Opening Day

The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season

By: Jonathan Eig

Narrated by: Richard Allen

April 15, 1947, marked the most important opening day in baseball history. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the diamond that afternoon at Ebbets Field, he became the first Black man to break into major-league baseball. World War II had just ended. Democracy had triumphed. Now Americans were beginning to press for justice on the home front, and Robinson had a chance to lead the way.

He was an unlikely hero. He had little experience in organized baseball. His swing was far from graceful. And he was assigned to play first base, a position he had never tried before that season. But the biggest concern was his temper. Robinson was an angry man who played an aggressive style of ball. In order to succeed, he would have to control himself in the face of what promised to be a brutal assault by opponents of integration.

Drawing on interviews with surviving players, sportswriters, and eyewitnesses, as well as newly discovered material from archives around the country, Jonathan Eig presents a fresh portrait of a ferocious competitor who embodied integration's promise and helped launch the modern civil-rights era. Full of new details and thrilling action, Opening Day brings to life baseball's ultimate story.

©2007 Jonathan Eig (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"Even Dodger haters - and they are legion - will cheer on the Bums in this fine account." (Booklist)

Important story about a crucial episode in baseball AND United States history.

Terrific story about a great ballplayer and an even greater man. I shed a few tears hearing about the gentleman who always wore a shirt and tie when he went to work in a once-segregated shipping department - a job he got thanks to an owner whose consciousness was raised by seeing Jackie Robinson’s battle for his own job.

Seems like there were more than a few mispronounced players names in the narration but that’s my only gripe. Overall it’s a helluva tale.

Interesting Facts and Distressing Narration

I read this book because I had just finished Eig’s book on Martin Luther King, which I thought was tremendous. I was not as enthralled with “Opening Day . . .” I thought it had strengths. It does a great job detailing Jackie Robinson’s recruitment by Branch Rickey. It also dispels myths and emphasizes the immense challenge Robinson had not responding to indignities. I also applauded the way Eig would digress away from the field and supply vignettes of persons who were impacted by baseball’s racial integration. It helped convey the societal impact of the event. HIs favorable bias toward New Yorkers was ridiculous. He speaks of Joe Dimaggio as a demi-god. And he bends over backward to create doubt about whether New York Daily News writer, Dick Young was a racist. (He obviously was). I also thought it very strange that he went into such detail recounting the 1947 World Series. I have one MAJOR flag regarding the narration. While I can certainly forgive the mispronouncing of a couple of baseball names (e.g., Hall of Famer Red Schoendienst), there was one pronunciation that I never got over. Instead of a long “E” for the word negro, the narrator pronounces it the vowel like the “i” in “dig.” So literally hundreds of times he says “nigro” all too similar sounding to the “n” word. Perhaps this is some regional habit of the speaker, but for me it ruined the narration.

Great Sports and Historic Book

The author does an amazing job writing about and history. They do so in a way that allows you to be in the moment and take in all of what was happening almost 100 years ago.

Great book, not so great reading

Eig did great work writing this book, and I enjoyed it a great deal. I just wish that the reader and recording engineer had been baseball fans. The mispronunciation of the names of prominent baseball figures is truly annoying. And it isn't just people from 1947. Many of those guys are still around the game today. Anyone acquainted with Major League Baseball would have been a vast improvement.
I would gladly purchase another copy of this audio book, if it were redone with a fan doing the reading.

greatest day ever

april 15. 1947 at the brooklyn dodger club
the greatest day in the history of baseball
it's importance only grows with time

no athletic season was ever more deserving of analysis
as "luckiest man" showed jonathan eig is the man for the job
others have told this story but none have done better

the telling detail / the counterintuitive interaction
the underlying personalities of the teammates
each insightful part of the puzzle gets presented

what stays with you is just how damn hard it was to do
rickey at his best / robinson at his best / brooklyn at its' best
it was for each of them their finest hour

have you done the right thing in the right way at the right time ?
do people line up to help you ? or do they drag you down ?
did the players have any idea of the history they were making ?

the very human nature of the struggle comes through clearly
these were brave tough lonely determined people
jonathan eig has made their lives more than memorable