Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson. March 17, 1953. , Jackie Robinson first set foot at Tinker Field with the National League Champion Brooklyn Dodgers on March 17, 1953 against the hometown Washington Senators. The game drew an all-time record crowd of 6,550 fans in a stadium with fewer than 4,000 seats, breaking Babe Ruth’s attendance record set in 1927. , , The New York Times reported that three-quarters of the fans at Tinker Field were African-American cheering for the Dodgers. The Orlando Sentinel noted that the “Negro bleachers” were filled by noon (two hours before game time) with an estimated 2,500 fans sitting along the grassy foul lines and all around the outfield, ready to catch a glimpse of Jackie Robinson. , , The Dodgers overcame a four run deficit in the seventh inning and the crowd cheered Brooklyn to an 11-10 victory over the Senators in the tenth inning. , , Seven years earlier, during 1946 Spring Training, Robinson played with the Montreal Royals in Sanford and Daytona, surviving death threats and police intervention that removed him from the ball field during a game. Between 1947 and 1952 the Dodgers trained in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and their own camp called "Dodgertown" to avoid the effects of racism against their integrated team., Robinson first played in Orlando on November 3, 1950 with the Jackie Robinson All-Stars in a post-season exhibition game. Robinson’s All-Stars, including Roy Campanella, Lary Doby and Don Newcombe, played the Orlando All-Stars, including a young Napoleon Ford, to a standing-room-only crowd at Carter Street Park less than a mile to the South.