[Daveinyork]

The Dodgers didn’t hire Jackie Robinson because they wanted to end racism. They hired Jackie Robinson because they wanted to win baseball games.

[driftless2]

Absolutely. And what is often ignored is that Larry Doby broke in for Cleveland the same year as Robinson but later on in the season. A number of owners had planned on integrating major league baseball before the war but were put off by hostilities until after WWII. Certainly, some were partly motivated by a sense of fairness, but basically they knew there was an untapped store of tremendous black talent they wanted to exploit.

Incidentally, Robinson was such a great athlete in a number of sports, some people think he should have been the first black player in the NBA. Basketball might have been his best sport. He starred at UCLA in basketball as well as the other sports. At 5'11 he was a tremedous ballhandler and could easily dunk. He played for a pro bb team (Los Angeles Red Devils) in the offseason during the late forties.