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