Jackie Robinson w/Pure DAILY BEAST Text

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Playing Pinochle and Breaking Barriers 

With Jackie Robinson

 written by Evan Weiner

 

Wally Triplett accompanied the major league’s first black player on trips

 to the most racist city in the league before making history on his own 

 in  pro football.

 

Triplett would become 
the first Negro drafted 
by a team, the Detroit
Lions, to make an 
NFL roster
in 1949.

Two weeks after opening day, Major League Baseball will hold its annual
Jackie Robinson day celebration, the 67 years after he broke the color barrier.

There are very few people still around from 1947 who can talk about Robinson
and the second player to have broken the color barrier, Larry Doby.

But Wally Triplett knew both and struck up a friendship with Robinson and Doby
that historic year.

Triplett was a chauffeur, confidant, card-playing buddy of Robinson
and made sure Jackie always got a home cooked meal when Robinson
played in Philadelphia when Brooklyn played the Phillies...

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Footnote
Photo credits: (Jackie Robinson) Hulton Archive/Getty;  (Wally Triplett) Leon Galip/Getty
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