Free Jackie Robinson by Arnold Rampersad

the pole vault. Not surprisingly, so much versatility led at times to inconsistent results. In the broad jump, for example, he won the Southland Class A title with a superb leap of 23 feet 1 inch. A week later, however, he failed to place in the California state championships.
    On September 6, 1936, just after Mack’s Olympic Games success, the legend of Jackie Robinson as a sports prodigy gained new life when he captured the junior boys’ singles championship in the annual Pacific Coast Negro Tennis Tournament. Jack played tennis only sporadically. His game was unorthodox; he relied on speed and guile and on his fierce will to win. Playing mixed doubles with his ambidextrous childhood friend Eleanor Peters, he refused to accept defeat easily. “Jack was always very competitive,” she said, “but of course we were all very competitive. Our parents all wanted us to achieve, to do something more with our lives.” Jack’s competitive fire helped her when she nervously faced the women’s singles champion in another Pacific Coast tournament. “Jack said, ‘You can play with her, you can do it,’ ” she recalled. “And I said, ‘No, I can’t.’ But he pushed me and pushed me, and I started to believe in myself. I didn’t win, but I gave her a run for her money. That’s what Jack was like.”
    Ray Bartlett, too, recalled the amazing drive Jack showed even in junior high school. “He was a hard loser,” Bartlett said. “By that I mean that he always played his best and did his best and gave all he had, and he didn’t like to lose. He liked to be the best, and he would be unhappy at school the dayafter we lost. He took losses very hard. The rest of us might shrug off a loss, but Jack would cry if we lost.”
    In the fall of 1936, as his young body developed, Jack’s football skills reached new heights. Although the Terriers started the season with almost every star of the previous year gone, they ran Muir’s record to eighteen consecutive league victories before losing in the last game of the season to Glendale, who won the league championship. Playing in the backfield on offense, Jack emerged as the star of the team. In the first game, before five thousand captivated spectators in the Rose Bowl, the “snake-hipped” quarterback (as the Pasadena
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called him) scored a rushing touchdown in the last minutes of the game to earn a tie against powerful Alhambra. In the third league game, against the Hoover High team from Glendale, he returned the opening kickoff fifty yards, then scored later as Muir won. Taking note, the Pasadena
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surprised its readers with a large picture of Jack, poised to hurl a football, on the front page of its sports section. Against Fullerton, “dusky” Jack Robinson scored the first touchdown as he “sped around right end” and “outraced the entire Fullerton team to cross the goal line standing up.” Against Pomona High, Muir Tech was down by thirteen points in the first half. “Then the fun started as the second half opened,” the
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reported. The Terriers struck back with a touchdown by Robinson to begin a rally that ended in a Muir victory.
    In its final game, however, against Glendale, the Terriers fell apart. Early—and perhaps according to a plan—Robinson was brought down, then “three Glendale boys piled on.” With cracked ribs, Jack staggered off the field and out of the game. His injury sickened the other Terriers, who proceeded to fumble the game and the championship away. Still, Muir Tech had enjoyed an excellent season, and Jack had established himself as a sensational quarterback and all-around football player, one of the finest prospects in talent-rich southern California.
    When his ribs finally mended, he rejoined the basketball team. Again, the loss of several stars made Terrier fans expect little for the new season; experts picked Muir Tech to finish fourth or fifth in its league. But the Terriers won almost all of their games and ended in second