ROBINSON'S VOICE IS LETTER PERFECT.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH

MEDIA

Michael Long was digging through the National Archives in Laguna Beach two years ago, researching a book project about former President Richard Nixon and evangelist Billy Graham.

Before he knew what hit him, Long became a Jackie Robinson fan.

An archivist showed Long a file they had kept full of Robinson's correspondence with Nixon that went back to the late '50s. Long, an assistant professor of religious studies at Elizabethtown (Pa.) College who had done books on politics and religion but nothing even remotely related to sports, said he felt as if someone had dropped "gems in my lap" as he immersed himself in Robinson's words about pursuing social justice.

But now, what to do with all this?

Long went back to his Anaheim hotel room. Not much of a sports fan, he happened to flip the TV on to ESPN. There, he saw another story involving an athlete gone bad.

"It was really an epiphanic moment," Long said. "The contrast between these athletes and Jackie could not have been more striking, or disappointing. Who other than Jackie Robinson, a national icon, to show there's still a need for a role model in the world of athletics?"

The result, after dozens more archive searches and the approval of Rachel Robinson, is the new book, "The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson: First Class Citizenship" (Times Books/Henry Holt and Company, $26, 384 pages).

Sixty years after he broke baseball's color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and 35 years after his death, Robinson's voice comes alive with pointed passion, direct anger, admitted frustration and unbowed determination as simply a person who wanted a better world for everyone.

Long found Robinson correspondence with JohnF.Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Malcolm X and Martin Luther KingJr. that focused on the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, segregation and discrimination.

Robinson and Nixon first met in 1952 at the Republican National Convention. Nixon shared a memory he had of Robinson playing football for UCLA in 1939. Robinson was more impressed with Nixon's pro-civil rights statements and ended up supporting him in the 1960 presidential campaign.

Robinson, however, would not side with either Republicans or Democrats in his quest for equality. He stumped for LBJ in '64, Nelson Rockefeller in '68 and Hubert Humphrey in '72. Robinson had respect for Kennedy but was critical of his motives. Robinson wasn't afraid to call Barry Goldwater a "bigot" and "white supremacist" during the '64 campaign, or to exchange ideas with Malcolm X about the right way for African Americans to have a voice in politics.

Robinson wrote to everyone, it seemed. In today's world of e-mails and text messages, it may be difficult to imagine how anyone left as much of an historic paper trail.

One letter in 1956 went to Bill Keefe, sports editor of the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, who had written an editorial suggesting Robinson was the catalyst for a new Louisiana law that criminalized interracial sports.

"I am happy for you, that you were born white," Robinson concludes. "It would have been extremely difficult for you had it been otherwise."

The book also sheds more on Robinson's departure from the Dodgers in 1957, when he choose to retire rather than be traded to the rival Giants. Dodgers general manager Buzzie Bavasi wrote to Robinson in '71 asking his thoughts about the Hall of Fame's decision to only allow one former Negro League player in per year. Robinson responded in agreement, and added: "Your action justifies the way I thought of you before the 1957 misunderstanding."

Robinson writes to Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley in '62, admitting his loyalty to Branch Rickey and his "being stubborn" had probably led to a deterioration in his relationship with the team after Rickey left.

Mark Langill, the Dodgers' team historian, said of the book: "I'm glad those other letters are being published because all the letters I've seen from Jackie over the years are always very thoughtful, insightful and sincere, no matter the topic."

Long, who never did his Nixon-Graham book, is more satisfied with this result.

"One of the disappointing things about the 60th anniversary of his breaking the color barrier was so much was ignored about his civil rights work outside of baseball," said Long. "It's easier to look at a smiling Robinson rather than one who was angry and wanted to change society. We've sort of sanitized him and kept him frozen in time. This expands his legacy with a new perspective.

"The media these days focuses so much on the negativity of sports. This is a positive story that Robinson reminds us of. It's really a story about the American dream in many ways."

A candid Cablecam explanation

In the hundreds of football games over the past half-dozen years that Cablecam has operated the remote-control overhead camera that zips around on wires high above the field, nothing really has gone terribly wrong.

Then came NBC's telecast Sunday night from Seattle of the Seahawks- Saints game, when 10 minutes into the contest, the company's 100-pound gyroscopic gizmo came gliding to the ground and spiked itself.

Play-by-play man Al Michaels tried to explain to the national audience that it was "something that almost never happens, but once in awhile it does."

Jim Rodnunsky, the camera's inventor, summed it up in more simple terms.

"When you want toast, you plug in the toaster -- this was a simple case of human error where someone forgot to turn the motor back on," said Rodnunsky, whose Chatsworth-based high-tech company provides the overhead cameras to NFL games on NBC, Fox and CBS, as well as sharing jobs on college games with competitor SkyCam, out of Tulsa, Okla.

In his 20-plus years running the company (www.cablecam.com), Rodnunsky has won six Emmy Awards for sports broadcasting and two Academy Awards for technical achievement, with his equipment used at events such as the Super Bowl, Kentucky Derby, NASCAR events and the Winter Olympics.

He said that during a timeout in the Seahawks-Saints game, a crew member made an adjustment to the camera. Then it was never turned back on.

"We're all kicking ourselves, because that's pretty dumb," said Rodnunsky, who has now rigged an LED light on top of all eight of his $100,000 overhead cameras to visually show when it's operating, since crowd noise can drown out the sound of the motor running. "As they say in Hollywood, it's usually complacency that hurts you in the end. This was our wake-up call."

Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, receiver Bobby Engram and fullback Leonard Weaver were nearly hit by the Cablecam device as it was coming down.

"I just feel fortunate that it didn't hit me on the head," Hasselbeck said afterward. "That's total access right there: A camera right up my..."

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, 2 boxes

Photo:

(1) Seattle Seahawks players wait for someone to fix a Cablecam overhead TV camera that suddenly dropped onto the field during a timeout Sunday against New Orleans.

John Froschauer/Associated Press

(2) no caption (book: "The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson: First Class Citizenship")

Box:

(1) WHAT SMOKES

(2) WHAT CHOKES