Baseball Pays Tribute To Jackie Robinson

Sunday marked the 65th anniversary of the day that Jackie Robinson (January 31, 1919 — October 24, 1972) entered Major League Baseball to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke the game's racial barrier on April 15, 1947.

To honor Jackie Robinson Day, all players in the league wore No. 42, Robinson's number, on April 15, the day that Robinson officially entered the game. This year Robinson's widow Rachel Robinson and his daughter Sharon Robinson attended a pre-game tribute to Hall-of-Famer Robinson at the new Yankees Stadium before the Yankees took on and beat the Angels Sunday night.

"Here we are concerned with a decreasing number of African-Americans [in baseball], so it's very important to bring back up the history and to think about how much we went through to get a fully integrated major league baseball," Sharon said, according to the New York Daily News. "So it does resonate."

The NBA players felt similarly. "It's just good to be able to wear the number and to have guys recognize and understand that we wouldn't be here without him," said Yankees ace CC Sabathia.

Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. His uniform number, 42, was retired across the major league in 1997.