Jackie Robinson's spring of '46 at Daytona's Kelly Field will be officially recognized
A handful of dates stand out in the Jackie Robinson story.
April 18: The day, in 1946, when he made his official debut in “white baseball” as a member of the Montreal Royals, the top farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
April 15: The day, in 1947, he made his first big-league start for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
March 17: The day, back again to 1946, when he and his Montreal club faced the parent Dodgers in an exhibition game at City Island Park in Daytona Beach.
But let’s not forget Oct. 23, both then and now.
It was that day in 1945 when Jackie first signed his Dodgers contract with Branch Rickey, which paved the way to the March 17 date mentioned above.
But before and after that mid-March day in ’46, Jackie’s Montreal Royals tuned up for the upcoming season at a ballpark in Daytona Beach’s midtown area — Kelly Field, which was host to ballgames (high school and college, mostly) for some 80 years before it was razed over a decade ago.
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Now, on this particular Oct. 23, Sunday afternoon, that former Kelly Field site will get its long-awaited official recognition, a State of Florida historical marker commemorating the ballfield for its role in the Jackie Robinson story — while also recognizing Johnny Wright, Jackie’s fellow Negro League veteran whose Dodgers tenure was short-lived.
The history books and articles detail the racial tensions Jackie faced during that spring in Florida, and it’s why the Montreal club was quickly relocated to Daytona Beach from Sanford, where Rickey originally had the Royals slated to train.
Sanford, DeLand and Jacksonville were all off-limits to the Royals, but Kelly Field (and, for a day, City Island) were more welcoming. Which leads us to Sunday’s 2 p.m. ceremony at the Midtown Cultural and Education Center, at the corner of Keech Street and George Engram Boulevard, just east of Nova Road — site of the old field.
The Kelly Field recognition began with the inquisitive minds of some guys from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), notably Jim Bard and Mike Kaszuba, from SABR’s Central Florida Chapter.
“Both Mike and I, being longtime baseball guys, thought we knew all about Jackie Robinson and what happened in Daytona back in 1946,” Bard says.
But during a visit here in August of 2021, when they took in a Tortugas game at what’s now Jackie Robinson Ballpark, they learned a bit more. They learned, for instance, that Robinson and Wright were housed in Daytona Beach’s midtown while all of their Montreal teammates stayed at a beachside hotel.
“It quickly became obvious to our group that Kelly Field, without a doubt, played a significant role in the reintegration effort being undertaken by Branch Rickey,” Bard says.
“And the more we searched and unearthed what happened, we found it almost unbelievable that the Montreal team would bus about 30 players and coaches daily from their beachside hotel into the black neighborhood the entire month of March to play with two black teammates — Jackie Robinson and Johnny Wright.”
The spring of ’46 was the Dodgers' only preseason spent in Daytona Beach. They’d spend the spring of ’47 in Cuba and ’48 in the Dominican before beginning a 60-year run in Vero Beach in ’49.
The Dodgers-Daytona spring fling was a short one, but quite historic, and now there will another bit of official recognition for it.
“Although this plaque is specifically about what happened at Kelly Field,” Bard says, “we feel it really should be a tribute to the entire Daytona community.”
The Monday following Sunday's ceremony, Oct. 24, will mark 50 years since Jackie Robinson's death at just 53 years old.
He once famously said, "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives." Sunday will provide one more little glimpse of his impact.
The Picks
Nick Saban has lost two straight football games before at Alabama. Throw out that initial get-to-know-you season in 2007, and it’s happened two times since. Both times, it was a season-ending loss followed by a long layoff and a loss in a bowl game.
So it’s been 15 years since the Crimson Tide lost two straight regular-season games with Saban on the sideline. Coming off last week’s dramatic loss at Tennessee, and with a strangely porous defense, the Tide face Mississippi State’s capable offense.
Hmmm.
No, don’t even think about it. What you saw last week with Bama-UT might have you rethinking what’s technically possible in college football, but some certainties must remain — Bama by 18.
• Elsewhere: Ohio State big over Iowa; Clemson beats Syracuse; Duke over Miami; Ole Miss in OT over LSU; Oregon beats UCLA; Oklahoma State by 3 over Texas; Penn State survives Minnesota; and in the far northwest reaches of Massachusetts, so close to Vermont you can smell the pancakes, the Williams College Ephs by three touchdowns over the visiting Bantams of Trinity.
BTW: Ephs?
Yep, Ephs. It’s short for Ephraim, as in Colonel Ephraim Williams, whose willed money started Williams, in 1793, in West Township, Mass. One stipulation in the colonel’s will, however: To get the money, the town’s name had to be changed to Williamstown.
Call it ego if you want, but it seems ol’ Eph was centuries ahead of his time in the naming-rights game.
— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Jackie Robinson's '46 Daytona history recognized Sunday at Kelly Field
