When you hear the name Jackie Robinson, you picture the Major League Baseball player who broke the sport's color barrier in 1947, and rightfully so.
Robinson was a superstar on the diamond, putting together a Hall of Fame career despite going through all of the unjust repercussions that came along with breaking down the racial walls of America's most popular sport.
Robinson was a Rookie of the Year winner, a seven-time All-Star, an MVP and a World Series champion. He earned one batting title, led the league in stolen bases twice and finished with a career .313 batting average and .410 on-base percentage.
Yet if a couple of things went differently, we may have seen Jackie Robinson the basketball player, not the Hall of Fame baseball pioneer.
It is well-known Robinson was a generational athlete. He is, still to this day, the only four-sport letterman in UCLA history, playing baseball, basketball, football and track and field during his four years on campus.
Before he broke barriers and records in the @MLB, Jackie Robinson was a four-sport phenom at @UCLAAthletics — in track, basketball, football, and of course, baseball. #Jackie42 pic.twitter.com/HlH7FVRD5v
— NCAA (@NCAA) April 15, 2020
He was an electrifying forward on the basketball court, leading the Pacific Coast Conference Southern Division (now Pac-12) in scoring in both 1940 and 1941.
The quotes surrounding his playing style sound tailor-made to that of what the NBA would become years down the line.
“Scoring is the least of the dusky marvel’s accomplishments,” noted The Chicago Defender, according to BlackFives.org. “A lightning dribbler and glue-fingered ball handler, his terrific speed makes it impossible for one man to hold him in check.”
"Robinson formed the nucleus of a fast-breaking attack," it said in the 1941 UCLA Yearbook.
“The first player who I ever saw dunking as part of his game was Jackie Robinson,” former New York Renassaince player John Isaacs stated.
On this date in 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in @MLB with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
— UCLA Men’s Basketball (@UCLAMBB) April 15, 2020
As a four-sport star at @UCLA, Robinson twice led the Southern Division of the Pacific Coast Conference in scoring on the basketball court (1940, 1941).#Jackie42 :blue_heart::yellow_heart: pic.twitter.com/WMZlSGKUEM
Once Robinson's college basketball eligibility was up following the 1941 season, he elected to leave UCLA's campus to pursue a professional career playing football. He did so for the time being until he reported for military duty in the midst of World War II, but injury prevented him from ever being deployed.
In speaking with Jonathan Eig, the author of the New York Times best-selling book Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season, it was in that moment where Robinson began to make some decisions about his future as an athlete.
"After the military, he coached basketball at a small school in Texas for a little while, but that was the point where he was really beginning to think about his career options," Eig told The Sporting News.
"Did he want to settle down and be a basketball coach? Playing professional basketball or professional football were not great options. They just didn’t pay enough. Baseball was the best career option for somebody like Jackie who didn’t want to give up playing sport yet.
"That's why the Negro Leagues were attractive to him. Even though I think he liked football and basketball better, baseball offered the best professional opportunity to actually play and compete and make a living," Eig said.
That's when Robinson signed with the Kansas City Monarchs, which eventually led to being scooped up by the Brooklyn Dodgers organization in 1946 to play for their minor league team, the Montreal Royals.
"When Robinson signed with the Monarchs, he didn't think 'this is step one to making it to the big leagues.' He did not think, 'this is where I can have the biggest impact on society' or 'this is how I'm going to fight racism,'" Eig told TSN.
"It was really just 'what is the best job for me at this time?' He was miserable for most of his time with the Monarchs. He was a fierce competitor and didn't like how poorly run the leagues were. He was used to competing at the highest level of college sports at UCLA and he was frustrated by it," Eig said.
He was a star in the Negro Leagues, but when he returned home to California for the summer, it was basketball that was next on Robinson's list of pursuits in professional sport.
He joined a lesser-known pro team called the Los Angeles Red Devils, who were seeking to join the National Basketball League (NBL).
Robinson was the starting forward for a Red Devils team that included a number of well-known and talented players in the SoCal area. With a loaded roster, Robinson and the Red Devils put themselves on the map against some of the finest professional teams the United States had to offer.
When they dominated the NBL's Sheboygan Redskins twice, it drew the desire for other professional teams to want to face off against LA's newest independent pro team. The famous New York Renaissance (Rens) even flew out to Los Angeles to take on the Red Devils, making them the first all-Black team to fly on an airplane for what is now commonly known as a road game.
When the Rens got to Los Angeles, they were run out of the gym by Robinson's Red Devils.
The Red Devils even got a shot at the NBL's reigning champions, the Chicago Gears, who were headlined by future Hall of Famer George Mikan. The Gears defeated Los Angeles, but only by four points.
At the time, the NBL was in talks of merging with the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the NBA had interests in acquiring a West Coast franchise. But despite having a roster stacked with talent, the Red Devils' games didn't bring in enough of a crowd.
“There were some exceptionally good basketball players with name value on the squad. We had, I think, a really fine team,” Robinson stated, according to BlackFives.org. “There was a reasonable amount of publicity as well, and yet the promoters took a real bath in this venture. Our games just didn’t draw.”
When things didn't work out for the Red Devils in joining either pro league, Robinson received serious consideration from professional basketball teams all around the country. Harlem Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein reportedly offered the multi-sport star $10,000 to join his franchise, but Robinson declined. He also received offers from other pro franchises like the all-Black Canton Cushites, the Detroit Wolverines or even the New York Rens, but Robinson turned them all down.
When he left the Red Devils in January of 1947 at age 28, it was said to have caught people by surprise. He could have starred on any of the aforementioned pro basketball teams and he was so gifted on the hardwood that he may have even accelerated the NBA's racial integration that occurred in 1950 if he stuck with it. But basketball was already making progress in that aspect. White teams had been playing Black teams for years and Black players were already receiving opportunities in pro leagues around the country.
Baseball was much further behind in that sense, but Robinson's talents expedited that process significantly. How long could MLB have taken to racially integrate if Robinson elected to choose a path to the NBA instead?
"There’s no way Robinson knew that baseball was going to integrate before basketball," Eig said to TSN. "He was going with whatever offered the best job and the best chance to make money, and these were relative terms because the Negro Leagues didn’t pay well, but they paid better than the Black basketball leagues would have paid at the time.
"(Dodgers executive) Branch Rickey decides to integrate the Dodgers, Jackie Robinson shows that it works and everything in America starts changing. From basketball integrating to the military integrating, the list goes on and on.
"Would Robinson have led to basketball officially integrating first? We just don't know. Robinson was the engine that fueled many of these changes and it’s hard to say how long it would have taken without him."
When Robinson made his debut at Ebbetts Field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, he became one of the paramount pioneers for Black athletes in the history of American pro sports. Electing to play baseball would end up making cultural shockwaves, leaving an eternal impact on all professional leagues.
He was immediately successful in baseball, leading the league in stolen bases in his first season while also taking home Rookie of the Year honors. Two seasons later, he won National League MVP, earned the NL batting title and was named to his first of what would become six-consecutive MLB All-Star nominations.
Eig says despite Robinson's love of basketball, he never considered switching sports during his career.
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"I think he would have been one of the greatest professional basketball players or football players of his time given his talent, but those weren’t really attractive options," Eig said. "They weren’t big deals. Most Americans could name the entire starting lineup or roster of their hometown baseball team, but they probably couldn’t name three professional basketball players. And the same for football. Those sports just weren’t nearly as popular and Robinson would not have made as much money.
"I’m not even sure the Dodgers would have allowed him to risk injury playing another sport even if he wanted to in the offseason."
But just know that while Robinson would go on to be one of the greatest players in the history of baseball, he just may have left a similar mark if he chose basketball instead.