BOSTON—Celtics legend Bill Russell on Friday joined a celebration to honor Jackie Robinson at Fenway Park, where the future Hall of Fame ballplayer was once given a sham tryout that would have made the Red Sox the first team -- instead of the last -- to field a black player.
It was the sixth annual Robinson celebration hosted by the Red Sox, who did not integrate until Pumpsie Green played in 1959 -- 12 years after Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
On Thursday, the day Robinson would have turned 89, Russell and Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree spoke to 150 Boston students about the importance of his life.
On Friday, the two men held a panel discussion along with Red Sox vice president Elaine Steward, Washington Nationals part-owner Faye Fields and Newsday columnist Steve Jacobson, who wrote the book "Carrying Jackie's Torch."
"Jackie was a hero to us. He always conducted himself as a man," Russell said. "He showed me the way to be a man in professional sports."
The feeling was mutual, Russell found out when Rachel Robinson called and asked him to be a pallbearer at Jackie's funeral.
"She hung the phone up and I asked myself, 'How do you get to be a hero to Jackie Robinson?'" Russell said. "I was so flattered."
Jacobson told about how the Red Sox, under pressure from the Boston city council, agreed to hold a tryout at Fenway for Robinson and fellow Negro Leaguers Sam Jethroe and Marvin Williams. The Red Sox chose not to sign any of them; it was 1945, two years before Robinson took the field for the Dodgers.
By the time Russell came to Boston in 1956, he had already won two NCAA titles and an Olympic gold medal. But Celtics patriarch Red Auerbach was still second-guessed for drafting him.
"People said it was a wasted draft choice, wasted money," he said. "They said, 'He's no good. All he can do is block shots and rebound.
"And Red said, 'That's enough.'"
