baseball executive; basketball executive; baseball manager; baseball player
Personal Information
Born Lawrence Eugene Doby, Sr., on December 13, 1924, in Camden, SC; died on June 18, 2003, in Montclair, NJ; married Helyn Curvey; children: Chris, Leslie, Larry, Jr., Kim, Susan
Education: Attended: Long Island University; New York University; Virginia Union University.
Military/Wartime Service: U.S. Navy, 1944-45.
Career
Newark Eagles baseball team, second baseman, 1942-44, 1946-47; Cleveland Indians baseball team, center fielder, 1947-55, coach, 1974; Paterson Panthers basketball team, 1947; Chicago White Sox baseball team, coach, 1956-57, manager, 1978; Montreal Expos baseball team, coach, 1971-73, 1976; New Jersey Nets basketball team, director of community relations, 1977, 1980-89; Major League Baseball Properties, licensing department, 1990-2003.
Life's Work
Breaking the color barrier 50 years ago, in 1947, Larry Doby became the first black baseball player in the American League when he joined the Cleveland Indians. In an interview with New York Times reporter George Vecsey, baseball player Willie Mays emphasized, "Don't forget Larry Doby. Larry came right after Jackie [Robinson] .... From what I hear, Jackie had Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges and Ralph Branca, but Larry didn't have anybody." There was no fanfare either. In 1947 Doby was also the first black to play in the American Basketball League.
Lawrence Eugene Doby was born on December 13, 1924, in Camden, South Carolina. Son of a semi-pro baseball player who died when Doby was eight, he grew up in Camden, moving to Paterson, New Jersey, in his teens. At Eastside High School, as the only black player on the team, he lettered in baseball, football, and basketball. He also lettered in track. In 1942, as a 17-year-old, Doby joined the Newark Eagles of the Negro National Baseball League, playing second base under the name of Larry Walker to protect his amateur standing. Former shortstop Willie Wells was the manager. Wells told him, Doby recalled to New York Times reporter Dave Anderson in 1997, "You're here because you can play. Don't let anybody intimidate you because of your age." His first professional baseball game was played at Yankee Stadium.
Faced Racism in Major League
At the end of the season, the talented Doby signed a contract with the Paterson Panthers of the American Basketball League. The next two years were spent in the U. S. Navy, but he returned to the Eagles, leading them to a Negro National League pennant and World Series championship win over the Kansas City Monarchs. Doby's batting average, .415, and home run total, 14, were at the top of the league in his final season.
Two years later Doby would again play on a winning World Series team, this time in the major leagues. Bill Veeck purchased the 22-year-old second baseman from the Eagles, making Doby the first African American to jump straight from the Negro leagues into the majors. Doby recalled, according to Ira Berkow in the New York Times, that when Veeck signed him he said, "'Lawrence,'--he's the only person who called me Lawrence--'you are going to be part of history.' Part of history? I had no notions about that. I just wanted to play baseball. I mean, I was young. I didn't quite realize then what all this meant. I saw it simply as an opportunity to get ahead."
Doby continued his recollection, "When Mr. Veeck signed me, he sat me down and told me some of the do's and don'ts.... 'No arguing with umpires, don't even turn around at a bad call at the plate, and no dissertations with opposing players; either of those might start a race riot. No associating with female Caucasians'--not that I was going to. And he said remember to act in a way that you know people are watching you. And this was something that both Jack [Robinson] and I took seriously. We knew that if we didn't succeed, it might hinder opportunities for the other Afro-Americans." Robinson and Doby became and stayed friends, supporting each other through the extraordinary pressures that included open hostilities from team members and opponents.
Doby remembered his first day with the Cleveland Indians on a Saturday, July 5, 1947, at Comisky Park in Chicago. When player-manager Lou Boudreau took him into the visiting team locker room, some of the players shook his hand, but most did not. Doby did not realize then what the next 13 years would entail: that he would be segregated even during spring training for ten of those years; that he would eat in a separate restaurant and sleep in a separate hotel; that day after day he would be called "coon," "jigaboo," or the "N-word;" and that he would be spit in his face when he slid into second base. Lou Brissie, a pitcher for the Philadelphia A's in 1947, recalled in an interview with Berkow, "I was on the bench and heard some of my teammates shouting things at Larry, like, 'Porter, carry my bags,' or 'Shoeshine boy, shine my shoes,' and well, the N-word, too. It was terrible."
Went From Field to Front Office
The next 15 months, until Satchel Paige became his roommate, Doby would be lonely, especially after games. He told Berkow, "It's then you'd really like to be with your teammates, win or lose, and go over the game. But I'd go off to my hotel in the black part of town, and they'd go off to their hotel."
Doby's talent at least garnered fans--due to his speed and skill as a center fielder and to his hard-hitting runs. In 1948 his home run won the fourth game of the World Series. After the series, in his home town of Paterson, the citizens, black and white, paraded him to the steps of his former high school. In 1949 his five-hundred-foot ball cleared the bleachers at Washington's Griffith Stadium and landed on the roof of a house. An irate mother called the Senators' front office and complained, "You'll have to stop it. Someone from your stadium just threw a ball onto our house and woke up my children, and now I can't get them back to sleep."
Doby was the league leader a number of times. In 1952 he led in runs, and in 1951 and 1954 he led in home runs and runs batted in. He became the first black player to hit a home run in a World Series. He made six straight All-Star teams, including the 1949 team where he played along with three other distinguished men: Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Don Newcombe. In 1950 he and "Luscious" Luke Easter gave Cleveland the most powerful black duo in baseball. When Doby retired after a 13-year career in which he played with the Indians, White Sox, and Detroit Tigers, his batting average was .283. Out of the 1,533 games he played, he'd hit 253 home runs.
In 1955 Doby played his last game with the Indians, then played briefly with San Diego in the Pacific Coast League, and in Japan, where he became one of the first blacks to play professional baseball in that country, before taking a two-year-coaching position with the Chicago White Sox. In 1968, after a hiatus of eight years during which he sold insurance and worked at other vocations, Doby joined the Montreal baseball organization in Canada. Doby expressed to a New York Times reporter, "I went crazy. If I get up at 6 a.m. to go to an office, I hate it. I can get up at six for baseball, and love it." In 1971, he coached first the Montreal Expos, then the Cleveland Indians, before returning to the Expos.
Doby became director of community relations for the New Jersey Nets of the National Basketball Association in 1977. The late commissioner Bart Giamatti insisted it was wrong that such a pioneer could only find work in the front office of the Nets. Doby was offered a position with the Major League Baseball Properties in 1979, handling the licensing of former players and advising Gene Budig, the American League president.
Gained Long Overdue Recognition
Doby did not get the recognition that Jackie Robinson received over the years, yet he never became bitter, preferring to keep a low profile. When he shared his history with students in Northfield, Minnesota, during a Carleton College program founded by former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, Doby stated, "If we all look back, we can see that baseball helped make this a better country for us all, a more comfortable country for us all, especially for those of us who have grands and great-grands. Kids are our future and we hope baseball has given them some idea of what it is to live together and how we can get along, whether you be black or white."
Despite never connecting himself to political or social issues, Doby remained committed to improving the welfare of children. During the time he worked as the director of community relations for the New Jersey Nets in the 1980s, Doby involved himself in a number of inner-city youth programs. In 1997 Harvey Araton in the New York Times quoted Aubray Lewis as saying, "He [Doby] is more than a role model. He is an American hero." Lewis was the dinner chairman for a $500-a-plate sports memorabilia dinner and auction benefiting Project Pride, a Newark college preparatory and scholarship organization that Doby, a volunteer board member, served with for more than nine years.
Some recognition for Doby finally came with the creation of a National Black Sports Hall of Fame in 1973. He was one of 38 athletes chosen that year by the editors of Black Sports magazine. In 1997 New Jersey Representative William Pascrell suggested naming the main post office in Paterson after Doby. That same year, Princeton and Fairfield Universities bestowed honorary doctorates on Doby. When Montclair State University, a baseball throw from Doby's home, decided the new baseball stadium would be christened Yogi Berra Stadium, New York Times reporter Araton submitted that the name, Berra-Doby Field, would better represent the community. In 1997 Doby was honored at an Indians game, and on July 8, at the All-Star game in Cleveland, almost 50 years to the day of his start in the majors. Former teammate Lou Brissie gave Knight-Ridder Newspapers reporter Bill Robinson a summation of Doby that has been echoed by many others, "He had dignity. He had talent. He gave forth his effort anytime he walked out there. That is the ultimate in professionalism." Brissie added, "Larry, in my mind, deserves whatever honor that baseball can give him. He earned it."
In 1997 Doby went through surgery to have his left kidney removed because it contained a cancerous tumor. He told Jet magazine "Thank God, I've never been sick, and this is the first time I've ever gone through anything like this." At the same time more honors for Doby started arriving. The Cleveland Indians had a week of tributes to the player, culminating in Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White announcing that five playgrounds were going to be dedicated as Larry Doby All-Star Playgrounds, the first of which was to be at the King-Kennedy Boys and Girls Club in Cleveland's Central neighborhood. Jet magazine reported White as saying, "This new playground stands as a lasting reminder that young people can and must learn from Larry Doby's example. They must take pride in who they are and put forth their very best, even when confronted by challenge or adversity." Jimmy Milano of Milano Monuments in Cleveland was also hi! red to create five monuments commemorating Doby's baseball highlights, one of which will be put into each Larry Doby All-Star Playground.
It was in 1998, however, that Doby received the highest honor a baseball player can garner--he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was elected because of his major league record, but also in large part because of his role in helping to break the color barrier in the game of baseball. At the ceremony Doby thanked Bill Veeck for giving him the opportunity to prove himself. He told the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service that "the people of Cleveland 'treated me with nothing but respect.' He said he never expected to be a racial pioneer, to be a Hall of Famer."
On June 18, 2003, Larry Doby died after a long struggle with cancer in his hometown of Montclair, New Jersey. Nearly 300 people attended his funeral, including Rachel Robinson, the widow of Jackie Robinson, Mike Veeck, the son of Bill Veeck who started Doby in his major league career, Baseball greats Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, and Joe Morgan, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg, and Hall of Fame president Dale Petroskey. According to Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, Doby was remembered by the gathering as "a man of courage, tenacity, and class ... a friend to man who stood above men." And he will go down in history as a man who, through his talent at baseball, helped African Americans gain their place in professional sports.
Awards
Negro World Series championship, 1946; first black in the American League, 1947; first black in the American Basketball League, 1947; played in two World Series, 1948, 1954; member of the World Series Champion Cleveland Indians, 1948; played in six consecutive All Star Games, 1949-54; center fielder, Man of the Year, Baseball Writers Association of Sporting News, 1950; elected to Cleveland Hall of Fame, 1955; National Black Sports Hall of Fame, 1973; Baseball Hall of Fame, 1977; led the American League in slugging, 1962; batted 542; honorary doctorate, Montclair State University; honorary doctorates, Princeton and Fairfield Universities, 1997; honored by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, 1997; honored at the All-Star game in Cleveland, 1997; five Larry Doby All-Star Playgrounds dedicated, Cleveland, 1997; inducted into Baseball Hall of Fame, 1998.
Further Reading
Books
- Moffi, Larry and Jonathan Kronstadt, Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947-1959, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1994.
- Reichler, Joseph L. and Ken Samelson, The Great All-Time Baseball Record Book, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993.
- Riley, James A., The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994.
- St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James Press, 2000.
- Associated Press, July 7, 1997.
- Crain's Cleveland Business, July 7, 1997, p. 1.
- Jet, July 28, 1997, p. 46; December 1, 1997, p. 50.
- Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, April 16, 1997, p. C3; July 5, 1997; March 4, 1998; June 19, 2003; June 23, 2003.
- Maclean's, August 10, 1998, p. 46.
- New York Times, February 23, 1997, sec. 1, p. 1, sec. 8, p. 6; April 27, 1997, sec. 8, p. 7; May 2, 1997, sec. B, p. 9; May 19, 1997, sec. B, p. 4; May 23, 1997, sec. 8, p. 3; June 4, 1997, sec. B, p. 5; June 27, 1997, sec. B, p. 11; June 19, 2003.
- New York Times Biographical Edition, September 30, 1974, p. 1238.
- Sporting News, June 30, 2003, p. 7.
- "Larry Doby: Bearing the burden, too," Hartford Courant, http://news.courant.com/special/jackie/doby.stm (August 18, 2003).
- "Doby makes life better for city kids." Amarillo Globe-News, www.amarillonet.com/stories/070997/doby.html (August 19, 2003).
— Eileen Daily and Catherine V. Donaldson
