“42,” August 28, 2015 (2013), DVD. Chadwick Boseman’s young, strong, incredibly talented Jackie Robinson enters the all-white bastion of major league baseball in 1946 at the behest of Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford in a fatsuit and prosthetic nose, and I’ve been told by some who saw him at the time, really like Rickey, but to me still Harrison Ford.) This is a sincere and solid, if not exciting, Hollywood tribute to men who act as they must in their moment to change the world a bit. Robinson, devoted family man, 4-sport letterman at UCLA, and WWII army officer must contain his anger at the abuses he confronts daily to play baseball at the highest level. Rickey acts to make money and to win. He knows the mine-field he’s entering. Both, knowingly and self-consciously, do what they do to change the world and play a part in the destruction of a social evil, apartheid in American life. It touches the high points of the battles, including Phillies manager Ben Chapman’s vicious racists taunting, the Enos Slaughter spiking, training camp threats, and the mythic stand by fellow southerner Pee Wee Reese in Cincinnati. It is one small step for humanity, one giant leap for baseball in the North. Some teams like the Boston Red Sox didn’t arrive at this point until more than a decade later (1959!) Racism in baseball did not evaporate after his arrival in the game as we all know and see every day. It’s a good, if commercial, reminder that the times don’t change on their own, people change them often late and slowly, but only if they act and act together. For a wilder and very funny look at race and baseball, check out the much underrated “The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings” (1976).
