42

[Petertherock]

I saw the movie 42 this past Sunday. It's about Jackie Robinson and everything he went through breaking into major league baseball. The manager of either Pittsburgh or Philly (can't remember which one) every time Robinson came up to bad would step onto the field by the dug out and yell at him saying, "Hey nigger nigger nigger!!! You don't belong here nigger nigger nigger!" It got so bad the second at bat after he got out for the second time in the game he went into the tunnel and smashed his bat into pieces and told his coach he was quitting. The coach gave him a pep talk and he went back out and the next at bat the manager for the other team went out and was yelling his "nigger nigger nigger" stuff and one of Robinson's teammates came out and went up to the manager and told him to get back in the dug out and shut his mouth or he would push it in.

Robinson ended up getting a hit and stealing 2 bases and scored what would eventually be the winning run.

He had people on his own team wanting to get traded because he was black. The commissioner of baseball suspended the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers because supposedly the Catholic Youth Organization found out the manager had an affair and demanded he be punished and the CYO buys lots of tickets for the games. But the only reason the manager was fired is because he supported Robinson.

All in all it was a decent movie...the only thing I didn't like is the owner of Brooklyn at the beginning of the movie said, "I'm a Methodist, Jackie's a Methodist, and God is a Methodist..." I said to myself, Isn't he going to get a big surprise when he dies. LOL!

[Archer]

Thanks for the review Pete. It looks good and I'd definitely like to see it on DVD.

[Bonaventure]

I'm not sure what exactly Leo Durocher did. It was either an affair, or, iirc, he remarried an actress and lived with her. I don't know if she was married. Durocher was a HOF quality manager.

It certainly shows how much the power the Catholic lobby had.

The Philly manager, Ben Chapman, blamed his lack of entry into the HOF, and the end of his career, on Robinson. The movie didn't exactly say what Chapman said, and neither did the papers at that time.


He didn't say "which one of these white women are you dating, Robinson." That's for sure.

[Mr. Mysterious]

Actually the movie had it wrong vis-a-vis Leo Durocher. It wasn't his affair with the actress that got him into trouble, it was the fact he was involved with the gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel who was rubbed out just a couple of months after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier on June 20, 1947.

[OCLittleFlower]

My dad saw it and really liked it -- maybe we will Redbox it.