r! During high school, he excelled as an athlete in four varsity sports. At Pasadena Junior College, he lettered in football, baseball, basketball and track and later transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles. Within two years, he had accomplished some of the most amazing feats in the history of the Pacific Coast Conference. He was the first athlete in UCLA history to letter in four sports. Jackie was twice the conference's leading scorer for the Bruin basketball team. In track, he received recognition as a National Champion Long Jumper. He was an All-American halfback on the football field as well as a two-year starter for the baseball team. His position was second base. Though it was his least hyped sport at the time, it was baseball that would someday make him a star.
             In 1941 Jackie left UCLA and joined a semi-pro football team in Hawaii. But, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Jackie was inclined to return to California. Shortly there after, he was drafted into a segregated unit in the United States Army. Because policy at that time dictated that blacks were ineligible for Officer's Candidate School, it took intense protest by then heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis and Truman Gibson, the African-American Advisor to the Secretary of War, before Robinson was accepted to the Officers Training School. When he completed the program, Jackie was commissioned as a Lieutenant. He nearly ruined his career, however, when he refused to vacate his seat near the front of a bus in Fort Hood, Texas. His snub of white authority ultimately led to charges of public drunkenness, conduct unbecoming of an officer and willful disobedience. Fortunately for him, the court martial was exonerated, but he was still not allowed to take up arms in the war overseas like the rest of his comrades. Instead, he found himself assigned to various bases across the country as an athletic director to new r...