Front row seat to history

Jackie Robinson finds himself a seat on Montreal’s bench 80 years ago today as he joins the Royals for the first time in an exhibition game against their major league affiliate, the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The game is played before a packed crowd of 3,100 in Daytona Beach, marking the first appearance of an integrated team in organized baseball since the 1890s.

Robinson spends the 1946 season playing second base in Montreal, where he bats .349 in 124 games with 113 runs scored and 40 stolen bases.

A year later, Robinson breaks the majors' color barrier, bringing an intensity and aggressiveness to the game unseen since the days of Ty Cobb and embarking on a 10-year career in Brooklyn that culminates with his first-ballot election to the Hall of Fame in 1962.

“He knew he had to do well,” longtime Brooklyn center fielder and teammate Duke Snider later says of Robinson.

“He knew that the future of Blacks in baseball depended on it,” Snider says. “The pressure was enormous, overwhelming and unbearable at times. I don’t know how he held up. I know I never could have.”

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