Jackie Robinson Wasn’t the Only American Baseball Hero in 1947
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
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 compete in the American League. He was the second Black baseball player in the Major Leagues. Behind Jackie Robinson, Doby endured the same challenges and injustices during his athletic career.
On July 5, 1947, Doby made his major league debut for the Cleveland Indians as a pinch hitter against the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park in Chicago. 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 World War II 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 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 capture 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 regularly incurred 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 to stock the team with Negro League players.
Doby became the first Black player to hit a World Series home run. In Game Four in 1948, he homered off Boston Braves’ Johnny Sain. Cleveland won the Fall Classic.
Over his 13-year tenure in the big leagues, Doby appeared in 1,533 games, batted .283 with 253 home runs and 969 RBI. He was voted to seven All-Star teams and won two World Series titles.
After he retired, Doby stayed in 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 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 posthumously in 2003, the same year in which Larry Doby died.
On what would have been Doby’s 100th birthday, on Dec. 13, 2023, 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 in Clearwater Fla., also hosts the cable television program “Beyond the Game” seen on White Plains Community Media.
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