Entertainment : From the front row of the Palace: '42' brings life to an old, but immortal story

Fifteen-year-old Mike heard the men talking: A man was coming to Chicago to ruin baseball.

So, he went to Wrigley Field to see what the fuss was all about.

On that spring day in 1947, Mike and a friend walked to the stadium to see his beloved Cubs play the Brooklyn Dodgers – and more significantly, Jackie Robinson.

Mike – who later became famous as Chicago columnist Mike Royko – remembered that day as a contrast between the well-dressed colored baseball fans who helped fill the stadium for Jackie Robinson’s debut with the inexplicable racism of parts of white Chicago.

Mike watched as one of the Cubs tried spike Robinson at first base.

Mike wrote about how rude and non-big league it was for this player, who had been on of his heroes, to treat Robinson that way.

Late in the game, Robinson hit a foul ball that eventually bounced into Mike’s hands.

One of the black members in that crowd offered Mike $10 for that ball.

He accepted the offer.

Writing his column the day after Jackie Robinson died in 1972, Mike Royko said that he has both regretted not keeping that baseball and not giving it to the man for free.

But on the occasion of Robinson’s death, Royko wrote: "On Tuesday, I was glad I sold it to him. And if that man is still around, and still has that baseball, I’m sure he thinks it was worth every cent."

It’s been 41 years since No. 42 died, and 57 years since Jackie Robinson last played baseball. Nobody under age 60 can remember seeing the first black man play at all; nobody under 70 can say they remember watching Robinson break baseball’s color barrier.

I went to “42” expecting to be disappointed. The Jackie Robinson story has been told in movies since 1950, and Hollywood seems intent on telling us stories it has already told us in ways designed to bore us.

But writer/director Brian Helgeland created a film that simply and honestly told the Jackie Robinson story to a generation that is too young to have experienced it.

While historians will point out that the movie leaves out important facts about race and Robinson in baseball, and uses dramatic license at times, it showed clearly and fairly just how horribly too much of America treated blacks during that era – even those who had served in World War II.

What you should know before you go

Helgeland deserves credit for having the courage to use in the movie, in its historically awful sense, a word that can get white people fired: The N-word. Yes, the critics criticized Helgeland for using that word frequently. But, as Harrison Ford (who played Dodgers owner Blanch Rickey) pointed out in an interview with Ebony magazine, that word was used way too often in 1947, and no story about Jackie Robinson that eliminates that word can honestly capture its impact.

“You can’t make a movie about applesauce without talking about apples,” said Harrison Ford.

Why you should go

“42” is more historically accurate than most movies about history, although I am quite certain that Branch Rickey never used the phrase, “Judas Priest.”

It’s also well-written and entertaining. I give it extra points for using one of my favorite words: Discombobulated. There is also a clever scene that uses the word conspicuous.

Just about every movie coming to theaters this summer is a remake: Iron Man. Star Trek. Hangover. Despicable Me. The Great Gatsby (which most critics say isn’t so great).

Of all the stories that Hollywood is telling us again this summer, Jackie Robinson’s story is the one you should see first.

As a baseball fan, I appreciate how Helgeland and his crew recreated Ebbets Field – which opened exactly 100 years ago, in 1913 – and has since been replaced by an apartment complex. The movie brings to life much of how baseball looked when Robinson made history 66 years ago.

More importantly – it captures clearly how much of America looked and acted toward Robinson’s race in 1947.