Troy Maxson Talks Jackie Robinson
Troy Maxson Talks Jackie Robinson
By Marjorie Maddox
-August Wilson’s Fences
What you talking about Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson wasn’t nobody.
It should have been me. Good enough, just born too soon.
If you could play … then they ought to have let you play.
Yes, sir! I was good enough back in the day.
It should have been me. Those Crackers was just mean.
What you talking about Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson wasn’t nobody.
Yea, hell, I’d have fought back, the same way
I got to just to drive this garbage truck. I mean,
If you could play … then they ought to have let you play.
“Guts not to fight?” What that mean? Hell, ain’t nobody
like me or my boy crooning that strikeout tune.
What you talking about Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson wasn’t nobody.
“Nah, no way I’m keeping quiet. This body’s
old, not Out. I’m talking about me. Why you talking about team?
If you could play … then they ought to have let you play.
Hell, yea, I’m angry. Not turning no other cheek for nobody,
not then, not now. It should have been me. Born too soon.
What you talking about Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson wasn’t nobody.
If you could play … then they ought to have let you play.
Marjorie Maddox is twice a presenter at The National Baseball Hall of Fame and twice the official visiting author of the Little League World Series. She is the author of When The Wood Clacks Out Your Name: Baseball Poems (2001 Redgreene Press Chapbook Winner) and Rules of the Game: Baseball Poems (Boyds Mills Press 2009 and Wipf and Stock 2019). She is the great-grandniece of Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers who helped break the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to Major League Baseball. Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, she also has published 13 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); True, False, None of the Above (Illumination Book Award Medalist); Local News from Someplace Else; Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award); Begin with a Question (Paraclete Press, March 2022); and Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts Publishing, March 2022), an ekphrastic collaboration with photographer Karen Elias—the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite); four children’s and YA books—including Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems with Insider Exercises (Finalist Children’s Educational Category 2020 International Book Awards), and A Crossing of Zebras: Animal Packs in Poetry; I’m Feeling Blue, Too!(a 2021 NCTE Notable Poetry Book)—Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor); Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry (assistant editor); and 650 stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. The recipient of numerous awards, she gives workshops and readings around the world. For more information, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com
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