From Age Sports.:
" All over the major leagues, on the 60th anniversary of his first major league game, dozens of players, including the Los Angeles Dodgers team that won 9-3 against the San Diego Padres, wore uniforms with his No. 42 on the back in honour of Jackie Robinson Day.
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Wherever the Dodgers played, especially in St Louis and Cincinnati, black people from all over the South travelled to cheer him. But not everybody accepted him. Early in the 1951 season, the Dodgers arrived in Cincinnati after a life-threatening letter was delivered to the Reds' offices.
"Our manager, Charlie Dressen, got up and read the letter to us about how if Jackie took the field, he'll be shot," Carl Erskine, a revered Dodger right-hander of that era, recalled.
"There was complete silence. But then Gene Hermanski (the Dodgers left-fielder at the time) "piped up: 'Hey, Skip, I've got an idea. If we all wore 42 out there, they won't know who to shoot.' " Everybody laughed, especially Robinson.
When the Dodgers went out to warm up, Robinson was standing near Reese who joked: "You mind moving over a little, Jack, this guy might be a bad shot."
Robinson's trailblazing in baseball pre-dated the civil rights movement, which he later championed.
But until Sunday, Hermanski's joke was the only time it had been suggested that No. 42 should be worn by all the Dodgers, much less by dozens of other major leaguers. It should happen more often than once every 60 years."
