CIVIL RIGHTS STORY HAS PASADENA CONNECTION 'NATIONAL PASTIME' STEPS UP TO THE PLATE.

Byline: Vicki Smith Paluch

Correspondent

Sixty years ago, an African-American, college-educated, multitalented athlete -- Jackie Robinson -- broke through the color barrier that had once forced Negroes to play baseball in a league of their own.

But on April 15, 1947, the former Pasadena resident became the first black to enter Major League baseball, playing first base at Ebbets Field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Los Angeles City College Theatre Academy and the Jackie Robinson Foundation have joined together to celebrate the courage of Robinson and that of the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey. Both men fought for civil rights before the term became part of the national consciousness.

Bryan Harnetiaux's moving play, "National Pastime," opens Friday at the Caminito Theatre on the Los Angeles City College campus.

The play not only honors Robinson's life as a baseball great, it reminds us of the human indignities suffered by blacks during the reign of Jim Crow.

Guest artists Al Rossi, Louie Piday and James Hurley will be featured along with nine advanced students from the LACC Theatre Academy during the play's six-performance run, which ends March 24.

"This is one of the greatest stories of our culture, and people don't know about it," said Harnetiaux during a telephone interview from his home in Spokane, Wash. "Our battle against racism, it remains our single most important issue."

Harnetiaux, 59, was born in Pasadena the year Robinson broke the color barrier. During his childhood and adolescence, Harnetiaux and his family moved to various cities in the San Gabriel Valley. After graduating in 1965 from Bishop Amat High School in La Puente, he moved to the Northwest to attend college. He stayed, becoming a lawyer who tried civil rights cases in the 1970s. He has since curtailed his legal career to appellate work and teaching so he can concentrate on writing plays.

"I've written 30 plays, but this one was the most compelling. I knew I must try to write the play and that I must get it right," recalled Harnetiaux, who wrote "National Pastime" in 1997.

Harnetiaux had been reading Arnold Rampersed's book "Jackie Robinson: A Biography" for his own relaxation while he was writing another play.

"The story of breaking the color line, it grabbed me by the throat," he recalled. "I set the other play aside. I grew up in L.A. when the Dodgers came here. I was a Jackie follower. I'm a lawyer, as was Branch Rickey.

"And I care a lot about civil rights. The playwright in me just had to tell this story."

A 28-year-old South Pasadena resident, John Christopher, is portraying black sports columnist Wendell Smith in the production. Christopher grew up in Austin, Texas, where he said he experienced racial taunts and jeers when he played high-school football.

Working on this play, Christopher said, has been an eye-opener.

"I knew as much about Jackie Robinson as anyone else. During Black History Month in school, we learned that he was the first black to play Major League baseball. I didn't know about his struggle to get there," said Christopher, who lives just a few blocks away from the Fremont Theatre, where the play had its professional premiere in 2005.

As Wendell Smith, Christopher serves as a narrator of the events leading up to Robinson breaking the color barrier. His character also participates in the drama, serving as an advocate for the integration of baseball and as a personal friend of Robinson.

Robinson moved to Pasadena with his mother and four siblings, leaving Georgia in the 1930s. He was a remarkable athlete. As a student at Pasadena Junior College, he lettered in football, baseball and track. In 1939, Robinson transferred to UCLA, where he became the only person to letter in four sports -- basketball, football, baseball and track.

"Long before Rosa Parks, Robinson was arrested in 1944 for failing to sit at the back of a public shuttle bus he was taking from the military base at Camp Hood, Texas, into town," said Harnetiaux.

After the bus incident, he was court-martialed for insubordination and being uncooperative with the military police. He was acquitted after a long trial.

At age 26, Robinson joined the Negro League, playing for the Kansas City Monarchs, where the famed Satchel Paige was pitcher. Paige wanted to break the color barrier, but he was considered too old and some believed he would not have been able to handle the abuse of the white spectators at games.

Rickey had long recognized the social and economic value to integrating baseball. He just had to find the right player.

Robinson and Rickey met on Aug. 15, 1946, at the Brooklyn Dodgers offices, where Rickey tested Robinson to determine if he could take the heat that would come if he broke the color barrier.

"Rickey played the bigot to the hilt to see if Jackie would take the bait," Harnetiaux said. "He didn't. Rickey sent Robinson to the Dodgers' farm club in Montreal."

At the first exhibition game before the opening of the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers' season, no one knew if Robinson was going to play for Brooklyn or Montreal. When his name was announced as the first baseman for the Dodgers, a torrent of racial epithets rained upon the first Negro player on the white Brooklyn Dodgers.

He didn't get angry; he got even by playing brilliantly. As Rickey said, in baseball "only box scores count."

"He suffered tremendous abuse for three or four years, and yet he was voted Rookie of the Year," Christopher said. "He could have fought, but he endured it from a calculated, intellectual perspective. He had integrity and pushed the envelope when he could."

Robinson played for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1947 to 1956. He was inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame in 1962. He died at age 53.

"Long before Brown v. Board of Education, the Voting Rights Act, Miz (Rosa) Parks, there was Jackie," Harnetiaux writes in the play's last scene.

"Before Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, the march on Washington, Memphis, there was Jackie."

NATIONAL PASTIME

What: Portrays Jackie Robinson as a civil rights leader.

Where: Los Angeles City College's Caminito Theatre, 855 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles.

When: 8 p.m. Friday and March 23; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and March 24; 7:15 p.m. March 21 and 22.

Tickets: $10. Call [phone].

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Photo:

"National Pastime," opening Friday at Los Angeles City College, tells the story of former Pasadena resident Jackie Robinson (Egbert Bernard, right), who joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, becoming the first black to play Major League baseball.