Sports

Decision To Sign Jackie Robinson Has Catholic Ties

Photo courtesy LOOK Magazine
Photo courtesy LOOK Magazine

On Page 108 of Diocese of Immigrants: The Brooklyn Catholic Experience, 1853-2003, an interesting fact is revealed about Jackie Robinson’s breaking of baseball’s color barrier in 1947, explored in the new movie “42.” Msgr. Raymond Campion, then the pastor of St. Peter Claver parish, Bedford-Stuyvesant, is said to have influenced Brooklyn Dodgers’ owner Branch Rickey to sign Robinson in the mid-1940s.