OUR TEAMMATE (via Genecis)

Simple gesture, big change (DAVE ANDERSON, April 17, 2006, NY Times)

Even with jugglers, tumblers and two marching bands, this was not another jazzed-up minor-league opener. This was 27-year-old Robinson's debut as the first African-American to shatter organized baseball's color barrier.

His first time up, Robinson grounded out. In the third inning, with two on, Jersey City left-hander Warren Sandell threw a chest-high fastball that Robinson drilled for a 335-foot home run over the left-field fence. As Robinson approached home plate, teammate George Shuba, in that era long before high-fives and power-fists, extended his right hand. Robinson shook it -- a simple, silent, seminal moment in baseball history. Not that Shuba, whose father arrived in the United States in 1912 from Czechoslovakia, realized its social significance.

"I really didn't," he said over the telephone the other day from his home in Youngstown, Ohio. "Our teammate hit a home run, so I shook his hand."