Another Barrier Broken, and Done So in Style

Major league baseball’s first 427 managers had one thing in common.

They were white.

That changed the day after the 1974 season, when the Cleveland Indians appointed Frank Robinson, an African American, as their playing manager.

And 24 years ago today, he made a grand debut.

Robinson hit his 575th home run in the first inning and the Indians went on to beat the New York Yankees, 5-3.

Appropriately, Rachel Robinson, widow of Jackie Robinson, threw out the first ball before a crowd of 56,204. Twenty-eight years earlier, Jackie Robinson had become the major leagues’ first black player, with Brooklyn.

Robinson was made a winner with an assist from a teammate from his Baltimore Oriole days, Boog Powell. He hit a home run that tied the score in the fourth inning, then doubled in the sixth that brought in the go-ahead run.

Robinson succeeded Ken Aspromonte, fired after the Indians’ sixth consecutive losing season. Robinson too would go the way of nearly all managers, white or black.

His first Cleveland team went 79-80 and his second was 81-78. But his 1977 team, for which there were high expectations, got off to a poor start and he was fired midway through the season.

Robinson also managed the San Francisco Giants from 1981 to ’84 and the Baltimore Orioles in 1988 and ’89.

Footnote: When Robinson wrote his name on his lineup card that day in 1975, he became the first manager to do so since Hank Bauer in 1961, when he played and managed the Kansas City A’s.

Also on this date: In 1966, the Angels made their debut in their new $24-million park, Anaheim Stadium, in an exhibition against the San Francisco Giants. . . . On the same day, American Football League owners, having fired Joe Foss as commissioner the day before, gave the job to 36-year-old Al Davis. . . . In 1950, USC basketball/baseball star Bill Sharman was given a $6,000 bonus for signing a Brooklyn Dodger contract and was assigned to the Dodgers’ Pueblo, Colo., minor league team. . . . In 1935, the NCAA ruled that no offensive basketball player could remain in the key for more than three seconds. . . . In 1971, New York launched the nation’s first off-track horse race betting system. . . . In 1987, for the first time in baseball history, two 300-game winners pitched for the same team in a game. Phil Niekro and Steve Carlton combined to lead Cleveland to a 14-3 win over Toronto. Niekro, who started, earned his 312th career win. . . . In 1969, the expansion Montreal Expos played their first game and beat the Mets, 10-9, at Shea Stadium.