Why is Jackie Robinson in the HOF?

[egri]

Even if you throw everything but the stats out the window, Robinson still belongs. He might not have had some of the counting stats, but his other stats were all there. And there is something else; his ability to change a game. From the Summer of '49:

"The next day Preacher Roe beat Vic Raschi 1-0. Gil Hodges singled with Jackie Robinson on third for the game's one run in the third inning. Later Raschi told friends that it was not Hodges who had beaten him, it was Robinson, bluffing a break for home. "I had just never seen anything like him before," Raschi said, "a human being who could go from a standing start to full speed in one step. He did something to me that almost never happened: he broke my concentration and I paid more attention to him than to Hodges." The other Yankees, particularly the younger ones, watched Robinson with growing admiration. On the bench Jerry Coleman, who had turned down a Dodger contract before he signed with the Yankees, silently said a prayer of thanks that he had signed with the Yankee organization. The Dodgers, Coleman thought, were not going to need a light-hitting second baseman for a long, long time. Robinson was different from almost any player Coleman had ever seen. He was not a power hitter, but could change the tempo of the game nonetheless. Years later Coleman still thought Robinson was special. Some younger players with greater speed had arrived, and they had produced greater statistics, but Robinson remained apart; he had done everything with a purpose--to wake up his own team, to intimidate his opponents, to make the game different. What a player, Coleman thought."