Tuesday Will Be Doby’s Day : Baseball’s Forgotten Pioneer Gets His Due at All-Star Game

Through a hotel window in Cleveland’s new downtown, Larry Doby can see the sun, a lemon-yellow glow that makes Lake Erie glisten off the shore where he helped change baseball.

Doby is sitting a few blocks from the rubble that was once Cleveland Stadium, where he roamed center field and hit tape-measure home runs straight into history. Baseball’s forgotten pioneer has returned, to finally get the day he deserves.

“Thank God I lived long enough to see this day,” the American League’s first black player says.

At Jacobs Field, the city’s new ballpark that will host the All-Star game on Tuesday, Doby’s name will be heralded with that of Jack Roosevelt Robinson; the names finally spoken together, kept apart for too long by 11 weeks in 1947.

After the 50th anniversary of his debut is recognized on Saturday, Doby will be the AL’s honorary captain in the All-Star game, dedicated to him in the middle of this season played in Robinson’s name.

“If Mr. Robinson was alive, they probably wouldn’t pay that much attention to me,” Doby said. “That’s the way it goes. It doesn’t bother me.”

On July 5, 1947, Doby pinch-hit for the Cleveland Indians against Chicago at Comiskey Park, becoming the second black major leaguer and the first to appear in an AL game. His debut came 11 weeks after Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson dancing in a cloud of dust, racing around the bases, remains the indelible image of a year that changed baseball forever.

What of Doby? He was there before Robinson’s dust had cleared -- brushed back, heckled, spit on just the same. Now 72, he is thankful, not bitter.

“My intention was to play the game as best I could, and be able to live in a society where things are not as easy as they should be,” Doby said. “So I don’t try to think about second or first and all that stuff.”

Robinson had been carefully chosen by Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, who signed the former UCLA four-sport star in 1945 and let him flourish in the minors before it was time.

Cleveland owner Bill Veeck bought Doby’s contract from the Newark Eagles of the Negro League on July 3, 1947. Two days later, at 22, Doby was in the game.

He struck out as a pinch-hitter, then played first base in the second game of a doubleheader, driving in a run. He didn’t start again the rest of the year, batting .156 in 29 games, a humble beginning for what would evolve into an all-star career.

“It was up to his ability whether he’d be a starter or not,” said player-manager Lou Boudreau, now 79. “I just took it easy with him. I didn’t put him in the lineup right away. I was afraid of too much pressure.”

In history, Doby seems unfairly labeled as a follower. Second to Robinson on the field, Doby also was baseball’s second black manager -- after another Robinson, Frank.

Doby wasn’t even the first black pro athlete in Cleveland. Running back Marion Motley started scoring touchdowns for the NFL Browns in 1946.

All of this somehow eclipsed Doby’s incredible list of firsts. Doby and Satchel Paige were the first blacks to play on a World Series champion when the Indians beat Boston in 1948 -- Cleveland’s last baseball championship. He batted .318 in the series and won Game 4 with a home run that prompted winning pitcher Steve Gromek, who had white skin, to embrace his black teammate after the game.

In 1954 at Cleveland Stadium, Doby became the first black player to hit a home run in the All-Star game. He made seven All-Star teams and led the AL with 32 homers in 1952 and ‘54, when he also had a league-high 126 RBIs.

“My dad used to always say what happened to Larry Doby wasn’t on the field,” said Mike Veeck, son of the owner who gave Doby his chance. “For the 2 1/2 hours at the ballgames, those were his happiest moments.”

Sometimes, though, the harsh reality of America crossed the white lines.

When Boudreau introduced Doby to the team in Chicago, several players did not shake his hand. To this day, Doby will not say which ones. He had to live with black families during spring training, could not eat in restaurants or stay in hotels on road trips, instead spending lonely nights fighting the system in silence.

There was a game against Philadelphia, in which the shortstop tagged Doby out at second and spat in his face. Doby simply walked off the field.

“If you are a minority in a powerful situation like that, you have to take a back seat on a lot of things,” Doby said. “The important thing is that you are strong enough to be able to go through those tough situations and still, you don’t hate anybody, you’re not bitter.”

In a rare on-field union, Doby and Robinson played on a black all-star team after the ’47 season. They talked little of baseball, soothed instead by the uplifting jazz of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, letting the music carry them away from their troubles.

“He knew what I was going through, I knew what he was going through,” Doby said. “Those were a lot of negatives. We didn’t want to talk about it.”

Those who marveled at his composure then are even more amazed now.

“I’m blown away by it, and I’ve known him my whole life,” Veeck said. “I listen to him talk, and I ask myself, ‘Could I do it?’ And I know what the answer is. I know I couldn’t. I know somewhere along the line I would snap and say, ‘Hey, what about me?”’

At a luncheon in his honor last week, Doby was among friends. Former teammate Mickey Vernon and coach Mel Harder spoke fondly of him. Vernon recalled how word of Robinson’s contract with the Dodgers reached their naval station in the South Pacific and got Doby thinking about a chance at the big leagues.

Former NL president Bill White called him “one of the great pioneers of our society, who also happened to be a great ballplayer.”

The most moving speech was by Jim “Mudcat” Grant, one of the many black players who followed Robinson and Doby to the big leagues. Doby was Grant’s boyhood hero -- and his first roommate in the majors. Although portraits of Doby will be dedicated at two playgrounds in Cleveland on Tuesday, Grant pushed for more.

“We should have a statue of Larry Doby erected somewhere around that stadium,” Grant said, “so we could never forget this history.”

It burns many, in baseball and in America, that too many already have forgotten. Doby, who visits schools often to talk to young people, said he’s done all he can do.

“It’s up to them to find out what has happened to Afro-Americans in this country,” Doby said. “I’m not the type of person to walk into a classroom and say, ‘I’m Larry Doby, I did this in 1947.’ No, I’m not going to do that.

“If you don’t know who I am, then you’re the one that’s losing, not me. I’ve done my thing. But I will tell you this: If you want to get where I was or want to be where I am, it’s going to cost you some hard work.”

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Larry Doby Chronology

A chronology of the career of Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League:

1938--Moves from native Camden, S.C., to Paterson, N.J., where he letters in baseball, basketball, football and track at East Side High School. Before senior year, plays in first pro baseball game for Newark Eagles at Yankee Stadium, using alias Larry Walker to protect college scholarship.

1947--Batting .458 with 14 homers and 35 RBIs for Newark when Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck buys his contract for $15,000 on July 3. Strikes out as pinch-hitter for Cleveland in first game of doubleheader at Chicago on July 5, becoming the first black player to appear in an AL game.

1948--Making the transition from infield to center field, bats .301 with 14 homers and 66 RBIs in first full season with the Indians. Bats .318 against Boston in World Series and wins Game 4 with home run as the Indians win the championship in six games.

1952--Leads AL with 32 homers, 104 runs and .541 slugging average.

1954--Leads AL with 32 homers and 126 RBIs as Cleveland wins the league championship. At Cleveland Stadium, becomes first black player to hit home run in All-Star game.

1959--Plays final season of 13-year big league career, batting .230 in 39 games with Detroit and Chicago.

1978--Replaces former Cleveland teammate Bob Lemon as manager of the Chicago White Sox, becoming baseball’s second black manager.

1997--Hired as assistant to AL president Gene Budig.