“Go back to being a (expletive) slave, you (N-word)," the essay began.

Niko Goodrum, the Detroit Tigers' super-utility man, was a passenger in a car on Monday morning, while reading the essay on the way to an event that celebrated Jackie Robinson Day.

Goodrum read the first line and was stunned.

Gabrielle Porter, an eighth-grader at West Hills Middle School in Bloomfield Hills, wrote the essay after she was insulted verbally in 2018. Porter could have responded with violence. But she used the insult as inspiration and motivation.

Then she wrote a raw, profound, powerful essay about her experience.

“I read it and it was like, ‘Wow!’ ” Goodrum said. “That didn’t happen to me in middle school. Trying to deal with that in eighth grade? She is beyond her years.”

Porter’s essay finished in the top 10 in a national writing contest called “Breaking Barriers,” a program that teaches students about obstacles faced by Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson as he broke baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

“I’ve been holding in my frustration for a long time," Porter said Monday, "and this was the perfect opportunity to let it out.”

Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier 72 years ago, but his example and lessons are just as relevant today.

“In that moment, I felt like Jackie Robinson,” Porter wrote in her essay. “I know that each time he walked onto those baseball fields someone would shout something racist.”

The Tigers honored Porter on Monday with a surprise visit from Goodrum, Josh Harrison and Paws, the Tigers' mascot.

“I can’t believe something like this has happened to an ordinary person like me,” Porter said, after posing for pictures with Goodrum and Harrison. “It’s really weird.”

Robinson would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year.

The Tigers had an off day Monday, so the entire team will wear No. 42 jerseys to honor Robinson on Tuesday when the Tigers play the Pittsburgh Pirates in Comerica Park.

Porter will be honored on the field before the game, and Mark Honeyman, her teacher, will throw out the first pitch.

“I’m scared to death,” Honeyman said, about throwing out the first pitch. “The heaviest thing I lift is a dictionary.”

Honeyman played baseball as a kid but has gone 30 years without touching a baseball.

“The gym teacher and I have been playing catch for the last 10 days,” he said. “He’s been coaching me.”

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'Your voice can be heard'

At the surprise event on Monday, more than 100 eighth-graders all wore T-shirts with Robinson's No. 42 printed on the front and a quote from Porter’s essay on back: “I will change the world just like Jackie Robinson did.”

Porter was stunned.

“To see a quote from my paper on their backs was crazy,” she said.

Goodrum and Harrison presented Porter and Honeyman with new laptops on behalf of Major League Baseball. And the Tigers gave more than 100 tickets to the entire eighth-grade class to attend a home game on May 16.

“It doesn’t matter who you are, your voice can be heard,” Harrison told the students, drawing lessons from Robinson. “He exhibited a lot of courage, things we can’t even fathom or imagine. Even though he did it way back when, these are issues that are still around today.”

Robinson was known for his citizenship, commitment, courage, determination, excellence, integrity, justice, persistence and teamwork.

“Even though Jackie Robinson was a baseball player, a lot of life lessons can be taken from him, standing up for what is right and for what you believe in,” Harrison said. “There is so much negativity today and I think it’s a good message to hear.”

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Strength in writing

Honeyman, who teaches English, is a proponent of this writing contest. He has had three national winners within the past seven years.

“For me, the magic of this contest is watching kids grapple with how to articulate some problem they face, some dilemma, some barrier,” he said. “Watching them articulate that, and then watching them be able to talk about how they have used some of Jackie Robinson’s traits to overcome those challenges, or cope if it’s an ongoing thing, watching that beautiful spark in their eyes. They look at me and say, ‘I never realized the strength I had, the courage, to get over that.’ ”

Not all of it is about race. Some of the students have written about divorce, illness, dyslexia and social anxiety.

“They are so real about it and they put themselves out so far on the edge of that branch, trusting that whoever is on the other end will value what they have to say,” Honeyman said.

And that is exactly what Porter did.

“I was tearing up, choked up, as I read her paper,” Honeyman said. “She took what was the most brutally painful personal issue and exposed it to the light of day, with no punches pulled.”

Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff. To read his recent columns, go to freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel/.