Jackie Robinson was in headlines this weekend when New York Yankees third baseman Josh Donaldson referred to Chicago White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson as “Jackie” during Saturday’s game, igniting a brouhaha between the two teams.

Whether Donaldson was joking around, as he insisted, or used Robinson’s name in a “racist” manner, as Sox manager Tony La Russa claimed, it was certain to be a hot button debate throughout baseball.

No matter where you stand on the issue, there’s no arguing Jackie Robinson’s name remains as relevant in baseball today as he was when he broke the major-league color barrier 75 years ago.

If cooler heads prevail, this could be a teachable moment for Donaldson and anyone else trying to understand why using Robinson’s name was considered “disrespectful” by Anderson and “racist” by La Russa.

Robinson endured slights both public and private throughout his career, as most fans surely know. The mere idea of a Black man entering the majors was such a sensitive topic in the late 1940s that Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey had an early meeting with broadcaster Red Barber to give him a heads-up.

Barber, who was born in Mississippi, was as popular a radio broadcaster in New York as Harry Caray later became in Chicago. According to Kostya Kennedy’s book, “True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson,” Barber moved to Florida as a child and witnessed a Black man “tarred and feathered and forced through the streets by the Ku Klux Klan.”

Kennedy wrote Rickey wanted Barber to know of his plan to integrate the Dodgers so Barber could look for another job if the broadcaster felt he couldn’t call a game with white and Black players. After the meeting, Barber went home and told his wife, Lylah, what Rickey had said, then informed her he was going to leave the Dodgers.

Lylah said “let’s have a martini” and think things over for a few days. Kennedy wrote “Barber came to a couple of what he would characterize as ‘self-realizations’ about the randomness of his or any other person’s lineage and place in the world; about the second great commandment, ‘Love thy neighbor,’ and about his role as a reporter.”

Barber decided to stay and report what he saw. During a 1949 broadcast in St. Louis, he informed listeners Robinson and two other Black players were forced to stay in an inferior hotel in town without air conditioning.

“By informing his audience of Brooklyn Dodgers fans of these circumstances, Barber was in a small but direct way influencing how some people thought,” Kennedy wrote. “It was a vivid situation.”

Baseball honors Robinson every April 15 by having all its players, coaches and managers wear his No. 42. But once that annual celebration ends, it seems like Robinson’s legacy is forgotten for the rest of the season and he becomes just another great player from baseball’s past.

It doesn’t have to be that way, and perhaps Donaldson inadvertently helped some remember the true meaning of Robinson’s legacy with his ill-chosen remark during Saturday’s game in the Bronx.

For those looking to understand the importance of Robinson and other contributions of Black players to the game, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., is updating an old exhibit with the help of Chicago Cubs great Fergie Jenkins.

“Twenty-five years ago when MLB did the 50th anniversary of Jackie breaking the color barrier, we put out our first Black baseball exhibit,” Josh Rawitch, president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, told me Friday during Jenkins’ statue unveiling outside Wrigley Field. “This year we’ve announced we’re going to redo the whole thing. Obviously a lot has changed in 25 years.”

The exhibit at the Hall of Fame museum, previously called “Pride and Passion,” has been renamed “Ideals and Injustices,” a better description of the game’s refusal to integrate until Rickey’s bold move in 1947.

“It’s basically the story of Black baseball from mostly the Negro Leagues and up through Jackie and into the ‘70s,” Rawitch said. “It didn’t really get updated after ‘97, so now we’re going to have a whole new exhibit that will take over a portion of the Hall of Fame.

“We’ll also have a traveling exhibit that will go out to various Black communities and cities throughout the country. It’s a major initiative that we believe will tell the story of 150 years of Black baseball in America.”

Their stories will be told anew — and just in time for the return of Hall of Fame induction ceremonies from pandemic-related limitations in 2020 and ‘21. Negro League greats Bud Fowler and Buck O’Neil — the first Black coach in the majors with the Cubs — will posthumously be inducted on July 24, along with former White Sox star Minnie Miñoso, who began his playing career in the all-Black league. Miñoso was considered “the Latino Jackie Robinson,” as Rawitch reminded me, and also endured bigotry and injustices during his major-league career.

Jenkins, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1991, will serve on the advisory board for the new exhibit.

“We called him and he was excited to help us get the word out and tell the story right,” Rawitch said.

It’s doubtful the Donaldson-Anderson imbroglio will rate a mention in the Hall’s exhibit, and it might be forgotten by the time the next baseball controversy surfaces.

But it serves as a reminder of what the name Jackie Robinson still means to Black players who are following in Robinson’s footsteps and to the rich history of a game he helped change for the better.

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A day after top prospect Adley Rutschman made his Orioles debut, Executive Vice President and general manager Mike Elias offered a reminder that more are coming as the organization continues to trend upward in the next stage of its rebuild.

“We’ve got blue skies ahead of us,” Elias said Sunday morning in the Orioles’ dugout at Camden Yards. “We’ve got a No. 1 farm system. We’ve got a young, talented major league team. We have payroll flexibility. We’re past the pandemic, and there’s gonna be more and more people coming into the ballpark. We’re gonna be renovating this place. There’s a lot to look forward to.”

Perhaps chief among those is the arrival of more prospects around Rutschman. The Orioles could’ve possibly had back-to-back debut days at Oriole Park, but No. 2 prospect Grayson Rodriguez instead started for Triple-A Norfolk on Sunday. He threw 87 pitches during his prior start — the same eighth-ranked prospect Kyle Bradish reached in his last Triple-A outing before being promoted — but Elias was clear the Orioles feel there remain steps to be taken for the game’s top pitching prospect.

Rodriguez, 22, posted a 2.65 ERA with a 38.5% strikeout rate in his first eight Triple-A starts, pitching beyond the fifth inning three times after doing so only once in 2021. The Orioles want to be able to let him loose in the majors, Elias said, while also building up his innings this year so that he can pitch without restrictions in 2023.

“When he comes up here, we want him to be able to go and pitch and help the team and not handcuff the team, and we’ve got to be super careful with the workload for this kid just because of who he is,” Elias said. “He’s getting close to a full build-up. We just want to see him keep going on the track that I feel like he’s been on. The last two or three outings have been markedly better in terms of stuff, location, delivery. I think his last outing was kind of vintage Grayson, which was exciting. And I’m watching each one of his starts very carefully, and I know we are as an organization.

“Grayson is one of the most important pitchers in baseball, and we want to make sure that we’re handling that responsibly.”

He did not offer specifics on what they feel Rodriguez must do to reach the majors, which has been standard. Only after Rutschman reached the majors did Elias say that the three straight games he caught for Norfolk from Tuesday to Thursday were what showed the organization he was ready after missing time with a strained strained tricep.

The timing allowed Rutschman to play his first game at home, where a raucous but modest crowd cheered his every move. Orioles manager Brandon Hyde compared the atmosphere to what he saw as a coach with the Chicago Cubs’ fan base when they first promoted eventual Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player Kris Bryant.

“Once that box was checked, we figured it was a live ball,” Elias said. “And then looking at the schedule, Yankee Stadium didn’t seem like a great option for a debut. And it just seemed he was ready, and this weekend made the most sense. And now, he will get the experience of going to play in Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, which is cool for him because that’s life in the [American League] East and then come back for a nice homestand around Memorial Day, so I think the timing worked out as well as it could have given that we were constrained by his injury.”

The Orioles are also managing an injury comeback with No. 3 prospect DL Hall, a left-hander who is routinely showing upper-90s velocity in his return from a stress fracture in his pitching elbow. In three starts since joining Norfolk, Hall, 23, has a 6.52 ERA but has struck out more than 30% of the batters he’s faced.

“He’s got stuff that I think Triple-A is going to be speaking to him about, meaning the hitters there, and you saw the line last time, some walks,” Elias said. “His stuff is unbelievable. He’s been healthy. He looks great. He’s throwing harder than ever, but he’s doing it with ease and efficiency.

“He looks excellent. I think that the mixture of good and bad that we’ve seen in his performance so far in Norfolk is exactly what I would have expected, and I think that he’s ahead of sort of schedule and expectations in terms of where he came into the year, and this is all good stuff, healthy stuff that we’re seeing from him.”

Elias also provided updates on a trio of prospects all recovering with hamstring strains.

Outfielder Heston Kjerstad hasn’t played a professional game since the Orioles drafted him second overall in 2020. He was diagnosed with myocarditis (heart inflammation) shortly after he signed with Baltimore then suffered a left hamstring strain this spring as he finally appeared to be at full health.

Elias said Kjerstad, 23, will begin playing in extended spring training games “as soon as next week,” with the possibility he plays in Florida Complex League games when those begin next month.

“Our goal is to get him to [Low-A] Delmarva this summer,” Elias said. “I don’t know exactly when that’s gonna happen. But he’s doing well with the hamstring and the other stuff that he’s been through.

Last week, outfielder Yusniel Diaz suffered a recurrence of a right hamstring strain that cost about three weeks earlier this season. When on the field, he’s performed well for Norfolk, posting a .934 OPS. Once ranked the Orioles’ top prospect after coming to Baltimore in the Manny Machado trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Diaz, 25, has missed time with lower body injuries each of the past three minor league seasons.

“I don’t know what to say other than that it stinks,” Elias said. “It’s tough news. Once you have those, sometimes they get more susceptible to recurrence, and he’s a twitchy, explosive guy, and this stuff happens, but it’s really putting a hamper on his ability to get on a roll and make himself relevant for the major league team. I’m not ruling anything out, but this is a big setback timewise, and we’ll just keep working with him and get him back out there, and hopefully, maybe in the second half, he can get up here because his time’s overdue.”

Triple-A second baseman-outfielder Terrin Vavra, 25, is fully recovered from his right hamstring strain and is in a build-up period, Elias said. He’ll go to a lower affiliate for a rehab assignment before rejoining Norfolk.

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