Sunday is Jackie Robinson Day in major league ballparks, where the ballplayer and his legacy will be remembered with tributes and testimonials. All big-league players will wear Robinson’s number 42 on their backs, the only number in sports retired in perpetuity.

Chris Lamb is a professor of communication at the College of Charleston and the author of Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball.

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