Before He Was #42

Welcome back to the weekly MUSAY! I hope you all had a great 4th and are leaning hard into the back half summer!

NEW WIRES - NEW HIRES! 🙌

Counting down to MUSAY’s beta relaunch means new wires and a new fractional CTO to turn them into product - Brad Hefta-Gaub! Brad started coding when he was 12, was one of the first 20 employees at Real Networks and he SWEARS he likes working with companies in the “messy middle, the stretch when things are unclear, fragile, and very real.” That’s definitely MUSAY, and we’re thrilled that Brad is here!

Our Instagram community continues to grow and this post about Cheekwood here in Nashville got picked up by…Cheekwood…as did this one about NMAAM! 🎉

Next week, we’ll have more on our Data leadership team and on two exciting new partnerships.

DO YOU KNOW WHY SPORTS FANS LOVE MUSEUMS?

Do you know why Sports fans love museums? Because they’re called Halls of Fame! When I tell people about MUSAY, they always think of art. But art museums, while magnificent and important, represent only 41% of museums accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and about 6% of the 35K museums in the USA. Most museums are - in fact - focused on history, science, and stories about the things people are curious about…like pizza, jazz, birds, ice cream, etc…! (Accreditation can be expensive and time consuming, so not all museums can afford it.)

BEFORE HANK ARRON, KEN GRIFFEY JR AND DEREK JETER…

When I was a kid, summer meant ice cream from Kimball’s in Carlisle, Mass., backyard barbeques, Ipswich beach days, Jordan Marsh blueberry muffins and, at some point, a Red Sox baseball game with my dad & brother.

Baseball is summertime in America … heck it IS America! From sandlots to city streets to Fenway Park - it’s everywhere … but it didn’t always include everyone. You may not believe this, but some of today’s top-ranked baseball players, (and fantasy team faves), like Jose Ramirez and Elly De La Cruz wouldn’t be on the field today if it weren’t for the courage of one man and those that stood behind him.

This man’s story is the one told today by Darius Coleman and, if you’re a sports fan, you know you belong to a community of people who rally behind home-team stats, data and faves. What you may not know - and may be pleasantly surprised to learn - is that you also belong to a community of people who discover truths inside Halls of Fame and other sport museums.

A Note from Darius: This is a multi-part series on the importance of museums holding up the truth of history that can get lost in time.  

Every year on April 15, Major League Baseball comes together to celebrate one man: Jackie Robinson. 

I don’t think it's necessary to explain the importance of Jackie Robinson. But just to give a refresher, Robinson was the first non-white athlete to play in the modern era of Major League Baseball. Not only was he responsible for the breaking of that color barrier, but he had to push through challenging moments at a pivotal time in American history to continue playing.

Now, I know what you might be thinking: What does this have to do with us today, or MUSAY as a whole?

For years, the U.S. Department of Defense had a page recognizing Jackie Robinson and his service to its military efforts. In response to recent policy changes, this page was briefly taken down before being put back up because of demands from baseball fans and others who care about Robinson’s’s legacy.

Truth is, Jackie Robinson’s road to baseball was set into motion through him being honorably discharged from the military in World War II. The Brooklyn Dodgers’ general manager, Branch Rickey, was looking around for talent as he always did. And he looked at the Negro Leagues as an untouched place of that talent, but knew that whoever he picked to be the man to break the color barrier would have to endure tough hardships. No matter what way you slice it, the pick to Rickey was clear: Jackie was the way, and that was because he knew he could take the hardship.

Why does this come back to the Department of Defense and Jackie Robinson? Branch Rickey, although maybe not purposely, was brothers with Jackie.

Brothers in arms. 

Jackie and Branch served in the military together. There, Branch would watch African Americans sacrifice their time, bodies, and lives for the red, white, and blue, even for a country that didn’t give them full civil rights. That respect not only led Branch to fight for civil rights, but led him to fight the color barrier in baseball as well. 

It was only after his return from service that No. 42, Jackie Robinson, went on to play in baseball’s Negro Leagues. It was only after that that Rickey deemed Jackie the man to break the racial barrier for his team with the minor league Montreal Royals in 1945, and for the Dodgers in 1947. It was only after that that Jackie would over his career rack up a .313 batting average, smack 141 balls out of the park, and add 761 RBI’s (for my non-baseball watchers, runs batted in, or in simpler terms, how many points were scored because Jackie got a hit).

These accomplishments earned him a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, which was the first time a Black man earned that honor. It is so imperative to Jackie Robinson’s story that not only was he good, he was maybe the second-best of all time at his position and still is. 

Some of the key places you could hear these stories? Museums.

Museums serve as time capsules for being able to appreciate many things, like history, art, science, and in this case, sports. While information and unlikely stories can, of course, be posted online, these stories can be taken down or changed at any time, as just happened with the story of Jackie Robinson. But just as a sports fan relies on data and stats, a sports fan can also rely on museums to stay the course. Institutions like the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., continue to preserve stories about players of that time period.

History happened, and it lives its quiet truth inside historic, artistic, and sports museums that, by doing right by their heroes, are heroes themselves.

Without them, stories risk getting lost in time. And that’s no fault of Jackie’s. The reason that Jackie is held in such high regard is still true: Jackie broke the color barrier of the time. He was the face of diversity in baseball as a sport and directly led to the influx of Black baseball players from that day all the way up to now. But not only was Jackie Robinson that face for diversity on the field, he also was that face off the field. 

No. 42 was accomplished. He spoke at the March on Washington alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was the first African American to ever be the Vice President of a major American company (Chock full o’ Nuts, which I know doesn’t sound like it was a major American company, but it was).

When we speak about Jackie Robinson, one of the main things that gets lost is his military service. It’s one of the things at the Jackie Robinson Museum that most people might gloss over, but is one of the most important parts to his story. He got drafted but he still went out and decided to put his blood, sweat, and tears on the line for a country that, when he returned, still didn’t view him as equal.

He was hardened. He was a rock emotionally that — while he felt pain like everyone else — responded differently to the struggles that defined what it meant to be a Black man during that time. That should be celebrated, and it is. 

When we look at stories like Jackie’s, the common thread that ties them all together is the communal understanding of knowing you have to endure something that you don’t think that you deserve — and push through.

History cannot and should not be erased. It isn’t always comfortable, and that’s why it matters.

I think it’s important to show another story, though. The opposite of the story of Jackie’s. From a man who broke the color barrier willingly, to a man who broke the color barrier without anyone knowing. Jackie wasn’t the first. That other story goes to William Edward White. 

But we’ll hear about that next time.

MUSAY Museum Suggestions based off this post: 

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum - Kansas City, Mo.

The Jackie Robinson Museum - New York, N.Y.

About Darius Coleman

Darius doesn’t just see the world. He feels it — deeply. He takes it in so it can surprise him, challenge him, and ultimately inspire him to dream, to write, to create. Whether it’s prose or poetry, sports or culture, Darius’s voice is one you must hear. A 2025 Magna Cum Laude graduate of Tennessee State University’s School of Mass Communications, Darius is only getting started and MUSAY is overjoyed he’s starting here.

About MUSAY

MUSAY is an app that transforms phones from isolation devices into discovery tools to  connect people with cultural experiences they never knew they needed — creating community around shared moments of awe while helping cultural institutions thrive.

MUSAY believes people, especially Gen Z, deserve more than endless scrolling through other people's lives and has engaged them in its design process.  The result is an App that gets people off their sofa and off their screen by helping them find things to do that fit their vibe; with all the things to do being at museums.  

© 2025 MUSAY Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.