Jackie Robinson faced gloom early in the 1947 baseball season.

He was in his rookie year as modern baseball's first black player, and he'd been prepared for the vicious racial slurs he was receiving from opposing players and spectators. He'd been prepared to be rejected by some of his teammates.

What he wasn't ready for was a deep batting slump. No matter how well Robinson handled race baiting, integration in baseball would fail unless he produced as a ballplayer.

Almost two years earlier, Robinson (1919-72) and the Brooklyn Dodgers' general manager, Branch Rickey, agreed that Robinson wouldn't answer racial taunts by fighting. Rickey contended fighting could set off race riots in the stadium, and those opposing integration would use that to justify excluding blacks from playing in the majors.

To win the battle for acceptance, Rickey told Robinson, "Our weapons will be base hits and stolen bases and swallowed pride."

With the Dodgers playing the Philadelphia Phillies for a three-game series early in that '47 season, Robinson was subjected to the worst kind of racial slurs from Phillie players. But Robinson restrained himself and let his play do the talking.

In the eighth inning of the first game, Robinson gave his complete focus to his play. He singled, ending a one-for-20 batting slump. A master base runner, he stole second, went to third when the throw went into center field and scored the winning run on a single.

By the third game of the series, the race baiting intensified. Finally Dodger infielder Eddie Stanky yelled to the Phillies' dugout, "Listen, you yellow-bellied cowards, why don't you yell at somebody who can answer back?"

Robinson's daring play throughout the season led him to being named baseball's first Rookie of the Year and helped the Dodgers win the pennant.

He also gained peace of mind. "I had learned how to exercise self-control — to answer insults, violence and injustice with silence — and I had learned how to earn the respect of my teammates," Robinson wrote in "I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography."

Robinson, who began his major-league career at the advanced age of 28, played 10 seasons with Brooklyn, compiling a lifetime batting average of .311. He helped lead the Dodgers to six pennants and a world championship. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962 and as a second baseman on Major League Baseball's All-Century Team in 1999.

"(Robinson) was a great competitor who could do it all. He was a great player, a manager's dream. If I had to go to war, I'd want him on my side," said Leo Durocher, who managed Robinson in 1948.

Robinson's impact off the field was even larger than his success on it. "He underwent the trauma and the humiliation and the loneliness which comes with being a pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road of freedom," said Martin Luther King Jr. in 1962.

"Jack said that a life is not important except for the impact it has on the lives of others," Rachel Robinson, Jackie's widow, told IBD. "He really lived by that. He never looked for self-aggrandizement."

Robinson credited his success to the love and support of his wife. His values were guided by a strong religious faith. He believed his skills were God-given and aided by continual practice. "Jack's spirituality and his deep devotion to his religion had a lot to do with the way he behaved and performed," Rachel Robinson said. "He prayed a lot, and he believed that God would take care of him if he did his part."

Robinson demanded the best from himself and took action when he didn't achieve it. For example, after an extensive off-season on the banquet circuit, Robinson was 25 pounds overweight by the start of spring training in 1948. His poor conditioning led to a slow start for him, and the Dodgers managed only a third-place finish.

"In my heart I was miserable. I knew that I should have done better — much better. I made myself a solemn vow to redeem myself and the Dodgers in 1949," Robinson said, as cited in "Jackie Robinson: A Biography" by Arnold Rampersad.

Robinson, who didn't smoke or drink, put himself on a tough conditioning regimen and reported to spring training in 1949 in shape. His effort paid off as Robinson won the National League batting crown with a .342 average. He knocked in 124 runs while leading the league in stolen bases and the Dodgers to the pennant. He was named the league's Most Valuable Player.

"He'd put on his game face and was all business," said Duke Snider, a former Robinson teammate. "He showed his intensity by his example on the field."

Robinson's baseball accomplishments gave him a platform. He spoke out and wrote forcefully on civil rights during and after his playing career. When a prominent sportswriter told Robinson he was offending other writers and might cost himself awards they voted on, Robinson remained undeterred.

"If I had a room jammed with trophies, awards and citations," Robinson wrote, "and a child of mine came to me into that room and asked what I had done in defense of black people and decent whites fighting for freedom — and I had to tell that child I had kept quiet, that I had been timid — I would have to mark myself a total failure in the whole business of living."

Among baseball players, "only Jackie Robinson insisted, day in and day out, on challenging America on the matter of race and justice," biographer Rampersad wrote.

"I learned a long time ago that a person must be true to himself if he is to succeed," Robinson wrote in a letter to a friend in the mid-1950s. "He must be willing to stand by his principles."

BY MICHAEL MINK