UCLA’s top-ranked baseball team’s school-record 27-game winning streak ended Tuesday evening with 4-0 loss to UC Santa Barbara at Jackie Robinson Stadium on the Veterans Affairs’ West Los Angeles campus.
The game was the first of four through Sunday the Bruins (33-3) will wear Jackie Robinson Day-themed uniforms with all their players wearing 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.
Robinson’s oldest granddaughter, Sonya Pankey, threw the ceremonial first pitch which was played on the eve of the 79th anniversary of his breaking Major League Baseball’s color line.
The loss was the Bruins’ first since Feb. 24.
UCLA is ranked first by all the prominent outlets — USA Tuesday, Baseball America, D1Baseball.com, National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and Perfect Game.
The Bruins will also wear the uniforms for their 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 affiliate in the fall of 1945 and spent the 1946 season with the International League 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 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.