updated 2:55 p.m. ET July 23, 2006

OTTAWA - Sixty years after Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers organization, the franchise is still being celebrated for its groundbreaking decision to integrate baseball.

Robinson’s minor league debut with the Montreal Royals in 1946 was commemorated Sunday by the International League’s Ottawa Lynx, who wore throwback uniforms during their game against Norfolk to honor the team that finished 100-54 and won the Little World Series over Louisville.

A pregame ceremony was held with two of the late Hall of Famer’s teammates that season, pitcher Jean-Pierre Roy and outfielder George Shuba. Then the father of current Dodgers catcher Russell Martin performed the U.S. and Canadian national anthems with his saxophone.

The elder Martin was a 2-year-old living in Montreal when Robinson broke the color barrier in the International League, one year before doing the same in the majors with Brooklyn.

“I don’t know if Russ would be where he is today if it hadn’t been for Jackie Robinson,” said Martin, whose parents saw Robinson play at Delorimier Stadium 60 years earlier. “He was an inspiration to me and that’s where my love and passion for baseball began.”

Roy, a Montreal native who won 25 games for the Royals in 1945, made three appearances with Brooklyn during the 1946 season, his only stint in the majors.

“Jackie Robinson, to me, was a terrific ballplayer but above it all, he was a human being,” Roy said.

“He was the pioneer of all the black players today who earn an excellent living, otherwise they would have never done what they can do at the present time and what they could do at that time. I don’t think many of them would have the determination and the strength, the fortitude to go through the adversity that the Robinsons, Rachel and Jackie, faced.”

Shuba is forever linked with the integration of baseball for his simple, yet remarkably significant, gesture of reaching out and offering a handshake to greet Robinson at home plate after the Royals’ second baseman homered in his minor league debut on April 18, 1946, in Jersey City, N.J.

“I was only there for about 20 games before they shipped me down but it was quite an experience,” Shuba said. “You can see what happened with that handshake. I’m still here today at 81 years old talking about it. Jackie Robinson wasn’t a saint, he wasn’t liked by everybody, but he did it his own way and he was the right guy to do the job. They picked the right guy to cross the color barrier.”

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International League president Randy Mobley took part in the ceremony. He was pleasantly surprised to learn the significance of Robinson’s role in Martin’s development in baseball.

“It’s a fantastic perspective that that story tells,” Mobley said. “There are bound to be hundreds, thousands of those stories out there that we don’t know about and that’s why Jackie being in this league, the handshake involving Mr. Shuba, things like that we have no idea or we can’t quantify how they have shaped the world today and the way people have conducted themselves or the way people have progressed after being inspired by that.”

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