Earlier this year Major League Baseball (MLB) kicked off a year-long commemoration of Jackie Robinson’s 100th birthday, which would’ve been January 31, to mark the Hall of Famer’s life and legacy as the person who broke baseball’s color line when he stepped onto the baseball field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947 - a date commemorated each year by MLB.

A week later, MLB mourned the death of Frank Robinson, MLB’s first African-American manager and a former top player whose career spanned 21 seasons. The news of his death at 83 following a prolonged illness broke on February 7.

Both men were trailblazers, with their lives and careers remembered for their individual impact on baseball and the country.

“There are a handful of moments that define America's modern civil rights movement, and Robinson stepping onto a baseball field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, is among them,” writes Richard Justice about the Jackie Robinson’s 100th birthday on the MLB website, https://www.mlb.com/news/jackie-robinson-remembered-on-100th-birthday/c-303366470.

“As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told Dodgers great Don Newcombe years later: ‘You’ll never know how easy you and Jackie and [other baseball pioneers] Larry Doby and Roy Campanella made it for me to do my job by what you did on the baseball field,’” Justice continues.

Baseball will commemorate all of this and more this year. MLB kicked the year-long celebration off on January 31 with a series of events that included widow Rachel Robinson and daughter Sharon, plus dozens of players and team executives. According to MLB, all of them will culminate in December with the opening of the Jackie Robinson Museum in New York, NY.

Another highlight of the season will be Jackie Robinson Day on April 15, when all 30 teams mark the anniversary of Robinson’s first game for the Dodgers in 1947. And in what has become an annual tradition, every player will wear uniform number 42 – Robinson’s number, now retired across MLB. Individual teams are remembering Robinson's 100th birthday in a variety of ways during the season, as well.

Combined, these efforts are aimed at telling Jackie Robinson’s story and reminding us why he mattered inside and outside of baseball, says MLB.

“Just as Jackie Robinson’s breaking of baseball’s color barrier in 1947 had opened doors for Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays and many others to play in the Major Leagues, it was Frank Robinson who paved the way for every minority manager who has followed,” notes MLB.

“Frank Robinson’s resume in our game is without parallel, a trailblazer in every sense, whose impact spanned generations,” says Commissioner Rob Manfred in a post on the MLB website following Robinson’s death, https://www.mlb.com/news/frank-robinson-dies/c-303656538. “He was one of the greatest players in the history of our game, but that was just the beginning of a multifaceted baseball career.”

As a player Robinson hit 586 home runs, and was a 14-time All-Star and the only player to win Most Valuable Player Awards in both leagues: 1961 for the Reds in the National League and 1966 for the Orioles in the American League.

As a manager, he went on to manage the Giants, Orioles and Expos/Nationals in what became a 16-year career as a skipper.

According to the same post, the proudest moment of Robinson's career occurred on April 8, 1975, when he walked the lineup card to home plate as player-manager of the Indians in front of 56,715 at Cleveland Stadium, and then homered off Yankees starter Doc Medich - a moment Cleveland fans have routinely voted the most memorable in franchise history.