Of course, I had to throw whatever Chadwick Boseman movies I could into my queue. This was his big breakout role, where he played baseball legend and first black MLB player Jackie Robinson. Watching this really made me think of the definition of a hero.
Yeah he played baseball. That was about the extent of what I knew about Robinson. Hell, I’d even seen this movie once before and just kinda thought of it like any biopic or sports movie. It’s not that I didn’t think Robinson was a hero, it’s that I didn’t get the extent to which he truly was. I didn’t fully comprehend what being that first person truly entailed.
Watching it this time, especially in the current climate this world is in, the message really sank home. He suffered so much abuse just for trying to do his job. As much as he wanted to fight back, he knew that it took more strength to ignore it as best he could and focus on his work. If he gave in and went off on somebody or cracked under the pressure, it’d be all over not just for him but for anybody that followed. He had to go thru hell in order to be the first one to come out on the other side, so that somebody else could come next. That’s what was heroic.