Larry Doby helped unite Major League Baseball and Jackie Robinson

Lifestyle

by gavin newsham

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson made history by signing with the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers and becoming the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB).

Just six weeks later, Larry Doby, a 23-year-old from Paterson, New Jersey, left the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League to join the Cleveland Indians, becoming the first black player in the American League.

But as Jerry Eisenberg explains in “Black and White Larry Doby: The Story of Baseball's Pioneer” (Sports Publishing), if Robinson thought things would be easier once he broke the color barrier. , that was a mistake.

When Dobby first met his new teammates, the reception was anything but warm. “I walked along the line and held out my hand, but very little came back in return,” he recalls.

“Most of the handshakes were cold ones, and they gave me looks that said, 'You don't belong here.'”

But he was philosophical.

“Jackie gets all the credit for putting up with racist crap and abuse. He was the first,” Dobie says in the book. “But the shit I took was just as bad.

“Nobody said, 'Let's be nice to the second black guy.'”

Larry Doby was born in Camden, South Carolina in 1923, the son of semi-professional baseball player David Doby. He moved north to New Jersey with his mother Etta after his father drowned when he was six years old.

In school, Dobie excelled in baseball, basketball, and football, earning him an athletic scholarship to Long Island University. In fact, Dobie's athletic talent was such that he achieved celebrity status at Eastside High School in Paterson. Everyone had his back.

When the school's football team was invited to play in a single-sex high school bowl game in Florida, the team voted to stay home rather than play without Doby, the only black player in the lineup.

After playing for the Newark Eagles and spending time in the military, Doby got his big break and signed with the Cleveland Indians in 1947.

But unlike Robinson in Brooklyn, Doby's situation in Cleveland was markedly different.

Still, schools were segregated and restaurants either refused service to blacks or charged them a premium. Movie theaters forced black moviegoers to sit on balconies, and amusement parks refused them entry.

Baseball was no exception.

During a game in the South, Doby had a beer bottle thrown at him and a Philadelphia Athletics infielder spat cigarette juice in his face.

Meanwhile, at the stadiums in Washington and St. Louis, Doby had to enter through a separate entrance from his teammates. It only spurred him on.

“I always hit the ball well in Washington and St. Louis,” he said. “I saw them in the Jim Crow pews. I felt like a high school quarterback with my 5,000 cheerleaders…and they made some noise. “When I hit the home run, the sound was deafening.''

Unlike Robinson, Doby did not enjoy the same support network. Even in spring training, he sat on the team bus while his colleagues ate at whites-only restaurants.

For Eisenberg, Dobie's longtime friend, the way he handled himself when faced with prejudice was extraordinary. “I ask myself, but I never asked him How can he suppress his hatred? ” he writes

“If it were me, I know I couldn't have done it. ”

Doby stuck with it because of club owner Bill Veeck, who signed him with the Indians.

When Veeck recruited Doby from the Negro National League, it was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two. Veeck often made surprise visits to cities where the Indians were playing just to check on Doby.

Indeed, Vik came under fire for signing him.

Hall of Famer Rodgers Hornsby, for example, was furious. “When Bill Veeck signed Larry Doby to the Cleveland contract, he didn't do the Negro race any favors,” he said at the time. “If he had been white, he would not have been considered a good enough player to play in a semi-professional club.”

Mr. Hornsby was clearly proven wrong.

The year after joining the Indians, Doby became the first black player to play in and win a World Series, and the first to hit a home run in a World Series. In 1952, he led the American League in home runs, the first black player to do so, and became a seven-time All-Star.

After retiring, Doby became the American League's first black manager, taking over as manager of the Detroit Tigers in 1979. In 1998 he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Larry Doby passed away in 2003 after a long battle with cancer, nearly two years after losing his wife of 55 years, Herrin, to the same disease.

The praise was overwhelming.

President George W. Bush called Doby's influence “profound,” and MLB Commissioner Bud Selig said the veteran slugger “endured the sufferings of a pioneer with class, dignity, and determination.”

Then, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth,^th On Larry Doby's birthday, he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

For Eisenberg, it was a long overdue recognition, even if Larry thought it ridiculous.

“Looking back, Larry was a hero to everyone but himself,” he wrote.