As he spoke, Mookie Betts couldn’t help but smile. What once felt forced, a weight placed on him as a Black superstar donning the Dodgers threads that are forever associated with Jackie Robinson and his family, now felt whole. Natural.
When Dodgers officials broached the idea with Betts shortly before hosting the All-Star festivities in Los Angeles this July, the former MVP didn’t hesitate. The Dodgers wanted Betts to speak because the game was to be held on the 100th birthday of Rachel Robinson, who continues to bolster her late husband’s legacy and has taken up his mission to improve the lives of Black Americans. So Betts spoke, hours after donning a T-shirt in batting practice that read: “We need more Black people at the stadium.”
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The following month, when the Dodgers arrived in New York in August, Betts was among the players invited to an early showing of the new Jackie Robinson Museum that opened in lower Manhattan.
Throughout, Betts couldn’t help but see his path in Robinson’s shoes.
“It was super cool,” Betts recalled recently to The Athletic. “Because in the back of my head, I knew what I was doing.”
What he was doing was producing a film about Robinson’s enduring legacy. Betts worked with executive producers and friends, Cam Lewis and Jeff Mason, and his new media company One Media/Marketing Group (OMG) and Propagate to provide a look at an overlooked aspect of Robinson’s impact 75 years after he broke baseball’s color barrier.
The project, titled “Jackie Robinson: Get To The Bag” is set to premiere on FS1 on Wednesday night after the network’s postseason baseball programming. Directed by Victorious De Costa, the documentary includes the lyrical hip-hop narration of “Skyzoo” as well as interviews with journalists, historians and players, including Betts himself. They dive into Robinson’s impact on the sport and, in addition, examine some of the entrepreneurial ventures that Robinson took part in during and after his playing career to seek advancement for Black people.
“He’s so much more,” Mason told The Athletic. “Look at what we’re doing now, still making a film about him years and years and years later, down the line. Still trying (to) introduce him to the younger generation.”
“This film is prominent in showing Jackie as an entrepreneur, activist and that’s the times of modern-day,” Lewis said. “When maybe some of our parents were growing up it may have been, ‘Hey, go to college, get a degree.’ But now, you can build a business in your garage. With that, Jackie was, like he was in baseball, well ahead of the game.”
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Betts was already in production on this project by the time he stood in front of the Dodger Stadium crowd and got the sold-out building to wish Rachel Robinson a happy 100th birthday. He was glancing over the final cuts of the film before arriving at the Jackie Robinson museum for the first time. It was there that the impact of what the 30-year-old All-Star was doing stuck with him.
“I hate to say it, but in a way, we still kind of live that way,” Betts said of observing the hurdles Robinson faced. “It’s just not as out there like it was back when Jackie was playing.”
Betts noted the architectural structure of the building, with wings divided to give breath to Robinson’s vision, One wing is dedicated solely to Robinson’s athletic accomplishments. The other is dedicated to his goals and life away from sports.
Betts hardly spent any time in the athletics wing. It was Robinson’s vision and work as a businessman, politician, soldier and activist that resonated with what is now part of Betts’ own plans.
Mookie Betts visited the new Jackie Robinson Museum in New York in August. (Fabian Ardaya / The Athletic)Lewis and Betts have known each other since the sixth grade. Before long, Mason entered the fold as well, the trio bonding in the weight room as Betts returned to the Tennessee area he grew up in each winter. Those workouts fostered conversations, dinners and eventually partnerships. As they worked out together during the COVID-19 shutdown, Betts, Lewis and Mason spoke of something bigger.
They wanted to spread a larger message and give voice to issues that were important to them. As the world remained locked down, Lewis said, “there was one avenue that exists, and that was content.”
So they launched a production company. It’s one of several ventures that Betts is hoping is as core to his identity as what he does in the batters’ box in the uniform colors Robinson once wore. Los Angeles is where Betts will stake his claim for the next decade, years after arriving in an offseason megadeal from Boston.
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He once was hesitant to take on the responsibilities he felt followed. Now, it’s a part of him.
“Once I came to the Dodgers, that was kind of the thing,” Betts said. “There’s been other Black players that have come through and played. But I feel like, for me, I was looked at as the ‘new Jackie’ or whatever immediately once I got here. I was kind of reluctant to do it for a little while because I wanted my own identity. But then I kind of looked at it and just kind of embraced it.
“Everything I’m trying to do, everything that I’m in the process of doing, is literally the same thing Jackie did. It’s more than just becoming an entrepreneur. It’s just affecting lives in a positive manner. I definitely have and want to use my platform to do those things. … I do want to point out that I’m more than an athlete. I want to affect lives the same way he did.”
This project, they’re hoping, is just the beginning. Wednesday’s film debut is just the first in a line of items they’re working on, if not the closest to Betts’ heart.
“You only know Jackie as a baseball player,” Betts said. “I think once you see the film you will see he’s well deserving of much more than that.”
(Photo of Mookie Betts in 2021 wearing No. 42 to honor Jackie Robinson: Ashley Landis / Associated Press)
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