After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made

by Ben Rhodes

I offered Cody the image of Jackie Robinson, an imperfect man who’d endured pitches thrown at his head and abuse hurled his way from the grandstand, stealing home in the 1955 World Series. What an American thing to do! What combination of brazenness, composure, and luck. How subversive, this thing that was allowed by the rules but not by the logic of the game. How many currents of American history informed that act? How many anonymous baseball games played under the American sun—segregated fields, Negro League ball, players forgotten to history—added up to the set of skills and cunning that Jackie had acquired by the time he got to third base that day and sized up the pitcher’s delivery against the distance home, marking American time. Obama, I thought, was much more akin to Jackie Robinson than to John Lewis—the barrier breaker who played by the established rules and looked for the occasional opening within the rules to dash home.