GREENVILLE - Even though the baseball season ended with the final out of the 2001 World Series in the Arizona desert, the diamond exploits of my heroes still strike my fancy.
And as the nation continues to wrestle with the terrorist intrusion to the American way of life, athletic contests will continue to provide the human metaphor, which keeps us on an even keel.
There is something about sports - contesting an outcome on a field of dreams - that maintains a nation's interest even in the face of befogging human calamity.
In my youth, I was transfixed by the marvelous athletic excellence of Jack Roosevelt Robinson, as he led the Brooklyn Dodgers to several National League pennants and a World Series triumph over the hated New York Yankees in 1955.
For my money, Robinson was the original straw that kept our athletic drink stirred, but never shaken. He would become the bedrock of performance, which personalized achievement for people in all walks of life.
It wasn't that Robinson broke major league baseball's "sacred" color line in 1947 when he took the field with the Dodgers at cozy Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. However, his achievement did make it possible for us to enjoy the athletic prowess of other black and Latin stars who would follow.
History generally gives then-Dodgers' General Manager Branch Rickey and baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler credit for paving the way for Robinson to erase a decades-old racial taboo.
Yet if truth be told, it was not so much that Rickey wanted to break baseball's so-called color line, but he viewed the then-27-year-old Robinson as an unwitting vehicle to tap into the black market for a new fan base.
The plan worked marvelously, because Robinson was superb on the field, and blacks flocked to the ballpark.
Nevertheless, Robinson's integration of professional baseball more than a half-century ago not so much signaled a mantra for blacks but for all people that they too can realize their dreams if they work hard, handle the taunts and stay focused.
A child of Georgia sharecroppers, Robinson was active in civil and human rights in America long before it became fashionable. Robinson, as a second lieutenant, risked his Army career in the 1940s - was court-martialed, then exonerated - for daring to refuse to move to the back of a military bus at Fort Hood, Texas. His act of defiance happened nearly a decade before Rosa Parks also refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Ala.
Robinson put himself on the line, on and off the playing field, so blacks and other minorities can enjoy constitutionally guaranteed freedoms today.
When Robinson died of a heart attack on Oct. 15, 1972, at 62, he was quite disillusioned at the direction major league baseball was headed. It would be another three years before Frank Robinson would be hired as the "first" black manager.
Now nearly three decades after Jackie Robinson's death, black managers, and even general managers, are the rule rather than the exception.
Many of you might have missed the announcement this month that Robinson's widow, Rachel, donated the late baseball Hall of Famer's voluminous collection of papers to the Library of Congress.
The Robinson papers will give scholars and sports fans alike a snapshot into the life of one of America's true icons.
The body of work covers more than 7,000 items, some of which include: correspondence, speeches, baseball contracts and other legal documents, military records, fan mail, photographs, newspaper articles and manuscripts from two critically acclaimed books, "Wait Till Next Year" and "I Never Had it Made."
Throughout his life, Robinson ushered in a new brand of player on the baseball diamond, and he used his athletic grace and celebrity to become a strident voice for those who lacked a forum for expression.
Just look around, even here in Mississippi. Robinson's influence is still very much a part of the fabric of our society for the inclusion of all people.
What Robinson did for America transcends the ability to steal a base, make a sparkling catch, or hit a home run. He became the conscience of the nation.
