By John Vorperian
A rare bipartisan moment happened on Capitol Hill this past December. The late Larry Doby was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal. Doby was the first Black player to complete in the American League. He was the second Black baseball player in the Majors in the modern era. Behind Jackie Robinson, Doby endured the same challenges and injustices during his athletic career.
On July 5, 1947, Doby for the Cleveland Indians made his major league debut as a pinch hitter against the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park. In April 1947, Robinson broke baseball’s color line playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Upon entering the visitors’ clubhouse Doby’s teammates averted their eyes and did not speak to him. The WWII Navy veteran had to go to the Chicago clubhouse to get a first baseman’s glove since none of his Cleveland teammates offered him one.
As for this cold, icy reception Cleveland manager Lou Boudreau told him ‘Shrug it off.” In a 2002 interview Doby said “I knew it was segregated times, but I have never seen anything like that in athletics. I was embarrassed. It was tough.”
Prior to Cleveland, Doby was a rising star in the Negro Leagues hitting .341 and .414 in his two seasons with Newark. His stellar performance in the 1946 Negro Leagues World Series helped the Newark Stars nab the championship. That notoriety caught iconoclastic Cleveland owner Bill Veeck’s attention to sign the New Jersey denizen to a contract.
An early proponent of integrated baseball, Veeck did regularly incur the wrath of the baseball lords. The maverick promoter wrote about being barred in 1942 from buying the bankrupt, cellar-dwelling, Philadelphia Phillies. His error was making overtures as to stocking the team with Negro League players.
Doby became the first Black player to hit a World Series home run. In 1948 Game Four he homered off Boston Braves’ Johnny Sain. Cleveland won the Fall Classic.
Over his 13-year tenure in the Bigs, Doby appeared in 1,533 games, batted .283 with 253 home runs and 969 RBIs. He was voted to seven All-Star teams and won two World Series titles.
Retired in 1962, Doby stayed with baseball as a coach with Montreal, Cleveland, and the Chicago White Sox. In 1978, he became the second Black major league manager, behind another Robinson, Frank Robinson. That season Doby piloted the White Sox.
Doby was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998. A Congressional Gold Medal is awarded by an act of Congress which needs two-thirds of the House and Senate to co-sponsor the act before it can be considered by committee. Congress has awarded 184 medals since the first was issued in 1776 to George Washington. Jackie Robinson received the honor posthumous in 2003. The same year in which Larry Doby died.
On what would have been Doby’s 100th Birthday, December 13th Larry Doby Jr. accepted the medal on his father’s behalf from Congressional leadership.
The medal’s reverse side depicts a famous sports photo from 75 years ago. When a Black player and a white one embraced each other in the sheer joy of victory that goes beyond baseball. The image is that of Doby and Cleveland pitcher Steve Gromek with an inscription chosen by Doby’s Family. “We are stronger together as a team, as a nation, as a world.”
It has been a long time coming to finally give this other American hero of 1947 the appropriate official and rightful National recognition he richly deserved.
John Vorperian, a Senior Associate with the Jackie Robinson Project at Tampa Bay International School, Clearwater FL, also hosts a cable television program Beyond The Game seen on White Plains Community Media.
