He Is Second, Only to One

Robinson, then Doby.

It is the story of how major league baseball was twice desegregated in the last half-century, once on the playing field and again, much later, in the manager’s office.

It is the story of Larry Doby’s life, really.

In April, 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African American to appear in a major league game.

Eleven weeks later, Doby became the second.

In 1975, Frank Robinson became the first African American to be hired as a major league manager.

Three years later, Doby became the second.

He is history’s runner-up, trail blazer No. 2, which, of course, in this country, has consigned Doby to the background while entire shelves of bookstores are stocked with volumes devoted to Jackie Robinson’s breaking of baseball’s color barrier.

Ted Koppel conducted no town meeting to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Larry Doby’s first game with the Cleveland Indians, which, for the record, was Saturday.

There is no Larry Doby documentary, no Larry Doby video collection, no Larry Doby hard-bound, glossy commemorative coffee-table picture book.

Doby’s share of the anniversary spotlight has been limited to a few “Larry Doby Days” in various big league ballparks and his serving as honorary captain for the American League at tonight’s All-Star game at Cleveland.

Which is fine, according to Doby.

Doby always considered Jackie Robinson a friend, not a rival. They spoke often on the phone during that difficult first season of 1947, bolstering one another, comparing stories that might have brought them to tears without such a support system.

“He was the first, and deserves all the recognition he received,” Doby said of Robinson last month in Arlington, Texas, where he was honored before a Texas Ranger game.

“But when people ask me, ‘Did he make it easier for you?’ that’s stupid. Eleven weeks. People’s minds can’t be changed in 11 weeks. We still have problems 50 years later.”

Doby made his major league debut July 5, 1947, as a pinch-hitter for the Indians in the first game of a doubleheader against the Chicago White Sox.

He struck out.

But that wasn’t the worst of his first day in a big league uniform. Upon his arrival at the visitors’ clubhouse at Comiskey Park, Doby held out his hand to greet his new teammates, and many of them refused it.

Then, when the Indians stepped onto the field for warmups, Doby stood alone, awkwardly, for five minutes before one of his teammates, Joe Gordon, threw him a baseball and began playing catch with him.

Doby started the second game of the doubleheader, at first base, not his customary position. Like Robinson, Doby was a second baseman. Doby needed a first baseman’s mitt but the Indians’ regular first baseman, Eddie Robinson, refused to lend Doby his. According to Doby, the Indians had to borrow one from the White Sox.

Doby had imagined he’d have problems breaking the ice as the first black player in the American League, but this felt more like chipping away at a glacier with a pencil.

“Thank God,” Doby says 50 years later, for Gordon, catcher Jim Hegan and coach Bill McKechnie--three of the 1947 Indians who helped run interference for him.

“They were very kind, respectful, and tried to make me comfortable,” says Doby, 72. “It was a little tough for them, because maybe your buddy didn’t like the black guy. So if your buddy doesn’t like that black guy, you better be careful, because you don’t want to lose your buddy. Maybe your social status [on the team] will drop down.”

Doby also had an important ally in Indian owner Bill Veeck, who had hand-picked Doby for his assignment, much as Branch Rickey had done with Robinson, and braced him for the cruel reality that awaited him.

“Bill Veeck told me that these things were going to happen,” Doby says. “Now, I’m not going to say to you that I wasn’t surprised a lot of these things happened. I definitely was surprised. But I think the important thing was, I had been warned this things would happen.”

Warned that opposing players would taunt him by cackling from the other dugout, “Hey, shoeshine boy, shine my shoes,” or “Porter, carry my bags.”

Warned that opposing pitchers would throw at him.

Says Doby: “In the early part of my career, there was a statistic taken comparing [Stan] Musial, [Joe] DiMaggio and Ted Williams to Doby, [Roy] Campanella and Robinson. The question was, ‘How many times were you hit, compared to Musial, DiMaggio and Williams?’ The count came to 165 to 5.”

Warned that opposing players would spit at him.

“One of the toughest things that happened to me was, one day I slid into second base and the second baseman spit tobacco juice on me,” Doby says. “That’s the toughest thing I had to face. . . .

“The next thing you want to do is grab him and kick his butt--or he’ll kick yours, one or the other. But you walk away.

“There was an umpire named Bill Summers, who gave me the greatest respect, who just jumped in between us as soon as this happened. I think I might have reacted physically--and, of course, like Veeck said, ‘Anything you do, you’re out of here.’ And I probably would have been out of there if it wasn’t for that umpire.”

Doby credits Veeck for carefully shepherding his career--Veeck also hired Doby to manage the Chicago White Sox in 1978--and likened their relationship to a father and his son.

“I lost my father when I was 8 and I always said that I would’ve liked my father to be like Bill Veeck,” Doby says. “Bill Veeck was a kind a man that you’d never question his integrity. You didn’t get any political rhetoric. I think maybe now he would be put into a ‘liberal’ category.

“He’s the kind of person I would put all the faith in the world in, a person I trusted. . . . I know one thing: It would have been hard to have been successful if I hadn’t had a person like him.”

Doby spent 13 seasons in the majors--10 with Cleveland--and finished with a .283 batting average, 253 home runs and 969 runs batted in. He led the American League in home runs twice and in RBIs once, played in six All-Star games, had his uniform number retired by the Indians in 1994 and currently serves as an assistant to American League President Gene Budig.

But ask Doby to name the highlight of his baseball career and he’ll point to a 49-year-old newspaper photograph of a white Cleveland pitcher, Steve Gromek, planting a kiss on Doby’s cheek after Doby had homered to win a game in the 1948 World Series.

“I was fortunate enough to win a World Series, which has to be one of the greatest moments in your life,” Doby says. “But I kind of look at that picture that was taken of Steve Gromek and myself. That stands out in my mind. That gives me a great feeling in terms of what it is for people to be able to associate, to get along.

“Because that wasn’t planned. That wasn’t a movie script. It wasn’t a thing where ‘I’m not going to put my arms around him because he’s white’ or ‘I’m not going to put my arms around him because he’s black.’

“It’s emotion. It happened. They’re happy people. And the picture itself, if you look at the two guys and their smiles, there’s nothing phony about that. I think that came from the inside.

“Of all the things that have happened to me in baseball, that’s the thing I’m very proud of.”

And if baseball hasn’t done as much as it could have to follow up and build upon such a moment, Doby points to the societal progress that has been made since 1947 and says, “Baseball has been a big part of that.

“Because, in ‘47, you had two Afro-Americans [in the major leagues] and I think baseball was sort of a project at that particular time. We talk about the civil rights movement, Brown vs. the Board of Education--those were in the [‘50s and] ‘60s.

“So, you have to give baseball some sort of credit in terms of bringing people together.”

Doby is proud of his part in that initial experiment, even if his role is not as celebrated today as Robinson’s.

“My focus now,” Doby says, “is trying to get people to understand: Whatever those hardships, whatever those obstacles I had to go through, that’s the past. I want to do things to make it better for everybody.

“If I can be a part of that, that would be a big thrill for me.”

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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.