On Jackie Robinson Day, the work continues

“What is it about your people that make you so incredibly lazy?”

 

This was the question out of the mouth of my blond-haired Team USA teammate in the Goodwill Games in North Jersey in 1987, when I was 16 years old. Representing our country, we were playing Japan, hosting their players in a cultural exchange (one player stayed at my house for the week). Yet the guy wearing Team USA across his chest, just like me, asked me this question jovially, as if he was asking my favorite color.

 

I wondered what to make of it. In baseball, the opponent is in the other dugout. They wear different uniforms, color schemes, symbols. In these international affairs, it is more than the uniforms — a clash of cultures, with different traditions, approaches, beliefs. In the Goodwill Games, the idea is that despite these differences, we come together through respect and an open mind to learn from each other, with the game as our bridge, our common language.