I’ve crusaded down this same route before, so if you don’t want to join me for a repechage, jump to another page. Bored, been there, done this? Find something else to do.

Topic: Greatest athlete of all time. Why wasn’t more emphasis put on that label of excellence during the recent 60th anniversary celebrations of Jackie Robinson’s making baseball, the nation and the world a lot better by debuting with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, at age 28.

You can have your Jim Thorpes, Jim Browns, Bob Mathiases, Wilt Chamberlains, Muhammad Alis, Michael Jordans. Give me Robby, God bless his noble spirit and soul. It was years before his shattering of baseball’s color line in ’47, in arguably his fifth best sport, that he created most of the credentials to support my premise.

His widowed mother moved Jackie, three brothers and a sister to Pasadena, Calif. He shined shoes, sold scrap metal and hawked hot dogs at the Rose Bowl, anything for the family. Even in the “enlightened” Far West, black kids weren’t recruited by big schools in the ’30s. No scholarship, Robby went to Pasadena Junior College where he starred in basketball, track and baseball, leading to an offer from UCLA.

Add another sport, football. As a tailback he averaged 12 yards per rush in 1938 and led the nation in punt-return yardage. As a pre-John Wooden basketeer, Jackie led the Pacific Coast in scoring in 1940 and 1941. Did a little shortstopping in baseball, sprinted on the track team and won the national college title in the broad jump – the first four-sport letterman in school history.

Oh, yes, he could play tennis and golf well and reached the national tennis semifinals – when blacks might not even be able to get a court or tee time. Imagine how we’d be talking about some white guy who did all that, with a lot more yet to come.

The fiery Robinson entered the Army in 1942, achieved the rank of lieutenant and beat down a court-martial attempt after he refused to move to the back of a military bus. For one postwar year, ’45, Robby coached the basketball team at Sam Houston State to the city championship, then signed for $400 a month to play baseball with the Kansas City Monarchs. On Aug. 29, 1945, he signed with Montreal of the International League, a Brooklyn farm club, heralded as the first “negro” in “organized baseball.”

Jack sparked Montreal to the ’46 pennant and won the league batting crown. When Robinson was 28 – repeat, 28 – Branch Rickey installed Robby as a pioneer on a hostile Dodger roster. A shortstop by trade, he played first, second and third base and had productive times in the outfield. Consider the discipline this man mustered to beat the odds, threats and insults and show such amazing grace under pressure. Turned loose, he probably could have whipped any of his detractors.

He played 10 seasons in Brooklyn, and Robinson retired after being traded to, of all teams, the hated Giants after ’56.

The Dodgers finally beat the evil New York Yankees for the 1955 World Series title, and guess who figured magnificently in that rare feat? You can’t put it any better than columnist Red Smith: “The unconquerable doing the impossible.”

Mr. Everything was a successful businessman, husband, father and role model. Plagued by diabetes, a heart condition and failing eyesight, he died in 1972 at a mere 53.

I care not what course others may take – Jackie Robinson is my greatest athlete-citizen of all time.