beat writer to New York for the event because Becker was from LA and was familiar with Robinson from his college days.

Becker says he arrived at Ebbets Field about an hour and a half before the game started, and went down onto the field to watch batting practice. “The players were coming out of the Brooklyn dressing room one or two at a time,” he said. “I looked over and saw this very black man in those starched white uniforms they used to wear, and I looked him and I thought this magnificent athlete, this courageous man, is carrying the banner of decency and dignity and fair play … he’s carrying it for all of us.”

Becker recalled the New York press, especially Red Smith, was for the move. However, it hardly was universal with visiting reporters.

When the Reds came to town a couple weeks later, Cincinnati’s Tom Swope, reportedly a virulent racist, ‘looked around, and he said, “You’re a bunch of (N-word)-loving Jew Commie bastards,” and somebody knocked him down. And his glasses flew and he picked himself up and he picked up his glasses, and he walked back to his seat, and nobody said a thing.’

And finally from Becker:

“The day sent chills up my spine, and 66 years later it still does. I always said his failure would have been our failure, but the victory was his.”