One cannot overstate the resilience and courage Jackie Robinson showed by standing tall and excelling on the baseball field in the face of relentless bigotry and hate, but I hope you already know his story.

Someone had to make the call to put him on the field; someone had to envision the future of an integrated game of baseball we know today at a time when it was unanimously rejected by those with say in the matter. That man, who believed in and staked his reputation on Robinson’s potential to break the color barrier, was General Manager and part owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey.

From the start, Rickey knew the burden he was placing on Robinson. He ferociously defended the right for him to play even when other teams threatened to boycott, or when his own teammates threatened to quit. To shield Robinson and future players from the Jim Crow laws in Florida during spring training, he led the Dodgers to purchase a decommissioned naval air station that would be their own all-inclusive baseball campus, “Dodgertown,” the only sports-related stop on the Civil Rights Trail.

It was personal for Rickey. As a college player, he witnessed his only Black teammate humiliatingly denied access to the hotel where the rest of the team was staying. On that day, he made a vow because he believed, in accordance to his devout Methodist faith, that segregation was a moral sin and resolved to defeat it however he could.

These days, I often tune into the Dodgers games after I get home from coaching my own team on the West Side of Chicago. As I wonder at Shohei Ohtani, the two-way Japanese superstar who has drawn millions of new baseball fans from around the world, and marvel at the tapestry of nationalities and languages represented on the diamond, I can’t help but see a straight line back to the conviction Branch Rickey held in early 1947, standing alone when all 15 other team owners wished to keep baseball — and America — divided.