Larry Doby

1924-2003

American baseball player

Larry Doby is the invisible man in the struggle to bring black players into major league baseball. For most of his career Doby lived in the long shadow cast by Jackie Robinson , the first African-American to play major league baseball. Doby, who joined the Cleveland Indians just eleven weeks after Robinson made his debut with Brooklyn was the second black player to enter the majors. He was the second black, after Frank Robinson , to manage a major league club, he was even the second major league player to play in Japan. Doby can lay claim to a number of important firsts however: he was the first African-American to jump directly from the Negro Leagues into the majors, the first to play in the American League, the first to play on a championship club, the first to hit a home run in the World Series, and the first black home run champion. Doby was also one of the first African-Americans to

coach at the major league level and to enter the rank of major league executives. Like Jackie Robinson, in realizing these accomplishments Doby had to overcome the ugly racism that was permeated many facets of American life. He did it with courage and dignity. Along the way, Doby proved himself one of the most potent hitters in baseball.

Early Life

Lawrence Eugene Doby was born in 1923 in Camden, South Carolina. His father, David Doby, was a professional horse groom whose long trips to racetracks in the North led to the breakup of his marriage while Larry was still a child. When his mother, the former Etta Brooks, went North looking for work for herself, Larry was put in the care of others, first his grandmother and then his aunt and uncle. While in their care, Doby attended a school in Camden run by the Methodist Church, where he played organized sports for the first time. When he was ready to attend high school, he joined his mother in Paterson, New Jersey. At Eastside High in Paterson, New Jersey, he quickly proved himself a talented athlete, earning eleven varsity letters, in football, baseball, basketball and track. Foreshadowing his early experience in professional baseball, Doby was the sole black player on the school's football team.

Just before his graduation from high school, Doby played his first professional baseball game for the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League—under the name Larry Walker to protect his amateur status. After a year of college in 1942-43 at Long Island University and Virginia Union, he was drafted into the Navy. When he returned to the States in 1946, Jackie Robinson had been signed by the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers. Doby's future abruptly changed. "I felt I had a chance to play major league baseball," he revealed to his biographer Joseph Thomas Moore. "My main thing was to become a teacher and coach somewhere in New Jersey, but when I heard about Jackie, I decided to concentrate on baseball. I forgot about going back to college."

Chronology

Enters Major Leagues

Doby, a 22-year-old second baseman, rejoined the Newark Eagles in 1946, hitting .348 and helping the Eagles to a victory over the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro World Series. Then fate intervened in the person of Cleveland Indian owner Bill Veeck. Veeck was looking for a black player for the Indians. He had good reports on Doby, who in addition to boasting a .414 batting average and 14 home runs for the first half of 1947, neither smoked, drank, nor swore. Veeck bought Doby's contract from the Eagles. On July 3, while the Indians were playing in Chicago, Larry Doby made his debut as the American League's first black player.

Veeck expected Doby—like Robinson in Brooklyn—to comport himself by a different set of rules from other players: Doby was told not to react to the inevitable racial insults he would encounter. He must not fight back on the field. He could not disagree with umpires or react to fans. Doby was glad to submit. "He said this was the price I'd have to pay for being a part of baseball history. I was not worried about being a part of baseball history. All I wanted to do was play," Doby explained to Burt Graeff of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. His resolve was put to the test from the time he entered the Indians clubhouse. Introduced to the team, some Cleveland players refused to shake Doby's hand. On the field before the game, he stood alone for five minutes before second baseman Joe Gordon finally threw him a ball and warmed up with him.

Those were just the beginning of the indignities. Hotels across the country refused to let Doby room with his Indian teammates. He was denied service in restaurants. He was barred from entering ball parks in the South during spring training. On the field he was thrown at by opposing pitchers and spat on when he slid into base. He received hate mail from all over the country. With no other blacks on the Indians during his first year, Doby was forced to spend hours on the road by himself. Forty years after the fact some thought that Robinson's earlier entry into the big leagues would have made things easier for Doby. "To say I had it easy because of him is silly," he recalled to Burt Graeff, "I came in 11 weeks after he did. Eleven weeks did not alter the course of race relations in this country. We still have problems 50 years later. Jack and I went through a lot of the same things."

Doby struck out in his first at bat, and sat on the bench for most of the remainder of the 1947 season. Realizing he was unlikely to replace either Joe Gordon or Lou Boudreau—both All-Stars—in the infield, the Indians converted Doby to an outfielder in 1948. He had never played there before, but within a couple years he made himself into one of the finest defensive centerfielders in baseball.

Becomes a Star

Doby started to come into his own in 1948. He had hit 14 homers, knocked in 66 runs and finished with a .301 average that year, helping the Indians to a World Series victory over the Boston Braves along the way. Over the following years, he was named to seven consecutive American League All-Star teams. In 1952 and 1954 he was the American league home run champ, he led the league in RBIs in 1954, and in runs in 1952. In 1950, the Sporting News named Doby the best center fielder in baseball, over Joe DiMaggio . Those years were not without pain, however. Segregation from his teammates during many road trips continued. After a bad slump in September 1951, he was blamed for the Indians failure to beat the Yankees for the American League pennant, and the Cleveland papers called for him to be traded.

Career Statistics

By 1952 with a salary of $28,000, Larry Doby was the highest paid player on the Cleveland team with the exception of star pitcher Bob Feller. Doby led the Indians to another pennant in 1954, but the team was beaten in the World Series by the New York Giants. His performance fell off in 1955 because of injuries. At the end of the 1955 season, Doby was traded to the Chicago White Sox. He played well in 1956, but injuries were beginning to take their toll on the 30-year-old player. He went on to play with the Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland, the Detroit Tigers, and the White Sox, before breaking his ankle in a game with the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League in 1959. The injury spelt the end of Larry Doby's major league career.

In 1962 he and former Dodger Don Newcombe joined the Chunichi Dragons for a season, becoming the first former major leaguers to play baseball in Japan. On his return from Japan, Doby moved to Newark New Jersey, where in the summer of 1967 he experienced first-hand the race riot that wracked the city. Early in 1968 he told an interviewer that blacks would probably have to burn down a stadium before there would be any African-American managers or coaches in the big leagues. The comment touched a nerve in Commissioner Bowie Kuhn's office and in 1969 Kuhn arranged for Doby to be hired as a scout by the Montreal Expos. By 1971 Doby won praise as Montreal's batting coach. "There are few great hitters who can communicate," Expo manager Gene Mauch told Joseph Thomas Moore. "Larry Doby has sound theories and he can get the message across to the players. He is articulate and can communicate."

Seeks Manager's Job

Doby had his sights set on becoming a manager. After a season managing winter ball, he had let it be known that he was available for a job. "I give myself five years," Joseph Thomas Moore quotes Doby as saying. "If I don't make it by then, I'll give up on the idea and get out of baseball altogether." Unfortunately baseball in the 1970s seemed as unwilling to admit a black manager as it had been in the 1940s to admit black players. Doby took a coaching job in Cleveland with an understanding that he would be in line for the manager's job there. When the manager was sacked, however, Doby was passed over in favor of another African-American, Frank Robinson. Returning to a coaching position with the Expos, he was passed over two more times within one season for the manager's job. Discouraged, he considered leaving baseball for good.

In 1977, however, Doby's old mentor, Bill Veeck, offered him a coaching job with the Chicago White Sox. When the team got off to a slow start in 1978, Veeck made Doby another offer—to manage the team. It was a bittersweet opportunity for Doby. He would be replacing Bob Lemon, a friend and teammate from the Indians. Veeck not only wanted Doby to turn the club around in the standings, but also to attract more black fans to Comiskey Park. When neither materialized, Doby was replaced. He had become the second black major league manager, but he was never given a fair opportunity to show what he could do.

After leaving the White Sox, Doby became the Director of Community Relations for the New Jersey Nets of the NBA. In the 1990s, he later became a special assistant for licensing matters to the president of the American League.

In 1997 Larry Doby began to receive some of the long-overdue recognition for his pioneering efforts to integrate major league baseball. He threw out the ceremonial first pitch at that year's All-Star Game in Cleveland, followed by a week of celebrations honoring Doby. In August 1998 he was elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame. Despite the trials he had to suffer as a player and coach, Doby was not bitter. Far from feeling baseball had particular problems with race, he believes it led the way for American society. "A lot of people are complaining that baseball hasn't come along fast enough. And there is much more work to be done," Doby admitted to David Maraniss of the Washington Post. "But if you look at baseball, we came in 1947, before Brown versus the Board of Education [the 1954 Supreme Court decision integrating public schools], before anyone wrote a civil rights bill saying give them the same opportunities everyone else has. So whatever you want to criticize baseball about-it certainly needs more opportunities for black managers, black general managers, black umpires-remember that if this country was as far advanced as baseball it would be in much better shape."

Awards and Accomplishments

Doby died on June 17, 2003, in his home in Montclair, New Jersey, after a long illness. "He had been ill for some time," his son told the Associated Press. He is survived by his five children.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Moffi, Larry and Jonathan Kronstadt. Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947-1959. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1994.

Moore, Joseph Thomas. Pride Against Prejudice: The Biography of Larry Doby. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988.

Tygiel, Jules. Baseball's Great Experiment. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997.

Veeck, Bill. Veeck—As in Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1962.

Periodicals

"American League wins 3-1 at All-Star Game Dedicated to Larry Doby." Jet, July 28, 1997 v92 n10: 46.

"Baseball legend Larry Doby, First Black in American League, Selected for Hall of Fame." Jet, March 23, 1998 v93 n17: 47(1).

Berkow, Ira. "He Crossed Color Barrier, But In Another's Shadow." New York Times, February 23, 1997: A1.

Dolgan, Bob. "Barrier Buster." Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 5, 2001: 1D.

Graeff, Burt. "Doby Getting His Due; First Black Player In American League Faced Same Racism As Jackie Robinson." Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 3, 1997: 1D.

Grossi, Tony. "The Debt Owed To Larry Doby; Segregation And Ignorance Couldn't Deter Black All Star." Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 3, 1994: 1A.

"Larry Doby in Good Spirits While Recovery from Surgery." Jet, Dec 1, 1997 v93 n2: 50(1).

Maraniss, David. "Neither a Myth Nor a Legend; Larry Doby Crossed Baseball's Color Barrier—After Robinson." Washington Post, July 08, 1997: A01.

Sketch by Mike Pare

Larry Doby 1924–2003

Baseball player

Faced Racism in Major League

Went From Field to Front Office

Gained Long Overdue Recognition

Sources

Breaking the color barrier 50 years ago, in 1947, Larry Doby became the first black baseball player in the American League when he joined the Cleveland Indians. In an interview with New York Times reporter George Vecsey, baseball player Willie Mays emphasized, “Don’t forget Larry Doby. Larry came right after Jackie [Robinson]. From what I hear, Jackie had Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges and Ralph Branca, but Larry didn’t have anybody.” There was no fanfare either. In 1947 Doby was also the first black to play in the American Basketball League.

Lawrence Eugene Doby was born on December 13, 1924, in Camden, South Carolina. Son of a semi-pro baseball player who died when Doby was eight, he grew up in Camden, moving to Paterson, New Jersey, in his teens. At Eastside High School, as the only black player on the team, he lettered in baseball, football, and basketball. He also lettered in track. In 1942, as a 17-year-old, Doby joined the Newark Eagles of the Negro National Baseball League, playing second base under the name of Larry Walker to protect his amateur standing. Former shortstop Willie Wells was the manager. Wells told him, Doby recalled to New York Times reporter Dave Anderson in 1997, “You’re here because you can play. Don’t let anybody intimidate you because of your age.” His first professional baseball game was played at Yankee Stadium.

Faced Racism in Major League

At the end of the season, the talented Doby signed a contract with the Paterson Panthers of the American Basketball League. The next two years were spent in the U. S. Navy, but he returned to the Eagles, leading them to a Negro National League pennant and World Series championship win over the Kansas City Monarchs. Doby’s batting average, .415, and home run total, 14, were at the top of the league in his final season.

Two years later Doby would again play on a winning World Series team, this time in the major leagues. Bill Veeck bought out the 22-year-old second baseman’s contract from the Eagles, making Doby the first African American to jump straight from the Negro leagues into the majors. Doby recalled, according to Ira Berkow in the New York Times, that when Veeck signed him he said, “’Lawrence,’—he’s the only person who called me Lawrence—‘you are going to be part of history.’ Part of history? I had no notions about that. I just wanted to play baseball. I mean, I was young. I didn’t quite realize then what all this meant. I saw it simply as an opportunity to get ahead.”

Doby continued his recollection, “When Mr. Veeck signed me, he sat me down and told me some of the do’s and don’ts. ’No arguing with umpires, don’t even turn around at a bad call at the plate, and no dissertations with opposing players; either of those might start a race riot. No associating with female Caucasians’—not that I was going to. And he said remember to act in a way that you know people are watching you. And this was something that both Jack [Robinson] and I took seriously. We knew that if we didn’t succeed, it might hinder opportunities for the other Afro-Americans.” Robinson and Doby became and stayed friends, supporting

At a Glance…

Born Lawrence Eugene Doby, Sr., on December 13,1924, in Camden, SC; died on June 18, 2003, in Montclair, NJ; married Helyn Curvey; children: Christina, Leslie, Larry, Jr, Kim, Susan. Education: Attended: Long Island University; New York University; Virginia Union University Military Service: US. Navy, 1944–45.

Career: Newark Eagles baseball team, second baseman, 1942–44, 1946–47; Cleveland Indians baseball team, center fielder, 1947–55, coach, 1974; Paterson Panthers basketball team, 1947; Chicago White Sox baseball team, coach, 1956–57, manager, 1978; Montreal Expos baseball team, coach, 1971–73,1976; New Jersey Nets basketball team, director of community relations, 1977,1980–89; Major League Baseball Properties, licensing department, 1990–2003.

Awards: Negro World Series championship, 1946; first black in the American League, 1947; first black in the American Basketball League, 1947; played in two World Series, 1948,1954; member of the World Series Champion Cleveland Indians, 1948; played in six consecutive All Star Games, 1949–54; center fielder, Man of the Year, Baseball Writers Association of Sporting News, 1950; elected to Cleveland Hall of Fame, 1955; National Black Sports Hall of Farne, 1973; Baseball Hall of Fame, 1977; led the American League in slugging, 1962; honorary doctorate, Montclair State University; honorary doctorates, Princeton and Fairfield Universities, 1997; honored by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, 1997; honored at the Alt-Star game in Cleveland, 1997; five Larry Doby Alt-Star Playgrounds dedicated, Cleveland, 1997; inducted into Baseball Hall of Fame, 1998.

each other through the extraordinary pressures that included open hostilities from team members and opponents.

Doby remembered his first day with the Cleveland Indians on a Saturday, July 5, 1947, at Comisky Park in Chicago. When player-manager Lou Boudreau took him into the visiting team locker room, some of the players shook his hand, but most did not. Doby did not realize then what the next 13 years would entail: that he would be segregated even during spring training for ten of those years; that he would eat in a separate restaurant and sleep in a separate hotel; that day after day he would be called “coon,” “jigaboo,” or the “N-word;” and that he would be spit in his face when he slid into second base. Lou Brissie, a pitcher for the Philadelphia A’s in 1947, recalled in an interview with Berkow, “I was on the bench and heard some of my teammates shouting things at Larry, like, ‘Porter, carry my bags,’ or ‘Shoeshine boy, shine my shoes,’ and well, the N-word, too. It was terrible.”

Went From Field to Front Office

The next 15 months, until Satchel Paige became his roommate, Doby would be lonely, especially after games. He told Berkow, “It’s then you’d really like to be with your teammates, win or lose, and go over the game. But I’d go off to my hotel in the black part of town, and they’d go off to their hotel.”

Doby’s talent at least garnered fans—due to his speed and skill as a center fielder and to his hard-hitting runs. In 1948 his home run won the fourth game of the World Series. After the series, in his home town of Paterson, the citizens, black and white, paraded him to the steps of his former high school. In 1949 his five-hundred-foot ball cleared the bleachers at Washington’s Griffith Stadium and landed on the roof of a house. An irate mother called the Senators’ front office and complained, “You’ll have to stop it. Someone from your stadium just threw a ball onto our house and woke up my children, and now I can’t get them back to sleep.”

Doby was the league leader a number of times. In 1952 he led in runs, and in 1951 and 1954 he led in home runs and runs batted in. He became the first black player to hit a home run in a World Series. He made six straight All-Star teams, including the 1949 team where he played along with three other distinguished men: Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Don New-combe. In 1950 he and “Luscious” Luke Easter gave Cleveland the most powerful black duo in baseball. When Doby retired after a 13-year career in which he played with the Indians, White Sox, and Detroit Tigers, his batting average was .283. Out of the 1,533 games he played, he’d hit 253 home runs.

In 1955 Doby played his last game with the Indians, then played briefly with San Diego in the Pacific Coast League, and in Japan, where he became one of the first blacks to play professional baseball in that country, before taking a two-year-coaching position with the Chicago White Sox. In 1968, after a hiatus of eight years during which he sold insurance and worked at other vocations, Doby joined the Montreal baseball organization in Canada. Doby expressed to a New York Times reporter, “I went crazy. If I get up at 6 a.m. to go to an office, I hate it. I can get up at six for baseball, and love it.” In 1971, he coached first the Montreal Expos, then the Cleveland Indians, before returning to the Expos.

Doby became director of community relations for the New Jersey Nets of the National Basketball Association in 1977. The late commissioner Bart Giamatti insisted it was wrong that such a pioneer could only find work in the front office of the Nets. Doby was offered a position with the Major League Baseball Properties in 1979, handling the licensing of former players and advising Gene Budig, the American League president.

Gained Long Overdue Recognition

Doby did not get the recognition that Jackie Robinson received over the years, yet he never became bitter, preferring to keep a low profile. When he shared his history with students in Northfield, Minnesota, during a Carleton College program founded by former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, Doby stated, “If we all look back, we can see that baseball helped make this a better country for us all, a more comfortable country for us all, especially for those of us who have grands and great-grands. Kids are our future and we hope baseball has given them some idea of what it is to live together and how we can get along, whether you be black or white.”

Despite never connecting himself to political or social issues, Doby remained committed to improving the welfare of children. During the time he worked as the director of community relations for the New Jersey Nets in the 1980s, Doby involved himself in a number of inner-city youth programs. In 1997 Harvey Araton in the New York Times quoted Aubray Lewis as saying, “He [Dobyl is more than a role model. He is an American hero.” Lewis was the dinner chairman for a $500-a-plate sports memorabilia dinner and auction benefiting Project Pride, a Newark college preparatory and scholarship organization that Doby, a volunteer board member, served with for more than nine years.

Some recognition for Doby finally came with the creation of a National Black Sports Hall of Fame in 1973. He was one of 38 athletes chosen that year by the editors of Black Sports magazine. In 1997 New Jersey Representative William Pascrell suggested naming the main post office in Paterson after Doby. That same year, Princeton and Fairfield Universities bestowed honorary doctorates on Doby. In 1997 Doby was honored at an Indians game, and on July 8, at the All-Star game in Cleveland, almost 50 years to the day of his start in the majors. Former teammate Lou Brissie gave Knight-Ridder Newspapers reporter Bill Robinson a summation of Doby that has been echoed by many others, “He had dignity. He had talent. He gave forth his effort anytime he walked out there. That is the ultimate in professionalism.” Brissie added, “Larry, in my mind, deserves whatever honor that baseball can give him. He earned it.”

In 1997 Doby went through surgery to have his left kidney removed because it contained a cancerous tumor. He told Jet magazine “Thank God, I’ve never been sick, and this is the first time I’ve ever gone through anything like this.” At the same time more honors for Doby started arriving. The Cleveland Indians had a week of tributes to the player, culminating in Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White announcing that five playgrounds were going to be dedicated as Larry Doby All-Star Playgrounds, the first of which was to be at the King-Kennedy Boys and Girls Club in Cleveland’s Central neighborhood. Jet magazine reported White as saying, “This new playground stands as a lasting reminder that young people can and must learn from Larry Doby’s example. They must take pride in who they are and put forth their very best, even when confronted by challenge or adversity.” Jimmy Milano of Milano Monuments in Cleveland was also hired to create five monuments commemorating Doby’s baseball highlights, one of which will be put into each Larry Doby All-Star Playground.

It was in 1998, however, that Doby received the highest honor a baseball player can garner—he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was elected because of his major league record, but also in large part because of his role in helping to break the color barrier in the game of baseball. At the ceremony Doby thanked Bill Veeck for giving him the opportunity to prove himself. He told the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service that “the people of Cleveland ’treated me with nothing but respect.’ He said he never expected to be a racial pioneer, to be a Hall of Famer.”

On June 18, 2003, Larry Doby died after a long struggle with cancer in his hometown of Montclair, New Jersey. Nearly 300 people attended his funeral, including Rachel Robinson, the widow of Jackie Robinson, Mike Veeck, the son of Bill Veeck who started Doby in his major league career, Baseball greats Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, and Joe Morgan, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, U.S. Senator Frank Lau-tenberg, and Hall of Fame president Dale Petroskey. According to Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, Doby was remembered by the gathering as “a man of courage, tenacity, and class a friend to man who stood above men.” And he will go down in history as a man who, through his talent at baseball, helped African Americans gain their place in professional sports.

Sources

Books

Moffi, Larry, and Jonathan Kronstadt, Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947–1959, McFar-land & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1994.

Reichler, Joseph L, and Ken Samelson, The Great Ail-Time Baseball Record Book, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993.

Riley, James A., The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994.

St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James Press, 2000.

Periodicals

Associated Press, July 7, 1997.

Cretin’s Cleveland Business, July 7, 1997, p. 1.

Jet, July 28, 1997, p. 46; December 1, 1997, p. 50.

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, April 16, 1997, p. C3; July 5,1997; March 4,1998; June 19, 2003; June 23, 2003.

Maclean’s, August 10, 1998, p. 46.

New York Times, February 23,1997, sec. 1, p. 1, sec. 8, p. 6; April 27, 1997, sec. 8, p. 7; May 2, 1997, sec. B, p. 9; May 19, 1997, sec. B, p. 4; May 23, 1997, sec. 8, p. 3; June 4, 1997, sec. B, p. 5; June 27, 1997, sec. B, p. 11; June 19, 2003.

New York Times Biographical Edition, September 30, 1974, p. 1238.

Sporting News, June 30, 2003, p. 7.

On-line

“Doby makes life better for city kids,” Amarillo Globe-News, www.amarillonet.com/stories/070997/doby.html (August 19, 1997).

“Larry Doby: Bearing the burden, too,” Hartford Courant, http://news.courant.com/special/jackie/doby.stm (August 18, 1997).

—Eileen Daily and Catherine V. Donaldson