On Jackie Robinson Day in 2022, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, “What he did was incredible, but we’ve got to do him right by keep going.”
On Jackie Robinson Day in 2023, Roberts said, “Jackie was chosen … to fight the fight for all of us.”
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On Jackie Robinson Day in 2024, Roberts said, “He had a big burden in his life to be a professional baseball player but to take on all this negativity, this hate towards him, his wife, his kids and still persevere.”
On Jackie Robinson Day in 2025, Roberts said, “Jackie knew that things were bigger than him. He had to stay the course, remain steadfast, to give people an opportunity.” That one rang a little different.
MLB once again celebrated Jackie Robinson Day on Tuesday, commemorating the 78th anniversary of the day the Dodgers legend made his big-league debut and broke the decades-old color barrier, a landmark moment at the beginning of the civil rights era.
The league has celebrated Jackie Robinson Day every year since 2004, with all players donning Robinson’s retired No. 42 in a tribute to the courage it took for him to join an all-white MLB knowing the scrutiny he would invite and the obstacles he would face. The holiday has never been a controversial one because Robinson hasn’t been a controversial topic in decades.
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It was a surprise, then, when the Trump administration took two actions last month that treated one of sports’ greatest heroes as a divisive figure. There was the time it erased an article about Robinson and his military history from the Department of Defense’s website and the time it flagged a Robinson biography for removal from the U.S. Naval Academy library.
In both cases, the administration cited its opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, releasing two statements blasting them after removing the article, then backtracked. The article was restored a day later, and no book about Robinson was in the list of books actually removed from the library.
What’s confusing in all of this is that the Trump administration never explained how Robinson was related to DEI, unless DEI is taken to mean the very idea that a Black man could be worth remembering. Robinson never benefited from diversity policies — if anything, he was the exact opposite of what detractors would define as “a DEI hire.” He was a massively overqualified, Hall of Fame talent who had to fight to get a job he deserved years earlier. He reached MLB not because of his race but in spite of it.
In response to all of that — a presidential administration lambasting baseball’s greatest hero as a DEI story — MLB and the Dodgers have said very little.
Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier when he debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. (Richard Meek/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
(Richard Meek via Getty Images)
What have the Dodgers said about Jackie Robinson?
Before Tuesday, the only known comment that any member of the Dodgers had made on the recent Robinson stories had come from Roberts, who only alluded to having “strong opinions on DEI” when asked about the removed article. Beyond that, there had been no statements or comments from the Dodgers or their leaders. A request for comment by Yahoo Sports last week did not receive a response.
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What the Dodgers have done is visit President Trump at the White House last week without pushing back on the Robinson-DEI premise. Roberts and Mookie Betts, who produced a Robinson documentary in 2022, shook Trump’s hand. Clayton Kershaw presented him with a “Trump 47” Dodgers jersey. No players on the active roster declined to attend.
That was despite Roberts saying in 2019 that he wouldn’t go to the White House to see Trump if the Dodgers hypothetically won the World Series and Betts declining to go when he won the World Series with the Boston Red Sox in 2018. Betts said before this year’s visit that he regretted not going with Boston, saying that he “made it about me.”
This time around, the team presented a united front built on the idea that they were all eager to visit the White House, with Dodgers president Stan Kasten saying all the players wanted to go. When asked about fans who were upset with the team’s decision, fan favorite utility man Kiké Hernández, who was highly critical of Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria in 2019, said, “they have the right to have an opinion.”
However, Hernández also described the White House visit as “kind of a lose-lose situation for me” in comments to radio reporter Dave Vassegh. It’s unclear how enthusiastic other Dodgers players were about visiting the White House, despite what Kasten said.
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Roberts defended the White House visit when asked Tuesday about criticism of it, saying that making the trip was about team unity:
“I don’t personally view at as talking out of both sides of our mouth. I understand how people feel that way, but I do think that supporting our country, staying unified, aligned, is what I believe in personally. I just believe in doing things the right way, and I think people are going to have their opinions on what we did last week, but I do know that we all stand unified, and we all have different stories and backgrounds and economic, political beliefs, but I was proud that we all stood together.”
However, the Dodgers did not present a united front in 2021, when they visited Joe Biden after the 2020 World Series, as reliever Blake Treinen declined to make that trip to the White House.
For the record, the Dodgers are 3-4 since visiting Trump after a 9-2 start.
And what has MLB done?
It should be noted that we don’t know what conversations were had among the Dodgers, MLB and the White House, which has made headline after headline with its willingness to illegally threaten businesses, schools and organizations if they don’t abide by the administration’s wishes. It’s conceivable that the team and/or the league were warned about consequences if they created negative headlines for the White House. The league has faced similar ramifications before, such as when GOP Senators introduced a bill to strip MLB of its antitrust exemption after the league moved the 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta over a bill that restricted voting rights.
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On the league office’s side, Trump’s influence in relation to Robinson was again felt when observers noticed that MLB had removed some language from its annual Jackie Robinson Day press release. Here’s what it said in 2024 (and 2023), with added emphasis:
“Robinson played his first Major League game at Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947 as a first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Major League Baseball has celebrated Jackie Robinson’s legacy in an extensive and unified League-wide show of support over the years, including retiring his number throughout the Majors in 1997, dedicating April 15th as Jackie Robinson Day each year since 2004, and requesting that every player and all on-field personnel wear his Number 42 during games scheduled on Jackie Robinson Day since 2009. Major League Baseball aims to educate all fans about Jackie Robinson, his life’s accomplishments and legacy, while spearheading initiatives that support communities and meaningfully address diversity and inclusion at all levels of our sport. For more information, please visit MLBTogether.com.”
Here’s what it said this year:
“Robinson played his first Major League game at Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947 as a first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Major League Baseball has celebrated Jackie Robinson’s legacy in an extensive and unified League-wide show of support over the years, including retiring his number throughout the Majors in 1997, dedicating April 15th as Jackie Robinson Day each year since 2004, and requesting that every player and all on-field personnel wear his Number 42 during games scheduled on Jackie Robinson Day since 2009. Major League Baseball aims to educate all fans about Jackie Robinson, his life’s accomplishments and legacy, while communicating his message at all levels of the sport. For more information, please visit MLBTogether.com.”
In short, the league removed mention of how it is fighting racism — from a press release dedicated to a man who spent his life courageously fighting racism. That was after it removed the word “diversity” from its careers page in response to an executive order against DEI programs, then said its “values on diversity remain unchanged.”
MLB teams were similarly hesitant to share the specifics of their diversity programs when asked by Bradford William Davis of the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, with 29 of 30 teams, including the Dodgers, declining to make a public comment.
What does Jackie Robinson mean to the Dodgers?
In all this, you see a team and a league dancing for approval where Robinson once stood firm, both when he broke the color barrier and when he received a court martial for defying an illegal order to move to the back of a military bus.
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MLB and the Dodgers will still say Robinson is important, yet they seem increasingly wary of explaining why that is. And from that, it’s visible what influence the Trump administration is exerting, as well as the fact that it’s working, because the Dodgers and MLB would evidently rather stay quiet than risk political repercussions.
Roberts was asked Tuesday about the removal of the Robinson article, and he said, “I’d like to think it’s a continued wake-up call for everyone and to take a step back and appreciate the people who shaped our country. This country needs a wake-up call.”
When asked what kind of wake-up call, he could only allude to Robinson facing something far more difficult in a bygone era:
“I think a wake-up call to the sacrifice — we’re talking about Jackie Robinson today, right? What he had to endure, what he had to go through, the hate, to continue to persevere for the greater good. And now, context on what’s hard in life, individually, is not even close to what’s happening in the ’60s and the ’70s and beyond.”
Conversely, NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a civil rights hero in his own right, suggested in a speech Tuesday to the Dodgers and Colorado Rockies that the fight against segregation goes on, via the Dodgers’ site:
“Jackie had an idea of what we had to confront,” he said. “We had to confront segregation. In many ways, we’re still confronting it. But it’s worth it. It certainly makes people respect us as a country when they see there is some tension there, and good people are trying to do the right thing.”
