#1

Gosh dang it, we’re finally here! The Top of The Stud 400. The flagman is waving the checkered flag and the #42 car is ripping right through the finish line, outdistancing itself from the #3. Today, we’re revealing the #1 moment in our countdown of The Top 400 Moments in MLB History.

In the very first installment of The Stud 400, which ran on BallNine on November 30, 2021, we laid out the countdown’s ground rules. Here’s what we said:

The timeline runs from the 1901 season (the first season of the American League) and goes through the 2021 season. The list includes on-field accomplishments, impactful off-field moments, baseball in pop culture and much more. Basically, these are fabrics in the baseball tapestry that anyone who loves sport would and should know about.

According to that criteria, or any criteria anyone could come up with, we feel very comfortable with our choice for #1.

The countdown has been a great waltz through the timeline of Major League Baseball. We’ve covered every iconic moment, legendary Hall of Fame players and personnel, fun curiosities of the game and baseball in pop culture. Basically, everything that makes baseball lore a bottomless mine of interesting facts and people.

We also covered the magic numbers as well; numbers like 715, 56 and 61 that need no further explanation. Today we come across another magic number. That number is 1,349 and it’s not recognizable to anyone really.

In baseball history, 1,349 is the number of career hits Rick Manning had. Fred McGriff scored exactly 1,349 runs in his career and his Hall of Fame colleague Bobby Doerr hit 1,349 singles in his career.

A fellow by the name of Walter Fisher became the 1,349^th person to play Major League Baseball when he went 1-2 for the Louisville Colonels in 1889. It was the only game he played in MLB history, as he was part of a group of replacement players who suited up when existing members of the Colonels refused to play a game until they were paid their salaries, which were being withheld by owner Mordecai Davidson, who was a Civil War veteran!

Yeah, baseball history runs deep.

That magic number has nothing to do with any of those things though. The number 1,349 is how many days BallNine has been running The Stud 400. It works out to a little less than four years. The countdown was spread out over 83 articles and close to 200,000 words. The first installment of The Stud 400 featured numbers 400-396, which were Bartolo Colon’s HR (400), The London Series (397), Yankees PA announcer Bob Sheppard’s retirement (398), Pie Traynor’s steal of home in the 1934 All-Star Game (397) and Stan Musial retiring with exactly 1,815 hits at home and on the road (396).

So 1,349 days after Bartolo Colon kicked off the countdown with one of the most improbable homers in Major League Baseball history, we reach the top with a significantly more impactful moment.

Before we reveal the #1 moment in MLB history at The Stud 400, here is a look at the top 10 moments, which were covered in articles over the past two weeks.

10: Roger Maris 61 HRs (1961)

9: Curt Flood and Marvin Miller sue MLB (1969)

8: Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak (1941)

7: Lou Gehrig’s Luckiest Man speech (1939)

6: Giants & Dodgers leave New York (1957)

5: Shot Heard ‘Round the World (1951)

4: Hank Aaron’s 715^th home run (1974)

3: NL & AL sign National Agreement, creating MLB (1903)

2: Babe Ruth sold to the Yankees (1920)

And now, we present to you – for one last time – Episode LXXXIII of The Stud 400.

1. Jackie Robinson breaks the color barrier (1947)

Although I did strongly consider Babe Ruth’s sale to the Yankees and the actual formation of Major League Baseball when the American and National Leagues formally ended their feud, Jackie Robinson had to come in at the top of this list.

Simply put, Major League Baseball wasn’t Major League Baseball until it was open to all, and Jackie Robinson—along with Branch Rickey—are the ones who got us there.

There isn’t much new that we can write here to honor Jackie Robinson that hasn’t been said already about the man, who is a candidate for the most revered professional athlete all-time in any sport. When it comes to historical impact combined with a spot in American history, who else really could even measure up to Robinson?

Everybody knows Robinson’s story in some form, but if there is one aspect that might be overlooked, it’s just how far ahead of his time Robinson was when you juxtapose his debut against the race relations timeline in American history.

To put it in perspective, Robinson debuted with the Dodgers in 1947; Martin Luther King was just 17 years old when Robinson signed with the franchise. His career was entering its final season when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus. The Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1964, a full 17 years after Robinson’s Major League Debut. Blacks weren’t even given equal voting rights until 1965. Harry Truman ended segregation in the US Armed Services 14 months after Robinson’s debut and the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling which ended segregation in schools came in 1954, seven years after Robinson broke in with the Dodgers. The March on Washington and King’s “I Have a Dream” speech came seven years after Robinson’s career ended.

Understanding the racial context of the world and the United States in the years immediately after World War II is vital in appreciating just what kind of obstacles Robinson faced as he integrated Major League Baseball. Robinson wasn’t integrating the sport in a world barreling forwards towards equality, he was coming into a world that was taking the first very small and slow steps in that direction and a majority of the country still wasn’t on board with that.

Want some more perspective? The time between the end of the Civil War and Jackie Robinson’s debut (82 years) is just about the same difference in time between Robinson’s debut and today (78 years).

The slow drip of integration in Major League Baseball is also something that doesn’t seem to draw as much attention as it should. Robinson made his debut on April 15, 1947 and Larry Doby integrated the American League on July 5^th of the same season. Hank Thompson and Willard Brown became the first two Black players to play for the St. Louis Browns less than two weeks after Doby debuted with the Indians, but then things slowed to a crawl from there.

Those three teams remained the only integrated teams until Monte Irvin made his debut with the Giants in 1949. The Boston Braves and Chicago White Sox integrated in 1950 and 1951, respectively and then no additional teams integrated until 1953. By the time every team had at least one Black player, it was 1959 and Robinson had already been retired for three years.

Once every team had integrated, Major League Baseball started taking real steps in opening the game to everyone. Before the 1940’s baseball was largely a white man’s sport. About 135 Cuban-born players played in the Majors prior to 1940 and Hiram Bithorn became the first Puerto Rican-born player in 1942. There were about 35 Native Americans who played in the Majors before 1940 as well.

The 1940s were marked by World War II, so many players were absent from the Major Leagues for that time too. So, wrapping all of that together, by the time the 1940s ended, everyone had returned from World War II, four teams had integrated and players from other countries were beginning to turn up in the Major leagues.

Today we know baseball as a true global sport. Players now come from all over the world and games are played on location in other countries as well. You can trace all of this growth directly back to Jackie Robinson and his integration of Major League Baseball. All of the hate he endured, the threats on his life and the unspeakable strife his family went through is hard to comprehend. We’ve read the stories and seen the movies and documentaries, but it still doesn’t do justice to the hell that Robinson endured. Robinson handled every moment with class on and off the field and by being an athletic force for the Brooklyn Dodgers for 11 seasons.

A quote from Jackie Robinson himself is carved into his tombstone. It reads, “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” Robinson impacted so many lives in his day and still influences countless others today, decades after he has passed away.

The Stud 400 has always been about impact, aura, Americana and on-field accomplishments. Nobody—not even Babe Ruth—could surpass what Robinson has done in those areas for Major League Baseball and America itself, and that’s why his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947 has grabbed the honor as the top moment in the history of Major League Baseball.

Editor’s Note: So there it is. thank you for coming back week after week for years and being a part of The Stud 400. It’s been an absolute pleasure to bring you this countdown and I think I speak for Rocco when I say this has been one of the most fun undertakings BallNine has had the pleasure to bring you.

That said, Rocco probably needs a vacation after all this and we’ll bring you a brand new bunch of baseball history to get hooked on soon enough.

Love you guys.

– El Jefe