Welcome to the American Story. Mostly true stories about what it is that makes

America beautiful, heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and endlessly interesting.

This is Chris Flannery with the Clermont Institute.

Some of our listeners may recognize this story.

It was one of our first episodes, But with the start of this year's

baseball season delayed, we thought it more important than ever to call attention

to tomorrow, April 15th, Jackie Robinson Day, as Major League Baseball does every year.

I call this one number 42.

Each year on April 15th, all players in Major League Baseball turn in their regular uniforms and wear one adorned with the number 42.

On no other day does any player wear that number.

It has been permanently retired.

This custom unique in North American professional sports has been adopted to honor a man who not only changed a sport, but changed a country.

History records that on April 15th,

on April 15th, 1947, Jackie Robinson, number 42 of the Brooklyn Dodgers,

became the first man to break the color barrier against African Americans in Major League Baseball.

America was a country dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,

and every generation of Americans had proved in its own way that

this was an idea that required a lot of living up to, and always would. Good principles are necessary, but not a sufficient condition for free government.

They have to be remembered, understood, honored, lived up to. This can be hard, especially when it runs against the grain of deep

prejudice, selfish interest, and old habits in ways.

America's greatest statesman like Abraham Lincoln called Americans back to their good principles,

appealed to the better angels of our nature.

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