A Changing World: The Role of the Brooklyn Dodgers in Brooklyn

Colm Toibin’s book Brooklyn, is about a young Irish woman who immigrates to New York City at a time when the cultural mood of the United States was changing dramatically in relationship to race, religion, and ethnicity. The book’s main character, Eilis moves from her small hometown in Ireland to Brooklyn, where she lives in a boarding house for Irish women. Her coming of age as a woman is marked by her work in a department store that is one of the first to allow “colored” women into their store. She crosses ethnic lines when she begins to date an Italian man, facing the criticism of her Irish housemates and her own feelings of disloyalty to her family. As she develops her relationship with her Italian boyfriend, Tony, she is slowly integrated into life in New York. One of the pivotal moments in her relationship with Tony is when she attends a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball game with him and his brothers.

The story is set during a time when the Brooklyn Dodgers had already invited Jackie Robinson to join their team as the first African American man to be allowed to play in a major baseball league -a period remembered for creating social change in America. The excitement and energy surrounding his presence on the Dodgers team is highlighted in a scene where Eilis and Tony are at a dance one Friday evening, and the band begins to play the song, “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?” Eilis notices that Tony, “went crazy, as did many around him” (Toibin 175). Eilis admires Tony’s open friendliness to others and the way he refrains from criticizing people based on their race or ethnicity. That she shares this lack of judgement is shown by her calm acceptance of the women of color who shop at the store where she works and her willingness to wait on them with a friendly demeanor when no one else in the store is willing to do so (Toibin 123).

When the Irish priest who secured her immigration papers to the United States, and who serves as her link to her mother and sister in Ireland, is first introduced to Tony, the two of them fall into an animated discussion of the Brooklyn Dodgers that serves to reassure the priest that Tony is a good man (Toibin 154). Later in the story, after Eilis has been dating Tony for some time and has met his family, there is a moment when the Italian priest, Father Flood, asks her how things are going with Tony and whether or not he has taken her to a Dodgers game yet. During the conversation, he offers her a piece of advice about not joking about “the game”, and when she tells him that Tony had said something similar to her, he replies, “He’s a solid man” (Toibin 170). This endorsement is a moment of foreshadowing of Eilis’s deepening relationship with Tony, as one of the very next scenes describes her experience at a Brooklyn Dodgers game with Tony and his brothers.

At the game, Eilis is somewhat out of her element, and has trouble following the rules and plays. However, she is comfortable with Tony and his family, and finds herself observing him and enjoying his excitement and enthusiasm for the Dodgers. Her analysis of Tony at the game seems to be the main turning point in her questioning of whether or not she will make a commitment to him and decide to stay in NY. Rather than wishing for him to be Irish, or to be similar to her, in this moment she notes, “how different he was from her in every way. The idea that he would never see her as she felt that she saw him now came to her as an infinite relief, as a satisfactory solution to things” (Toibin 180). This acknowledgement of difference as a way of knowing that he is the right man for her, set against the backdrop of the Brooklyn Dodgers game, reinforces the idea of racial and ethnic melding as a positive evolution, both in Eilis’s life, as well as in the cultural life of Brooklyn, New York.

Jackie Robinson’s presence in the story as a heroic figure, sets the stage for what will be a coming of age story culminating in Eilis’s ultimate rejection of the expectations and norms of her small and culturally homogenous hometown and her eventual decision to integrate herself into a life where she embraces intimacy with people of different classes, races and ethnicities. Jackie Robinson lives on in the American psyche as one of the first popular icons of racial integration. He was accepted as a well-loved player of the Brooklyn Dodgers well before the Supreme Court declared school segregation illegal, at which time many African American players had already been integrated onto baseball teams (Tygiel 9).

At the end of Brooklyn, Toibin’s main character Eilis, has to face the criticism and pressure of leaving her hometown to return to New York. She is frowned upon, not just by members of her community, but also by her own mother, for making the choice to return to Tony and a life of difference. Similarly, Jackie Robinson had to face tremendous pressure and even death threats as he broke racial barriers throughout his life and career in baseball. In the end, “Robinson’s performance under unimaginable pressure was truly one of the greatest athletic triumphs, if not the greatest, in American history” (Glasser). Although at the end of Brooklyn, it isn’t totally clear what exactly Eilis will find when she returns to NY and Tony, the example of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers and their hard won popularity and success gives the reader a sense of hope for Eilis’s future, even though she is turning away from what would have been an easy and comfortable life of success in her Irish hometown.

Works Cited

Glasser, Ira. “Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, Precursors of the Civil Rights Movement.” The World and I, March 2003.

Toibin, Colm. Brooklyn. Ireland: Scribner, 2009.

Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.