'Jackie' Robinson Back at London Games

It was 1948, during high tea in London’s Buckingham Palace, when U.S. Olympic basketball player Jackie Robinson met Great Britain’s royal couple, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and their daughter - the future Queen Elizabeth II. Robinson, a spry 21-year-old, was awfully nervous. “They told me that he [the King] stuttered, and he did.  And they told me he had big ears and I caught myself looking as I talked to him. I remember thinking, ‘You dope, look away,’ and I did.” 

Now, when most people think of the late 1940s and the name “Jackie” Robinson, they think of the courageous baseball player who broke baseball's race barrier, but this Jackie Robinson who met the King and Queen during the ’48 London Games was a white basketball player out of Baylor and future Baptist minister. He was also the guy who, during training for the Olympics in the still-segregated Bartlesville, Okla., decided to join his black teammate in the “colored” section of a movie theater.

And this year at the 2012 Games, he’ll be the older-looking fellow with a twinkle in his eye, watching the team he used to play for try to win gold in London again.

Yes, Jackie Robinson, now 85, and his wife of 62 years, Charlotte, will be in London to celebrate the Olympics, past and present. It appears as if he’ll be the only U.S. player from the 1948 team on hand.

And, my, will things look different. London in ‘48 was still feeling the effects of World War II. Olympic athletes had to bunk in decrepit school buildings and in military camps on the outskirts of the city. In fact, Robinson plans to visit the former Uxbridge military base, in which his 1948 team lived and from which, during World War II, British Spitfires took-off - the same spitfires, Robinson likes to recall, that helped “save western civilization.” So, too, did Robinson’s brother, Bryan. As a member of the U.S. Army, he landed in southern France during the war and fought his way into Germany. And he made it back home.

In London in ’48, the track for the Olympics had been hastily put together, contributing to slower-than-usual times. And food remained scarce. Robinson remembers discovering that he’d been served horse meat at a restaurant. But this didn’t keep folks from having a good time. He also remembers that sweets came from rations during these Games. “We gave gum and candy bars to the little children and watched them eat candy for the first time in their lives,” he told me. World War II was over and the free world wanted to celebrate.

As for Robinson and his mates’ performance in London, the U.S. basketball squad - the first ever to feature a black athlete, Don Barksdale - mostly ran right past the competition en route to the gold. The only major scare was the 59-57 hair-raiser that it pulled out against Argentina - during which Robinson hit a crucial late basket and after which he somehow took the game ball home. He still keeps it on his desk. 

America’s 65.5 points per game was eye-popping for the time. “Of the USA team the salient features were the enormous height of their players and their speed. Normally, men of 6-foot-9 to 7-foot tall are not fast, but these players had all the agility of bantams!” wrote the Honorary Secretary of Britain’s Amateur Basketball Association. 

Of course, if Brits thought the U.S. hoops team was fast in ’48, they’ll probably be spilling their tea when they see LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Durant blaze across the hardwood this summer. 

Maybe it’s the romantic in me, but I like to think that at some point during the Games, James will get a chance to meet Queen Elizabeth II just like Jackie Robinson did 64 years earlier. And, who knows, maybe Robinson will be invited back to Buckingham for that reception, too. 

My word, what a connection between two points in time those three would make. There would stand a global superstar who is coming into his own and who will be playing on a U.S. roster full of black athletes, a fact that is worth noting largely because it will barely be noticed; an 85-year-old, son of a Baptist preacher from Texas, who played his role in setting the stage for the rise of basketball in the modern age; and a transformative queen who has served her country through the great highs and the difficult lows of the past 60 years and is now on the cusp of seeing her country, still decent and strong, serve as the world’s host.

Here’s to that meeting taking place. And here’s to Jackie Robinson and his wife finding a way to enjoy the high-flying exploits of LeBron and company in-person. They deserve it.

(Hey USA Basketball, can you hook a fellow up?)