IV.

Retirement

Robinson retired from baseball after the 1956 season rather than accept a trade to another team. He finished with a career batting average of .311, despite missing a number of prime years because of his military service and baseball’s racial policies. Robinson was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, the first black player to receive the honor. Robinson wanted to become the first black man to manage a major league team, but no club was willing to hire him. The experience left him bitter for much of the rest of his life.

After leaving baseball, Robinson became vice president of a restaurant chain in New York City. He also promoted black business enterprises in New York’s Harlem neighborhood and became a leading advocate for black civil rights. From 1964 to 1968 Robinson served as special assistant for civil rights to Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York.

Robinson starred in the motion picture The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and was the author, with Alfred Duckett, of I Never Had It Made (1972). He died October 24, 1972, in Stamford, Connecticut. The epitaph that appears on Robinson’s gravestone is one that he wrote himself. It reads: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”