significance for the first time; he started to teach Sunday school. After a punishing football game on Saturday, Jack admitted, he yearned to sleep late; “but no matter how terrible I felt, I had to get up. It was impossible to shirk duty when Karl Downs was involved.” The young minister, with his love of athletics and his easy manner, was also a pleasure to be around. “Karl Downs had the ability to communicate with you spiritually,” Jack declared, “and at the same time he was fun to be with. He participated with us in our sports. Most important he knew how to listen. Often when I was deeply concerned about personal crises, I went to him.”
In his last autobiography,
I Never Had It Made,
Robinson then mentions only one problem or crisis that he brought to Downs: his relationship to his mother, her long hours of menial work, and his own inability to help her end this cycle of toil. “When I talked with Karl about this and other problems,” he wrote, “he helped ease some of my tensions. It wasn’t so much what he did to help as the fact that he was interested and concerned enough to offer the best advice he could.” The relationship between his minister, his mother, and Jack himself was crucial. As a young man, vibrant, educated, articulate, and brave, Downs became a conduit through which Mallie’s message of religion and hope finally flowed into Jack’s consciousness and was fully accepted there, if on revised terms, as he himself reached manhood. Faith in God then began to register in him as both a mysterious force, beyond his comprehension, and a pragmatic way to negotiate the world. A measure of emotional and spiritual poise such as he had never known at last entered his life.
Looking back in 1949 on his youth, Jack would point out as a major turning point in his life his relatively late understanding of the crucial role his mother played in it—that “there was somebody else in this world beside little me.” The turning point had come “all of a sudden in junior college.… It made me realize there was somebody battling and pushing us along. With a mother like that a fellow just had to make good.” Acknowledging at last the moral victory Mallie had made of her life despite her dreary job and country ways, Jack came to see the strength from knowing“that I had a lot of faith in God.… There’s nothing like faith in God to help a fellow who gets booted around once in a while.”
Downs also gave Robinson his first inspired sense of a reliable future vocation. From about this point in his life, Jack knew that when the cheering stopped, as he understood it would, he would seek to become a coach, or to serve in some other intimate capacity with young people, especially young black people, to try to shape their lives as his life had been shaped by his mother and by Karl Downs.
W HEN THE BASEBALL SEASON STARTED , Jack was now an established star of the Bulldogs. His hitting was assured; his fielding was brilliant; his base running set him apart from all other players. In one play that astonished a sportswriter, Robinson found himself apparently trapped by fielders between second and third base; but when he saw the shortstop drop the ball, “instead of stopping at third, the dusky flash, noting that home was uncovered, went all the way to score.” Early in April, riding a thirteen-game winning streak, PJC climbed atop their division. In the process, Jack had made his mark. On May 1, when he was named to the All-Southland Junior College team, he was also selected as the Most Valuable Player in the region. The next day, he celebrated by going five-for-six and stealing two bases against Los Angeles Junior College.
On May 7, the sporting legend of young Jackie Robinson grew even more imposing. Arriving late for a vital division game against Glendale Junior College in Glendale, Robinson had one hit and stole a base in a PJC victory. But he had a good reason to be tardy. Earlier that day, in Pomona, about
In his last autobiography,
I Never Had It Made,
Robinson then mentions only one problem or crisis that he brought to Downs: his relationship to his mother, her long hours of menial work, and his own inability to help her end this cycle of toil. “When I talked with Karl about this and other problems,” he wrote, “he helped ease some of my tensions. It wasn’t so much what he did to help as the fact that he was interested and concerned enough to offer the best advice he could.” The relationship between his minister, his mother, and Jack himself was crucial. As a young man, vibrant, educated, articulate, and brave, Downs became a conduit through which Mallie’s message of religion and hope finally flowed into Jack’s consciousness and was fully accepted there, if on revised terms, as he himself reached manhood. Faith in God then began to register in him as both a mysterious force, beyond his comprehension, and a pragmatic way to negotiate the world. A measure of emotional and spiritual poise such as he had never known at last entered his life.
Looking back in 1949 on his youth, Jack would point out as a major turning point in his life his relatively late understanding of the crucial role his mother played in it—that “there was somebody else in this world beside little me.” The turning point had come “all of a sudden in junior college.… It made me realize there was somebody battling and pushing us along. With a mother like that a fellow just had to make good.” Acknowledging at last the moral victory Mallie had made of her life despite her dreary job and country ways, Jack came to see the strength from knowing“that I had a lot of faith in God.… There’s nothing like faith in God to help a fellow who gets booted around once in a while.”
Downs also gave Robinson his first inspired sense of a reliable future vocation. From about this point in his life, Jack knew that when the cheering stopped, as he understood it would, he would seek to become a coach, or to serve in some other intimate capacity with young people, especially young black people, to try to shape their lives as his life had been shaped by his mother and by Karl Downs.
W HEN THE BASEBALL SEASON STARTED , Jack was now an established star of the Bulldogs. His hitting was assured; his fielding was brilliant; his base running set him apart from all other players. In one play that astonished a sportswriter, Robinson found himself apparently trapped by fielders between second and third base; but when he saw the shortstop drop the ball, “instead of stopping at third, the dusky flash, noting that home was uncovered, went all the way to score.” Early in April, riding a thirteen-game winning streak, PJC climbed atop their division. In the process, Jack had made his mark. On May 1, when he was named to the All-Southland Junior College team, he was also selected as the Most Valuable Player in the region. The next day, he celebrated by going five-for-six and stealing two bases against Los Angeles Junior College.
On May 7, the sporting legend of young Jackie Robinson grew even more imposing. Arriving late for a vital division game against Glendale Junior College in Glendale, Robinson had one hit and stole a base in a PJC victory. But he had a good reason to be tardy. Earlier that day, in Pomona, about
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