Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season

Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season, is a book by Jonathan Eig originally published in 2007. It is primarily about Jackie Robinson and the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers. It spends a few chapters on Robinson's life prior to 1947 and contains an epilogue summing up his later life, as well as covering other related side stories, such as coverage of the 1947 New York Yankees who would go on to face Brooklyn in the 1947 World Series. Eig aims to present a more nuanced picture of Robinson's first season in the majors, trying to show that Dixie Walker was not a cardboard villain or that Pee Wee Reese was not a major support for Robinson in 1947 (regardless of their later friendship).

The book does try to delve too deeply into the motives of those it chronicles. For instance, it mentions Jackie's brother Mack wearing his Olympic Jacket while working as a street sweeper and says it was "an act of either remarkable provocation or extreme self-pity." Couldn't it have been pride at what he had accomplished in athletics? Eig also says that Hank Thompson and Willard Brown played on the same game on June 20th when it was really July 20th, a minor error.

Further Reading

• Jonathan Eig: Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY, 2007.