"I've investigated you thoroughly, Robinson," is how historians say Branch Rickey signaled to Jackie Robinson that they'd arrived at the moment, that they'd found the sociological vortex of their mutual and almost unimaginable courage.

"Because there's more than just playing," Rickey said dramatically. "I wish it meant only hits, runs, and errors, only the things they put in the box score. You know, Robinson, yes, you would know, that a baseball box score is a democratic thing. It doesn't tell how big you are, what church you attend, what color you are or how your father voted in the last election. It just tells what kind of baseball player you are on that particular day. It's all that ought to count. Maybe one of these days, it will be all that counts. That is one of the reasons I've got you here, Robinson. If you're a good enough man, we can make this a start in the right direction. But let me tell you, it's going to take an awful lot of courage."

You'd hope this inadequate slice of oral history would represent little but a worthy anachronism 60 years after Jackie Robinson hurdled baseball's color barrier on this date in 1947. Wouldn't you, Don Imus? Is this 2007 or 1947? The only thing that's new, Harry Truman used to say, is the history you don't know.

	Related coverage Jackie Robinson wore No. 42 with respect

Hundreds of major-league baseball players will stand at their lockers today and slip into jersey No. 42, an amazing and emotional tribute that sprang from a sentimental ripple within Cincinnati Reds star Ken Griffey Jr., who asked if he could wear Robinson's number on today's anniversary.

The percentage of those players who know the Jackie Robinson story will be significant, the number who can appreciate the revolting intensity of racial hatred he endured just to play this game will be less so, and only a minuscule percentage know of Rickey, the Ohio farm boy turned intellectual whose purpose in what became known as "the noble experiment" was rooted in his own revulsion at what America would tolerate, even as one nation under God.

The anecdote is oft-told, but seems most animated and genuine in the pages of Robinson's autobiography, "I never had it made."

In 1910, Rickey coached baseball at Ohio Wesleyan. Before a road game at Notre Dame, a South Bend hotel manager refused to assign a room to Rickey's only black player, Charley Thomas. Rickey talked the manager into putting a cot for Thomas in his room.

"He sat on that cot," Rickey said. "And was silent for a long time. Then he began to cry, tears he couldn't hold back. His whole body shook with emotion. I sat and watched him, not knowing what to do until he began tearing at one hand with the other, just as if he were trying to scratch the skin off his hands with his fingernails. I was alarmed. I asked him what he was trying to do to himself.

" 'It's my hands,' he sobbed. 'They're black. If only they were white, I'd be as good as anybody then, wouldn't I, Mr. Rickey? If only they were white.' "

"Charley," Rickey said, "the day will come when they won't have to be white."

The time wouldn't come for nearly 40 years, and to bring it about, Rickey had to face down a ton more menace than could be summoned by one South Bend hotel manager. First, there were the other baseball owners, who voted down Rickey's plan to desegregate the game, 15-1, before he formally had proposed it. Then there were his own Brooklyn Dodgers, at least six of whom threatened to quit if Robinson were on the team. "Go ahead," Rickey said. None did, although Dixie Walker asked to be traded and eventually was dealt to the Pirates. Though few understood it, Rickey had evaluated the politics of baseball in the hour at hand) and concluded he had just enough allies in just the right positions to call everyone's bluff. Among them were Commissioner Happy Chandler and Ford Frick, president of the National League.

Frick, quite famously, put down a threatened strike by the Cardinals, timed for the St. Louis arrival of Robinson and the Dodgers, with this missive:

"If you do this, you will be suspended from the league. You will find that the friends you think you have in the press box will not support you, that you will be outcasts. I do not care if half the league strikes. ... I don't care if it wrecks the National League for five years. This is the United States of America and one citizen has as much right to play as another. The National League will go down the line with Robinson whatever the consequences. You will find if you go through with your intention that you have been guilty of complete madness."

There was no strike, but madness ensued.

In his iconic tome, "The Boys of Summer," the eminent Roger Kahn strained mightily to cast the abuse aimed at Robinson in the most civil prose attainable. Robinson, Kahn wrote, was subjected from everything "up to the most raw, sexually disturbed vulgarity that raw, sexually disturbed men could conceive."

But Robinson was "sworn to passivity and silence. He had promised Rickey that he would encase his natural volatility in lead."

In other words, Rickey needed someone with even more nerve than he, and that's how their historic conversation ended.

"Mr. Rickey," Robinson heard himself say, "are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?"

"Robinson," Rickey barked. "I'm looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back."

The rest is that part of history, like much of the balance, not enough of us know.