In the winter of 1997, with his car heater roaring and the engine rumbling in bumper-to-bumper Driscoll Bridge traffic, Leonard S. Coleman Jr. had a thought that would make baseball history.
Coleman, an Atlantic Highlands resident since 1985, has served in many state government and private sector roles, but no job was as meaningful as when he was the commissioner of Major League Baseball’s National League from 1994 through 1999.
“I’ll never forget that moment,” Coleman said. “It was like someone reached out and put the thought in my mind. How can we honor this man properly? We’re going to retire his number throughout the league.”
The man on his mind was legendary Brooklyn Dodgers in-fielder Jackie Robinson, a 1962 Hall of Fame inductee who shattered baseball’s color barrier when he made his major league debut April 15, 1947.
A half decade later to the day, with the Dodgers – who relocated to Los Angeles in 1958 – in New York City to play the Mets at Shea Stadium, Coleman stood alongside former President Bill Clinton, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and Robinson’s wife Rachel to honor the baseball and cultural luminary in a fashion no other major sports athlete had ever been recognized before.
Since that evening in Queens, Robinson’s number 42 has hung at every Major League Baseball stadium around the country, removed from circulation and never to be worn by any future players.
“Baseball had always operated under the idea that no player was ever bigger than the game. But what (Jackie) meant to so many people, beyond the game, that was bigger than baseball. He deserved to be honored in that way,” said Coleman, who served as chairman of the board of directors of the Jackie Robinson Foundation for 18 years.
Coleman had a five-year run at the helm of the National League and remained with Major League Baseball for several years after the position of league commissioner was dissolved and centralized under Selig.
Coleman’s love for the game developed during his upbringing in Montclair, where his two-family household was divided. His mother was a diehard Dodgers fan, while his father backed the New York Giants and his uncle supported the New York Yankees.
“We would always argue over who had the better team, and who had the better centerfielder: Duke Snider (Dodgers), Mickey Mantle (Yankees) or Willie Mays (Giants). Those were fun days. They’re great memories,” said Coleman, who was a star baseball and football player at Montclair High School.
Coleman would continue his sports and academic careers at Princeton University, where he became the first African-American student to score a touchdown for the Tigers football team. After graduating from Princeton with a degree in history and earning two master’s degrees from Harvard University, Coleman went to Africa, where he completed four years of missionary work. Upon his return to New Jersey in 1984, Coleman was tapped by former Gov. Tom Kean to serve as the state commissioner of energy. It was in this office that his love for the game rekindled.
“I never lost that hunger to compete, but spending four years in Africa, where there is no baseball, it got put on the back burner. But now I’m back in New Jersey, I’m 35 and all I want to do is play again. I spent hundreds of dollars on tokens at batting cages and eventually worked my way into the Metropolitan Baseball League,” Coleman said.
The Metropolitan Baseball League is a summer baseball organization that still exists today, mostly featuring collegiate ballplayers. It was even home to Long Branch native John “The Count” Montefusco, a teammate of Coleman’s who went on to pitch 12 years in big leagues with the San Francisco Giants, Atlanta Braves, San Diego Padres and New York Yankees.
“Tom (Kean) was a big baseball fan. So he didn’t mind when I told him ‘No more meetings after 3 o’clock on game days. At 3 o’clock I’m out the door,’ ” Coleman said.
In 1988 Coleman left the governor’s cabinet for an investment banking position, and three years later he received an unexpected call from Major League Baseball, where he accepted a position as chief of market development.
Though Coleman climbed the ranks quickly, it’s an initiative he began in 1991 that he is proudest of.
It was in market development that Coleman took over Major League Baseball’s RBI program, an effort to revive baseball in inner cities by increasing baseball and softball opportunities for underserved youth that also promotes inclusion, academic achievement and teamwork.
Today, the RBI initiative operates more than 300 programs in upward of 200 cities across the nation. There are an estimated 200,000 participants served by RBI. “I was one of those kids. My friends were those kids. If someone didn’t introduce baseball to me, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Coleman said. “It’s a special program and I’m proud to have been a small part of it.”
Coleman said expanding the RBI program was a result of observing Major League Baseball from a dif ferent perspective. Examining his work, his family and his life from an alternative point of view is something he learned during his time in Africa.
While attending a funeral in a small village, Coleman entered and realized he was at the home not of a deceased villager, but of a man who was close to dying. “The entire village was there. There was dancing, chanting and respects being paid, but this man was still alive,” Coleman said. “I turned to one of the villagers I was working with and questioned their tradition. This is not how we do things in America. He said, ‘If you don’t visit while they’re still alive, how will they know what they meant to you?’ It was a great question and one that helped me see life a little dif ferently.”
It was an approach he took to Major League Baseball, and one that helped him implement significant cultural changes throughout the game, including the suspension and eventual ousting of former Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott, who on numerous occasions directed slurs toward African-Americans, Jews and persons of Japanese ancestry. She was banned from managing the Reds from 1996 through 1998 for supporting the German domestic policies of Adolf Hitler.
Schott sold the team in 1999. “Baseball is and has always been a reflection of society,” Coleman said. “As we evolve, it evolves with us. It’s our game, and it will always be special to me.”
