UCLA’s top-ranked baseball team will wear Jackie Robinson Day-themed uniforms beginning Tuesday evening, one day before the 79th anniversary of his breaking Major League Baseball’s color line.
All the Bruins players will wear the number Robinson wore with the Brooklyn Dodgers, 42, but never wore at UCLA. The university announced in 2014 that it was retiring the number in all sports.
The 7 p.m. nonconference game against UC Santa Barbara at Jackie Robinson Stadium on the Veterans Affairs’ West Los Angeles campus will be preceded by a Jackie Robinson pregame legacy ceremony and Robinson’s oldest granddaughter, Sonya Pankey, throwing the ceremonial first pitch.
Fans wearing a Jackie Robinson jersey will win a prize. There will also be Robinson-related raffle prizes.
The Bruins (33-2) are ranked first by all the prominent outlets — USA Tuesday, Baseball America, D1Baseball.com, National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and Perfect Game. They have won a school-record 27 consecutive games. Their most recent loss was Feb. 24 against San Diego State.
The game will be televised by the Big Ten Network.
UCLA will also wear the uniforms for its three-game Big Ten Conference series against Minnesota from Friday through Sunday.
After spending his first two years of college at Pasadena Junior College (now Pasadena City College), Robinson attended UCLA from 1939 to 1941, becoming its first athlete to letter in four sports: baseball, basketball, football and track and field.
In football, he led the nation in punt return average in both 1939 (16.5 yards) and 1940 (21.0 yards). He was the Bruins’ leader in rushing, passing yardage, total offense and scoring in 1940. No other Black player would lead the Bruins in passing until Brett Hundley in 2012.
In basketball, Robinson led the Southern Division of the Pacific Coast Conference in scoring in 1940 and 1941.
In track and field, he won the NCAA long jump championship in 1940.
Baseball was Robinson’s worst sport at UCLA. He batted .097 in the California Intercollegiate Baseball Association play in 1940.
Robinson left UCLA just shy of graduation in the spring of 1941 to become an assistant athletic director with the National Youth Administration.
Robinson was drafted by the Army in 1942, and commissioned as a second lieutenant in January 1943. He was honorably discharged in November 1944.
He began his professional baseball career in 1945 with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. He signed with the Dodgers’ Montreal International League affiliate in the fall of 1945 and spent the 1946 season with the team, then joined the Dodgers in 1947.
Between his discharge from the Army and Dodgers debut on April 15, 1947, Robinson also played for the Los Angeles Bulldogs of the Pacific Coast Football League and the Los Angeles Red Devils, a short-lived independent professional basketball team.
Robinson played with the Dodgers from 1947 to 1956, helping lead them to six National League pennants and in 1955, their only World Series championship in Brooklyn. He was Major League Baseball’s Rookie of the Year in 1947 and National League MVP in 1949.
Robinson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, his first year of eligibility.
He died on Oct. 24, 1972, at age 53.