by Kevin Burton
From something heinous, comes something great in Wichita. And who knows how far it will go?
The Statue of Jackie Robinson which was stolen Jan. 25 from McAdams Park in Wichita was found broken beyond repair and burning in a trash can at nearby Garvey Park Tuesday.
But yesterday Major League Baseball and its 30 affiliate clubs said they would pay to replace the statue. This is according to multiple national and international reports.
Robinson was the first black player allowed into the Major Leagues in the modern era, when he broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
He received countless honors during and after his Hall-of-Fame career for baseball excellence and for his work to improve race relations. This includes MLB retiring his number 42 throughout baseball in 1997.
Wichita had already rallied to replace the statue, led by Bob Lutz, founder of the nonprofit League 42, which put up the statue in 2021. A GoFundMe campaign had already raised more than $182,000.
League 42 is a youth baseball league comprised primarily by urban children aged 5-14 according to its website. Its name honors Robinson and his legacy.
“League 42 was founded in July 2013, to fill a void so that Wichita’s urban children could have an opportunity to play baseball without the exorbitant costs of playing in organized or even recreational leagues,” the website reads.
“We were able to field 16 teams, filled with just more than 200 players, for our first season in 2014. From there, the league has grown to nearly 600 kids and 44 teams. Our home is McAdams Park, a historical park in Wichita’s inner city where so many great athletes got their start, including Barry Sanders and Lynette Woodard.”
League 42 is the brainchild of Lutz, who for years was a Wichita Eagle sportswriter and columnist who covered everything, but most notably for me, the glory years of Wichita State basketball. These days he hosts a radio sports talk show.
Lutz and others have spoken of looking forward, not back, in the wake of the vandalism, and of putting up a statue that looks just like the one that was destroyed. I believe Wichita was well on its way to making it happen.
But it is fitting that MLB stepped up to the plate as it has. This incident, coming at the start of February, Black History Month, surely was meant as the latest demeaning of people of color. (Also Robinson’s birthday was Jan. 31, 1919.)
Whatever MLB will spend in Wichita is peanuts and cracker jack compared both to what it brings in in revenue each year and what it will gain in good will and good publicity.
Baseball got it right. And I doubt this is the end of the outpouring of support in the wake of the crime.
The estimated cost of the statue is $75,000. In addition to the statue’s replacement, MLB will provide League 42 with funding to support the nonprofit’s on-field and academic goals for its participants, according to the league’s announcement.
League 42 will use funds raised via GoFundMe to pay for more security and lighting around the podium for Robinson’s statue, reported CBS News.
Wichita Police on Monday located the pickup truck that was used to steal the statue, but have made no arrests.
There was an opinion piece in the Kansas City Star this week that spoke directly to racism as motivation for the criminals involved with the theft and destruction of the statue. I trust nobody seriously doubts this. But most of the on-the-record comments I have seen have spoken more to sorrow than to anger. Thank God for that. Bellicosity at this point is just what the racists would want.
Looking forward, as Lutz put it, is more in keeping with the character of Robinson.
“Jackie made us all stop and evaluate how we related to each other, which made it a very telling kind of experience,” Robinson’s Dodgers teammate Carl Erskine told The Athletic.
“Before that, there was a division between the races somewhat, and a lot of that had gone away. Jackie was an intelligent man, a college man; he was not a rabble-rouser or a troublemaker, but I think he just made us stop and check ourselves: ‘Where do we stand in this kind of situation?’
“Of course, the right-thinking people always took the position that we are all Americans and there’s no reason to separate us.”
Page 7 