The theft of the Jackie Robinson statue from the League 42 baseball fields brought to my mind one of the most embarrassing mistakes I ever made as a journalist.
I was the 24-year-old editor of a small weekly called the San Fernando Sun, in San Fernando, California.
And one dark and stormy night (with apologies to Snoopy), someone stole the American flag that flew over the San Fernando Pioneer Cemetery, the final resting place of the city’s founders, fallen soldiers and veterans from the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World War I.
I was outraged, and I pounded out a scathing editorial that ended thusly: “No one stoops so low as when they climb to steal the flag from over the graves of our honored dead.”
The next day, I got a call from a man who said “I’ve got that flag you wrote about.”
Turns out he was a Vietnam veteran and was upset that the flag was being flown in the dark and the rain and he took it down because he felt like it was dishonoring the flag and the people buried in the cemetery.
It was an embarrassing retraction for me, but it taught me a valuable lesson: When opining in print, try not to jump to conclusions, because sometimes there’s more to a story than you know.
That said, today, as I contemplate the theft of the statue from League 42, I am feeling the same burning, seething outrage that I felt as a young editor almost 40 years ago.
Only this time, I write with confidence that there’s no good explanation, no redemption, no quick fix, no happy ending.
On Monday, Wichita police released the news that the pickup truck believed to have been used to heist the statue had been located and impounded.
My hope, and a lot of people’s, was that it would lead to the recovery of the sculpture — which had been cut off at the shoetops — and that it could be repaired and reinstalled at a reasonable cost.
That hope ended Tuesday morning, at a police news conference announcing that the statue had been found in a south Wichita park, chopped to pieces and burned in a trash-cart fire — unsalvageable, a total loss.
Metal theft is common in Wichita, but this is something far more sinister than sawing off a catalytic converter or swiping a roll of copper tubing from a construction site.
League 42 — named for Robinson’s uniform number when he became the first Black player to get into the Major Leagues — is based at McAdams Park in the heart of Wichita’s Black community.
The league’s $30-a-family registration fee, which includes uniforms and equipment if needed, offers 5- to 14-year-olds from low-income families the opportunity to play organized ball without their parents having to shell out hundreds of dollars they can’t afford.
