True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson

by Kostya Kennedy

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Jackie Robinson is an iconic figure in sports and civil rights and has been written about many times before, but this new book from Kostya Kennedy zeroes in on four specific years. By digging into details previously unreported, Kennedy sheds welcome light on these transformative periods in Robinson's life.

True is a probing, richly-detailed, unique biography of Jackie Robinson, one of baseball's—and America's—most significant figures.

For players, fans, managers, and executives, Jackie Robinson remains baseball’s singular figure, the person who most profoundly extended, and continues to extend, the reach of the game. Beyond Ruth. Beyond Clemente. Beyond Aaron. Beyond the heroes of today. Now, a half-century since Robinson’s death, letters come to his widow, Rachel, by the score. But Robinson’s impact extended far beyond baseball: he opened the door for Black Americans to participate in other sports, and was a national figure who spoke and wrote eloquently about inequality.

True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson by Kostya Kennedy is an unconventional biography, focusing on four transformative years in Robinson's athletic and public life: 1946, his first year playing in the essentially all-white minor leagues for the Montreal Royals; 1949, when he won the Most Valuable Player Award in his third season as a Brooklyn Dodger; 1956, his final season in major league baseball, when he played valiantly despite his increasing health struggles; and 1972, the year of his untimely death. Through it all, Robinson remained true to the effort and the mission, true to his convictions and contradictions.

Kennedy examines each of these years through details not reported in previous biographies, bringing them to life in vivid prose and through interviews with fans and players who witnessed his impact, as well as with Robinson's surviving family. These four crucial years offer a unique vision of Robinson as a player, a father and husband, and a civil rights hero—a new window on a complex man, tied to the 50th anniversary of his passing and the 75th anniversary of his professional baseball debut.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250274045
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	13,035
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Kostya Kennedy is an editorial director at Meredith and a former Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated. He is the New York Times bestselling author of 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports (runner-up for the 2012 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing) and Pete Rose: An American Dilemma. Both won the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year. He has taught at Columbia and NYU, and lives with his wife and daughters in Westchester County, NY.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Spring/1946

Stance 3

Montreal 6

Before Montreal, Florida 20

Montreal, Midsummer 39

Had Robinson Gone Early to Brooklyn 49

A Letter in Atlanta 54

The Last of Robinson's Beginning 55

Part 2 Summer/1949

Basepaths 65

Brooklyn 73

Georgia 82

Brooklyn, The Streets 86

Feather 110

St. Albans 119

Part 3 Autumn/1956

Brooklyn 133

Boundless 152

Affinity 157

Brooklyn 165

Pat 4 Winter/1972

Gifts 187

Passages 189

Los Angeles to Cincinnati 203

Riverside 232

The Afterlife

Foundation 241

In Present Memory 249

Acknowledgments 259

Selected Bibliography 263

Index 269

Editorial Reviews

01/10/2022

Journalist Kennedy (Lasting Impact), a former Sports Illustrated editor, takes an idiosyncratic and heartfelt look at the enduring legacy of sports pioneer Jackie Robinson through four seminal chapters of his life. Beginning with the spring of 1946, Kennedy reports on Robinson’s time in the minor leagues as a member of the Montreal Royals. There, the field became a stage for Robinson’s athletic gifts—including his uniquely rigid batting stance, which, Kennedy writes, “may have been the most notable and influential of them all.” After joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 as the first Black man to play in Major League Baseball, Robinson delivered on the promise of his rookie year by being named the league’s MVP in the summer of 1949. The fall of 1956 saw Robinson’s career end on a down note: he struck out in his final at-bat for the Dodgers, ending the World Series against the Yankees. With the winter of 1972 came the retirement of Robinson’s number, 42, and his death from a heart attack. Lyrical throughout, Kennedy’s narrative radiates with reverence and ends on a resonant note with his description of Robinson’s funeral procession in Harlem: “ gathered thick along the sidewalks.... There was a time in many of lives when Jackie Robinson carried the brightest light of hope.” Baseball fans shouldn’t miss this. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"This is a marvelous addition to the library on the ever-important, ever-enigmatic Jackie Robinson, one of the towering figures in the Civil Rights Movement. Kennedy has given us four remarkable ‘snapshots’ of Jackie at this most brave and vulnerable moment."
-- Ken Burns, filmmaker

"True is a captivating reminder of Jackie Robinson’s greatness not only as a baseball player and trailblazer, but also as a fearless activist for the equal rights and fair treatment of all people. Reading it, I said to myself time and again: “I wish I could have met him.”
--John Grisham

"In these latter days, when Jackie Robinson's titanic sports legacy can be expressed in more nuanced human terms, and in terms of the struggle for human rights, Kennedy's restrained, patient, immensely readable biography might well be where a younger generation -- grown curious about the great Robinson -- can commence."
--Richard Ford

"There has been so much written and said about Jackie Robinson that one might think that there is nothing left to say. But Kostya Kennedy's True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson not only offers an innovative approach to biographical writing but fresh insights and information about Robinson. Even what we thought we knew is cast in a new context. An absolutely fascinating and compelling read. A truly masterful book."
--Gerald Early, author of A Level Playing Field: African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports

"Once again, the excellent Kostya Kennedy has found a unique way of vivifying the life of one of baseball's most imposing figures. But, unlike his previous biographies of Joe DiMaggio and Pete Rose, this one is devoted to someone whose impact on the game -- and on our national culture -- has only intensified since his playing days. True befits the greatness of the man whose life it chronicles."
--Daniel Okrent, author of Nine Innings, Last Call, Great Fortune (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History), and The Guarded Gate

"The 75th anniversary of the day Jackie Robinson became the first Black man to play in the Major Leagues is the perfect time to remember a great baseball player and an even greater American. Kostya Kennedy’s True tells Robinson’s story beautifully, a sweeping narrative rich in detail and full of riveting and important stories that should be told and retold for generations."
--Christine Brennan, USA Today sports columnist and bestselling author of Inside Edge

"Lyrical throughout, Kennedy's narrative radiates with reverence.” --Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

★ 03/01/2022

American baseball has seen some truly legendary players. While they all left their mark on the sport, few had the impact that Jackie Robinson did on the game and on society. Robinson's impact transcended baseball because he broke the color barrier in 1947. Even now, 75 years after his first at bat, Robinson's importance cannot be overstated. In this latest work, Kennedy (56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports) has written an unconventional biography of the baseball legend. The author writes about the four most important years of Robinson's life, spanning the time from Branch Rickey's signing him to the Brooklyn Dodgers to the athlete's final years as a second baseman—all while Robinson endured racism from fellow athletes, opposing teams, and baseball fans. Kennedy notes that Robinson was not only an incredible baseball player but also an outstanding person who endured much throughout his life and career and paved the way for so many athletes today. The inclusion of occasional photographs and illustrations is a bonus. VERDICT A fantastic, well-written biography; fans of baseball and of Robinson's career (on or off the field) must read this captivating book.—Gus Palas

Library Journal

2022-01-11
An appreciative biography of Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) and his role in the integration of Major League Baseball.

When he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1962, notes Kennedy, editorial director at Meredith and a former Sports Illustrated senior writer, Robinson “asked that his plaque make no mention of his role in integrating baseball.” The diffidence is curious, since Robinson famously faced court-martial while serving in the Army for refusing to vacate a bus seat reserved for Whites—10 years before Rosa Parks—and had been an active supporter of and fundraiser for the civil rights movement. Indeed, as the author shows, Robinson was a first in many ways—especially as the first Black player to work in MLB in the 20th century, by the design of executive Branch Rickey, who believed that the time had come for the sport to show the rest of American society the way to treat all citizens equally. Regrettably, as Kennedy writes, the lessons were hard-won. Robinson may have been an equal on the field, but when the Brooklyn Dodgers traveled, Robinson often dined alone in his hotel room, discouraged or forbidden from entering Whites-only dining areas. Even in the supposed racial haven of Canada, where Robinson played while being groomed in the minor leagues, he encountered the “clear marginalization of Black Montrealers, the small-in-numbers populace who lived for the most part in particular areas of town, who stayed only in particular hotels or rooming houses, who found jobs in labor and service.” Robinson didn’t go out of his way to make waves, nor did his friend and fellow Black player Roy Campanella, who insisted, “I’m no crusader.” Yet, in his quiet determination, Robinson opened numerous doors. There’s not much new in Kennedy’s life of Robinson, but it’s always good to be reminded of his greatness and significance in any big-picture view of modern America.

A sturdy combination of sportswriting and social history.

Kirkus Reviews