Quote:
Originally Posted by clydepepper
That's because it WAS a scene from a Hollywood movie (In '42')
The scene portrayed in the movie never actually occurred, but it did make it into the movie...what a surprise, huh. But, pretty neat all the same.
https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/cooper...harles-and-42/
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Actually, Ed Charles and his friends seeing Jackie and running with the train DID HAPPEN. Here's the quote from the fangraphs.com story you linked:
"The biggest revelation for me, however, came toward the end of the film, when a graphic explained that one of Robinson’s youngest fans in the film, an African-American child who lived in Florida, turned out to be future major leaguer Ed Charles. As Robinson departed spring training on a train in 1946, the young Charles led a group of enthusiastic young rooters bidding their new hero farewell. Charles waived to Robinson. Robinson waived back. Within 15 years, Charles himself would take his place in the major leagues."
"Charles did not have enough money to buy a ticket, but he watched Robinson from beyond a chain link fence in left field. “To a kid growing up in Daytona Beach,” Charles once told the Newark Star-Ledger, “in a world where we lived with our own form of apartheid—Jim Crowism—it was like a miracle.”
"While the film shows Charles receiving an autographed ball from Robinson at the train station, that kind of interaction never happened. Typically, after a Royals game at City Island Ball Park, Charles’ friends ran for the clubhouse door, where they asked Jackie to give them autographs. But Charles didn’t feel it was right to approach Robinson and ask for his signature. “He was like a god to me,” Charles told the New York Daily News, “and that [asking for an autograph] wasn’t something you did with someone like that.”
What did NOT happen, is Ed Charles getting an autographed baseball from Jackie; that scene in the movie was made up.
Steve