Once in a while at work, we have some fun by going around with our favorite fill-in-the-blank at the end of our pre-opening meeting. Last Friday — Aug. 28 — we were asked to name our favorite childhood and current movies. I couldn’t recall a flick from my youth at the time (The Wizard of Oz), but for my latter-day selection I basically said, “Anything with baseball,” and specifically A League of Their and 42. A number of my colleague nodded in agreement and we discussed how good Chadwick Boseman performed in the role of Jackie Robinson.
(By coincidence, Aug. 28 happened to be the day MLB celebrated the debut of MLB’s first African-American ballplayer. Of course, this is normally recognized on April 15, when Robinson first took to the field in Dodger blue, but since there was no baseball on that date this year because, well, you know…)
The next day we heard the news that Boseman had died. Shocking, to say the least.
The 43-year-old actor (some reports said he was 42, which, of course, would have been another eerie nod to the Robinson angle) had the task of playing three iconic figures: Robinson, soul singer James Brown, and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, not to mention Black Panther, recognized as the first black comic book screen hero.
Here are some posts on 42 when it first came out in 2013.
- 42 Overview
- Bookshelf Review: 42
- The Cast of 42: You Be the Judge (Note: this is the only entry I have updated since its original posting because some of the pictures were no longer available. Please pardon the poor alignment; tables are not my strong suit. Also, sad to see that Blake Sanders who played Gene Hermanski, seen in 42 as the first Dodger to greet Robinson in the locker room, passed away in 2018 at the age of 30.)
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