Kobe Bryant Immortalized in Hollywood-Who's Next?

As reported by Yahoo! News, Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant has been awarded a star with his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in California. The NBA superstar has been a symbol of the team and city since he came into the league in 1996 at the tender age of 18. Bryant has been selected to 13 All-Star teams and has won five NBA championships, all with the Lakers.

Bryant is the first athlete to ever receive the honor, as he takes his place among numerous film stars and television personalities. While there is an extensive process for the selecting of honorees each year, the final approval is given by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce for who goes on the walk.

Bryant’s enshrinement seemingly opens the door for an entirely new set of celebrities to be immortalized in Hollywood. The question is, who’s next? This writer believes that the next star should go to perhaps the most important athlete in American history, baseball great Jackie Robinson.

After all, isn’t Robinson emblematic of what the Walk of Fame stands for? A poster boy for the then Brooklyn (and now hometown Los Angeles) Dodgers in the 1950s, Robinson broke the seemingly impenetrable color barrier in baseball, and opened a wealth of new opportunities for not only black athletes, but all high-profile professions for minorities.

Not to mention his stellar career as a player. Robinson has a lifetime batting average of .311, was elected to 6 straight All-Star teams, and won a Rookie of the Year and National League MVP award in his relatively short 10 years in the majors.

Robinson has already been enshrined in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY and all 30 MLB teams have his retired number 42 hanging from their stadium rafters. However, his importance to sport and to society in general can never be overstated. In the turbulent 1950s, before Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X became prominent, Robinson was the leading catalyst for racial equality. Jackie helped people see that people of color were just as good at baseball as whites. If a black man could rule the diamond, why couldn’t he succeed in an office job? How about on the movie screen? What about a black writer? Robinson instilled hope in a race, and took a beating while doing it. It was only after his playing career that he was recognized for his contributions and achievements.

So when Hollywood comes calling next year, who will be immortalized in stone? Only time will tell, but hopefully the committee will recognize that if more athletes are to be enshrined, they ought to start with those who were most important to the game, and almost no one can rival the historical significance of the late and great Jackie Robinson.