The world of baseball mourns today as they lose one of their own.

Jerry Coleman was a great baseball man and an American hero. He passed away today at the age of 89.

Coleman played for the New York Yankees from 1949 to 1957, managed the San Diego Padre in 1980 and has been a part of the Friars broadcast crew for many years and was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame in 2005 as a broadcaster.

You can put the baseball aside when you talk about Coleman if you’d like and focus only his service to his country.

Coleman was a Marine aviator in both World War II and Korea earning a multitude of medals including two Distinguished Flying Crosses. He is the only Major League Baseball player to see action in two wars.

In fact, the 1949 Associated Press Rookie of the Year in 1949 left baseball in order to participate in the Korean War as a Lieutenant Colonel.

Growing up in California, Coleman was brought up to b color-blind. Always an advocate for the Negro Leagues and the players that played in that beloved league – he remembers the first time that he saw Jackie Robinson in the article below from the U-T San Diego and Jay Paris from April 15, 2013.

Jerry Coleman never forgot his first sight of Jackie Robinson

LOS ANGELES – Mention Jackie Robinson and Jerry Coleman’s time machine shifts into overdrive.

Sure they stared each other down in the World Series, with Robinson leading the Dodgers and Coleman, the Yankees’ scrappy second baseman.

But Coleman’s exposure to Robinson, who was honored by major league baseball on Monday, goes back. Way back, to when Coleman was a senior at San Francisco’s Lowell High School.

“We were playing the Stanford frosh team in basketball and after our game, UCLA played Stanford,” Coleman said. “There was this African-American out there for UCLA and he was running all over the place, making everyone look stupid. He was five players in one.”

Coleman, the Padres’ announcer, still shakes his head.

“I later found out it was Jackie Robinson,” he said. “Then the next time I saw him, he was a Dodger.”

Or better put, the enemy. The Yankees and Dodgers shared New York City, with the Giants. But no one, according to Coleman, could match Robinson.

“We would have a meeting and talk about the players before the World Series,” Coleman said. “But the only Dodgers we talked about were Pee Wee Reese and Jackie. Not Roy Campanella, not Gil Hodges, not Duke Snider, not Billy Cox – it was Reese and Robinson. It was because those were the guys that could beat you. They were the creme de la creme.”

Robinson’s legacy rose to the top, but not for his baseball talents. When he took the field in 1947, he left a footprint that is rightly celebrated today, and every day, Americans boast of being the land of the free.

Coleman still shudders of the inequity black players absorbed. Coming from San Francisco, Coleman said he was color blind. Then he began his baseball journey and was shocked and disgusted how fellow Americans treated those of color.

“The more you think about him being the only person, the only black person in baseball, and what that would do to you,” Coleman said. “How do you live through that?

“You can’t stay in the hotels with your teammates when you were down South, in Kansas City or St. Louis. I remember when Elston Howard joined our team, he never stayed in our hotel. In spring training, he stayed with a doctor in town.”

Robinson was the talk of this town Monday, and every city that draws its breath through baseball. But Robinson’s impact stretched beyond the chalked lines, something Coleman stressed.

“I’ve said that 100 times,” Coleman said. “Robinson was the guy who led the path at a national level. He was years before Martin Luther King. Can you imagine what that felt like for Robinson?”

Bud Black, the Padres’ manager, appreciated the honor which accompanied facing the Dodgers.

Suddenly the talk of revenge regarding last week’s brawl in San Diego between these teams seemed small. It appeared frivolous to speak of Carlos Quentin breaking Zach Greinke’s collar bone when compared to Robinson smashing the color barrier.

“It’s a special day for baseball and I think for our society,” Black said. “To be playing against the organization he played for is special for all of us.”