Reese was still finishing up his World War II military tour in
the U.S. Navy in 1946 when Jackie Robinson was signed to the
Dodgers’ baseball organization. Robinson would begin his play
that year with the Dodgers’ minor league team in Montreal,
Canada. But in 1947, when Robinson reported to the main Brooklyn
Dodger’s spring training camp, Reese was the first Dodger to
walk across the field and shake his hand. “It was the first time
I’d ever shaken the hand of a black man,” Reese would later say.
“But I was the captain of the team. It was my job, I believed,
to greet the new players.”Jackie Robinson made his debut in
major league baseball when he stepped onto Ebbets Field that
April 1947 day in Brooklyn, New York. Branch Rickey had
carefully selected Robinson for this day. Rickey thought he had
found in Robinson a candidate who could weather the storm of
taunts and abuse that was certain to come to the first black
player in major league baseball. Rickey had the support of Happy
Chandler, baseball’s commissione