In Their Footsteps: Its Opening Day, 2014, a fine time to hail baseball pioneer Larry Doby. Everybody knows the story of #42, Jackie Robinson, the man who broke the color line in major league baseball. Doby deserves the same honor. Lawrence Doby was born in Camden, SC in the peak of the Jim Crow years. After his father, a stablehand for wealthy whites, died, he moved with his mother to Patterson, NJ, where he won 12 letters in high school sports. After serving in the segregated US Navy during World War 2, he became a star of the Newark Eagles in the National Negro League. Less than three months after Jackie Robinsons 1947 debut for the National Leagues Brooklyn Dodgers, Larry Doby took the field for Bill Veecks Cleveland Indians, becoming the second Black player in the majors in the modern era and the first in the American League. Veeck had been trying to get permission to integrate his team for years. He was a much less austere and deliberate man than Dodgers owner, Branch Rickey (just google Eddie Gaedel), and brought Doby straight up to the big time, without the year of seasoning Robinson had had in the minors. (He also paid the Newark Eagles for Dobys contract, something Rickey had refused to do with the Kansas City Monarchs when he signed Robinson.) Doby bore up under everything Robinson did--naked hostility from teammates, racist catcalls on the field and off, death threats, segregated hotel accommodations in some cities on the road. He had to turn the other cheek, to take it, but I fought back by hitting the ball as far as I could. That was my answer.” He and Robinson spoke often on the phone that year, giving each other support. But the most important support came from those whose hopes and aspirations, whose defiance of segregation he was embodying every time he stepped on the field: You know why I hit so well in Washington and St. Louis? They were major Jim Crow seating parks and when I came to bat, I knew where the noise was coming from and who was making it. I felt like a quarterback with 5,000 cheerleaders calling his name. You know most of them couldnt afford to be there. I never forgot them. Had Doby failed, it would have been easy for the haters to write Jackie Robinson off as a fluke and slow the advance of Black players into the Majors. He did not. He went on to a great pro career, leading the Indians to a World Series championship in 1948 and being selected to seven straight AL All-Star teams. He played in the big leagues all the way to 1959. That was the year the last team in Major League baseball, the Boston Red Sox, finally integrated its roster, completing the job Larry Doby had begun in the American League.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 18:29:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015