Letters to Tom — Baseball

Dear Tom:

Today begins MLB’s baseball’s second season — league playoffs leading up to the World Series. The best of this year’s teams face-off. Ace pitches against ace, the best hitters face the game’s top pitchers, and great fielding plays or errors can turn a series. I love watching. Therefore it is approriate to discuss the words of one of baseball’s greats — Jackie Robinson

Jackie said, “… imperfections are human. But that wherever human beings were given room to breathe and time to think, these imperfections would disappear, no matter how slowly.” Jackie believed whatever obstacles he found only made him fight all the harder. But he said he would have been impossible to overcome his obstacles, if he had not been sustained by the deep-rooted belief that his fight had a chance. Not once did he believe that the situation was so cast-iron rigid that he had no chance at all. He believed that in overcoming prejudice there is always a chance. “No guarantee, but a chance.”

Jackie believed there is nothing static with a free people. There is no logic so strong that it can stop the human tide from flowing forward. Jackie believed that what he was able to attain came to be because we put behind the dogmas of the past to discover the truth of today, and perhaps find the greatness of tommorow.

Jackie believed in man’s warm heart, integrity, and the goodness of a free society. His fight was against the barriers that kept, because of the color of his skin, him and many others out of major league baseball. This was the area where he found “imperfection.” He fought it because he knew he was not doomed in his fight against it. It couldn’t be a losing fight — it took place in a free society. Most of all Jackie believed that his faith in God sustained him in his fight.

As we begin the Playoffs our society faces many obstacles. We face new prejudices over gender, race, sexual orientation and religion to name a few. Yet our society is still free and thus no prejudice cannot be overcome. There are no immovable objects. There are still free minds and good hearts at work all around us. Thus, “what was done for me (Jackie), must and will be done for others.”

Your friend,

Webb

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About the author

Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of The United States. His novels, When Men Betray, Ginger Snaps, A Game of Inches, The Eighteenth Green, and The East End are published by Beaufort Books and are available online or at your local bookstore. When Men Betray won one of the IndieFab awards for best novel in 2014. Ginger Snaps and The Eighteenth Green won the IPPY Awards Gold Medal for best suspense/thriller. His latest, “Light of Day” will be on the bookstands soon.