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Robinson played first base during his first season with the Dodgers. But he spent the most successful years of his career playing second base. He also played third base and the outfield. Robinson was an outstanding hitter and finished with a .311 lifetime batting average. He was also an excellent base stealer. In 1947, he was named Rookie of the Year. In 1949, he won the National League's Most Valuable Player award. That year, he also won the league's batting championship with a .342 average.

First black player in major league baseball. Played football with Honolulu Bears, 1941; played on Kansas City Monarchs baseball team, Negro National League, 1945; signed with Montreal Royals, late 1945; professional baseball player with the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947-56. Had career batting average of .311 with the Dodgers; compiled .333 batting average as National League All-Star; helped Dodgers win six National League pennants and one World Series. Served as executive for Chock Full O'Nuts restaurant chain, and insurance, food-franchising, and interracial construction firms, beginning in late-1950s. chairman of the board of Freedom National Bank in Harlem; member of the New York State Athletic Commission. Author of autobiography I Never Had It Made, 1972.

$12,500 contract (equal to $123,321 today)

Freedom National Bank

The impact Robinson made on Major League Baseball is one that will be forever remembered. On April 15 each season, every team in the majors celebrates Jackie Robinson Day in honor of when he truly broke the color barrier in baseball, becoming the first African-American player in the 20th century to take the field in the big leagues. He opened the door for many others and will forever be appreciated for his contribution to the game.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia. The youngest of five children, Robinson was raised in relative poverty by a single mother. He attended John Muir High School and Pasadena Junior College, where he was an excellent athlete and played four sports: football, basketball, track, and baseball. He was named the region's Most Valuable

In the fall of 1618, three comets appeared. A book by a prominent Jesuit argued that the comets followed orbits close to those of planets, although they had short lifetimes. Galileo knew the comets moved in almost straight line motion much of the time. As usual, Galileo could not conceal his contempt of the incorrect views of others:

Paul V

One more source of tension between Galileo and the Jesuits arose at this point. Since 1611, Galileo had been observing the motion of sunspots: small dark spots on the surface of the sun, easily visible through a telescope at sunset. They were observed independently at about the same time by Christopher Scheiner, a German Jesuit from Ingoldstadt.(It is possible that Scheiner had somehow heard of Galileo's observations.)Scheiner thought they were small dark objects circling the sun at some distance, Galileo correctly surmised they were actually on the sun's surface, another blow to the perfect incorruptibility of a heavenly body. Galileo published his findings in 1613, with a preface asserting his priority of discovery. This greatly upset Scheiner. About this time, some members of another order of the Church, the Dominicans, were becoming aware of the Copernican world view, and began to preach against it. In 1613, Father Nicolo Lorini, a professor of ecclesiastical history in Florence, inveighed against the new astronomy, in particular "Ipernicus". (Sant p 25). He wrote a letter of apology after being reproved. In 1614, another Dominican, Father Tommaso Caccini, who had previously been reprimanded for rabble-rousing, preached a sermon with the text "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into the heaven?" He attacked mathematicians, and in particular Copernicus. (In the popular mind, mathematician tended to mean astrologer.) It should be added that these two were by no means representative of the order as a whole. The Dominican Preacher General, Father Luigi Maraffi, wrote Galileo an apology, saying "unfortunately I have to answer for all the idiocies that thirty or forty thousand brothers may or actually do commit".

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This was the second time that Galileo was in the hot seat for refusing to accept Church orthodoxy that the Earth was the immovable center of the universe: In 1616, he had been forbidden from holding or defending his beliefs. In the 1633 interrogation, Galileo denied that he “held” belief in the Copernican view but continued to write about the issue and evidence as a means of “discussion” rather than belief. The Church had decided the idea that the Sun moved around the Earth was an absolute fact of scripture that could not be disputed, despite the fact that scientists had known for centuries that the Earth was not the center of the universe.

Copernicus was not the first to advance this heliocentric idea. Several ancient Greeks, including the astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, had proposed it about 260 B.C. Like Galileo, he was denounced for impiety but apparently unharmed. Aristarchus could advance no proof for the heliocentric idea, however, and it went into hibernation.

On June 22, 1633, Galileo Galilei was put on trial at Inquisition headquarters in Rome. All of the magnificent power of the Roman Catholic Church seemed arrayed against the famous scientist. Under threat of torture, imprisonment and even burning at the stake, he was forced, on his knees, to "abjure, curse and detest" a lifetime of brilliant and dedicated thought and labor.

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.