[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 98 (Friday, July 11, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7315-S7316]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO LARRY DOBY
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, 50 years ago this week, a young 22-
year-old rookie named Larry Doby took the baseball field for the first
time as a Cleveland Indian. Although Larry did not make a hit during
that first at bat, he did something more: he made history. On that day,
July 5, 1947, Larry Doby became the first African-American to play in
the American League. I have had the great privilege of knowing Larry
since our days growing up together in the streets of Paterson, NJ. I
have developed a deep admiration for him. I ask that the text of an
article that appeared recently in the Washington Post that captures
Larry's character be printed in the Record.
The article follows:
[From the Washington Post, July 8, 1997]
Neither a Myth Nor a Legend--Larry Doby Crossed Baseball's Color
Barrier After Robinson
(By David Maraniss)
There is only one person alive who knows what it was like
to be a black ballplayer integrating the white world of the
major leagues during the historic summer of 1947. If you are
young or only a casual follower of baseball, perhaps you have
not heard of him.
Larry Doby is 72 years old now, and his calm manner seems
out of style in this unsporting age of self-obsession. He is
neither a celebrity nor the stuff of myth, simply a quiet
hero with an incomparable story to tell.
This season, as the national pastime commemorates the 50th
anniversary of the breaking of the color line, the attention
has focused inevitably on the first black player of the
modern era, Jackie Robinson, who shines alone in baseball
history as the symbol of pride against prejudice. But Doby
was there, too, blazing his own trail later that same year.
He was brought up by the Cleveland Indians on July 5, 1947,
three months after Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn
Dodgers. Some of the strange and awful things that happened
to No. 42 in the National League happened to No. 14 in the
American League as well.
``I think I'm ahead of a lot of people because I don't hate
and I'm not bitter,'' Doby says softly now. He has spent a
lifetime ``turning negatives into positives,'' but he is also
sharp and direct in pointing out what he considers to be
myths surrounding the events of a half-century ago.
Jackie Robinson in death has gone the way of most American
martyrs, transformed from an outsider struggling against the
prevailing culture into a legend embraced by it. In the
retelling of his legend it sometimes sounds as though most
people always loved him. Doby knows better. He was there and
he remembers. After that first season, he and Robinson
barnstormed the country with Negro leagues all-stars. They
rarely discussed their common experience in white baseball
(``no need to, we both knew what the situation was''), but a
few times late at night they stayed up naming the players in
each league who were giving them problems because they were
black.
It was a long list.
``Many people in this world live on lies. Know what amazes
me today?'' Doby asks, his deep voice rising with the first
rush of emotion. ``How many friends Jackie Robinson had 50
years ago! All of a sudden everyone is his best friend. Wait
a minute. Give me a break, will you. I knew those people who
were his friends. I knew those people who were not his
friends. Some of them are still alive. I know. And Jack, he's
in heaven, and I bet he turns over a lot of times when he
hears certain things or sees certain things or reads certain
things where these people say they were his friends.''
Playing and traveling in the big leagues that year was a
grindingly lonely job for the two young black men. Which
leads to Doby's second shattered myth: the notion that
Robinson, by coming first, could somehow smooth the way for
him.
``Did Jackie Robinson make it easier for me?'' Doby laughs
at his own question, which he says is the one he hears most
often. ``I'm not saying people are stupid, but it's one of
the stupidest questions that's ever been asked. Think about
it. We're talking about 11 weeks. Nineteen forty-seven. Now
it's 50 years later and you still have hidden racism,
educated racist people. How could you change that in 11
weeks? Jackie probably would have loved to have changed it in
11 weeks. I know he would have loved to have been able to
say, `the hotels are open, the restaurants are open, your
teammates are going to welcome you.' But no. No. No way.
No way.''
The Embrace
There was no transition for Larry Doby, no year of grooming
in the minors up in Montreal like Robinson had. One day he
was playing second base for the Newark Eagles of the Negro
leagues, and two days later he was in Chicago, pinch-hitting
for the Cleveland Indians in the seventh inning of a game
against the White Sox. ``We're in this together, kid,'' Bill
Veeck, the Indians' owner, had told him at the signing, and
that was enough for Doby. He trusted Veeck, then and always.
Doby was only 22 years old, and his life to that point had
been relatively free of the uglier strains of American
racism. At East Side High in Paterson, N.J., he had been a
four-sport star on integrated teams. He remembers being
subjected to a racist insult only once, during a football
game, and he responded by whirling past the foul-mouthed
defensive back to haul in a touchdown pass. That shut the guy
up. In the Navy on the South Pacific atoll of Ulithi during
World War II, he had taken batting practice with Mickey
Vernon of the Washington Senators and found him to be
extremely friendly and encouraging. Vernon later sent him a
dozen Louisville Slugger bats and put in a good word for him
with the Washington club.
Wishful thinking. It would be another decade before the
Senators broke their lily-white policy, but Veeck, who had
both an innate empathy for life's underdogs and a showman's
readiness to try anything new, was eager to integrate his
Indians as soon as possible. Doby was not the best black
player (that honor still belonged to old Josh Gibson), but he
was young and talented. Through the Fourth of July with the
Newark club in 1947, he was batting .414 with a league-
leading 14 homers.
His Newark teammates gave him a farewell present, a kit
with comb, brush and shaving cream, but there was no
celebration when he took off to join the Indians. ``We looked
at it as an important step as far as history was concerned,
but it was not the type of thing you would celebrate in terms
of justice for all, because you were going to a segregated
situation,'' Doby says. ``Maybe someone smarter than me would
be happy about that, but I wasn't. You know you're going into
a situation where it's not going to be comfortable. That's
what you're leaving. What you're leaving is comfortable
because you are with your teammates all the time, you sleep
in the same hotel, you eat in the same restaurants, you ride
in the same car.''
When Doby was introduced to the Cleveland players that
afternoon of July 5 a half-century ago, most of them stood
mute and expressionless, essentially ignoring his existence.
There were a few exceptions. Second baseman Joe Gordon told
him to grab his glove and warmed up with him before the game,
a practice they continued throughout the year. Catcher Jim
Hegan showed he cared by asking him how he was doing. And one
of the coaches, Bill McKechnie, looked after him. ``He was
like Veeck, but there every day on the road--nice man,'' Doby
recalls.
But there was no roommate for him on the road, no one in
whom he could confide. In every city except New York and
Boston, he stayed in a black hotel apart from the rest of the
team. Equally troubling for him, he rarely got the chance to
play. After starting one game at first base, he looked at the
lineup card the next day and was not there. Same thing the
rest of the year. The manager, Lou Boudreau, never said a
word to him about why he was on the bench. He was used as a
pinch hitter, and could not adjust to the role. He finished
the year with only five hits and no home runs in 32 at-bats
over 29 games.
After the last game of the season, he was sitting at his
locker, wondering if that was the end of the experiment, when
McKechnie came over to him and asked whether he had ever
played the outfield. No, Doby said, always infield, in high
school, college at Long Island University for a year, Negro
leagues, the streets, wherever. ``Well,'' Doby recall
McKechnie telling him, ``Joe Gordon is the second baseman and
he's going to be here a while. When you go home this winter
get a book and learn how to play the outfield.''
He bought a book by Tommy Henrich, the Yankees outfielder,
and studied the finer points of playing outfield: what to do
on liners hit straight at you (take your first step back,
never forward), throwing to the right bases, hitting the
cutoff man. He started the next season in right, and within a
few weeks was over in center, where he developed into
[[Page S7316]]
an offensive and defensive star, a key figure on the fearsome
Indians teams from the late 1940s to mid-1950s. With Doby
driving in more than 100 runs four times and tracking down
everything in center, the Indians won the World Series
against the Boston Braves in 1948, and lost to the Giants
in 1954 after winning a league-record 111 games during the
regular season.
It was during the '48 season that Doby set several firsts.
After batting over .300 during the regular season, he became
the first African American to play on a championship club and
the first to hit a home run in the World Series. His blast
won the fourth game that fall against the Braves. In the
locker room celebration afterward, a wire service
photographer took a picture that was sent out across the
nation showing something that had never been seen before: a
white baseball player, pitcher Steve Gromek, hugging the
black player, Doby, who had won the game for him.
Doby says he will never forget that embrace. ``That made me
feel good because it was not a thing of, should I or should I
not, not a thing of black or white. It was a thing where
human beings were showing emotion. When you have that kind of
thing it makes you feel better, makes you feel like, with all
those obstacles and negatives you went through, there is
someone who had feelings inside for you as a person and not
based on color.''
It was a rare situation that went easier for the black
person than his white friend. Gromek received hate mail and
questions from his neighbors when he went home. What are you
doing hugging a black man like that? Hey, was his response,
Doby won the game for me!
But the world did not embrace Doby as warmly as Gromek had.
In St. Louis one day, McKechnie restrained him from climbing
into the stands to go after a heckler who had been shouting
racist epithets at him the whole game. His anger erupted one
other time in 1948, when he slid into second base and an
opposing infielder spit in his face. ``I didn't expect to be
spit on if I'm sliding into second base, but it happened. I
just thank God there was an umpire there named Bill Summers,
a nice man, who kind of walked in between us when I was ready
to move on this fella. Maybe I wouldn't be sitting here
talking if that hadn't happened. They wanted to find anyway
they could go get you out of the league.''
Al Smith, a left fielder who joined the Indians in 1953 and
became Doby's roommate and close friend, said there was one
other way opposing teams would go after black players.
Whenever Al Rosen or some other Indian hit a home run, the
pitcher would wait until Doby came up, then throw at him.
``They wouldn't knock the player who hit the home run down,
they'd knock Doby down.''
Common practice in those days, says Doby--he and Minnie
Minoso, a Cuban-born outfielder who was an all-star seven
years despite not becoming a regular in the major leagues
until age 28, and Roy Campanella, a three-time NL most
valuable player after playing for the Baltimore Elite Giants
of the Negro leagues, were hit by pitches 10 times more often
than Ted Williams, Stan Musial and Joe DiMaggio.
``You don't think people would do it simply because of
race,'' Doby says. ``But what was it? Did they knock us down
because we were good hitters? How you gonna explain DiMaggio,
Williams and Musial? Were they good hitters? So you see, you
can't be naive about this kind of situation.''
But there was one setting where Doby and the other blacks
on the Indians' team felt completely protected--when teammate
Early Wynn was on the mound. ``Whenever Early pitched we
didn't have any problems getting knocked down. Early, he
would start at the top of the opposing lineup and go right
down to the bottom. They threw at me, he'd throw at them.''
The segregation of that era offered one ironically
comforting side effect to Doby. Black fans in the late 1940s
were directed out to the cheap seats, the bleachers in left
and center and right. They were a long way from the action,
but very close to Doby. ``When people say, `You played well
in Washington,' well, I had a motivation factor there. I had
cheerleaders there at Griffith Stadium. I didn't have to
worry about name-calling. You got cheers from those people
when you walked out onto the field. They'd let you know they
appreciated you were there. Give you a little clap when you
go out there, and if you hit a home run, they'd acknowledge
the fact, tip their hat.''
Back to Cleveland
At the All-Star Game at Jacobs Field in Cleveland on
Tuesday, all of baseball will finally tip its hat to Lawrence
Eugene Doby. Finally, he will emerge from the enormous shadow
of the man he followed and revered, Jackie Robinson. The
American League, for which he works as an executive in New
York, has named him honorary captain of its team, and he has
been selected to throw out the first pitch. The prospect of
standing on the field in front of a sellout crowd to be
honored has led Doby to think about what has changed since he
broke in with the Indians 50 years ago.
``A lot of people are complaining that baseball hasn't come
along fast enough. And there is much more work to be done,''
Doby says. ``But if you look at baseball, we came in 1947,
before Brown versus the Board of Education [the 1954 Supreme
Court decision integrating public schools], before anyone
wrote a civil rights bill saying give them the same
opportunities everyone else has. So whatever you want to
criticize baseball about--it certainly needs more
opportunities for black managers, black general managers,
black umpires--remember that if this country was as far
advanced as baseball it would be in much better shape.''
Doby rises from his chair and walks around his den, taking
another look at history. Here is a picture of him at the
first of seven straight all-star games to which he was
selected. He is posed on the dugout steps with three other
black players. ``There's Camp and Newk [pitcher Don Newcombe]
and Jackie,'' he says. ``I'm the only American Leaguer,
fighting those Dodgers.''
Nearby is the picture of ``Doby's Great Catch,'' taken in
Cleveland in a game against Washington on July 20, 1954.
``What a catch,'' he says softly, sounding modest even in
praise, as though it was someone else who climbed that fence
to make the play.
And in the corner is a picture of the football team at
Paterson's East Side High back in the early 1940s. One black
player in the crowd--the split end. ``I was always the one
guy,'' he says, looking at the image of his younger self.
Sometimes he was overshadowed or all but forgotten, and in
the history books it says he came second, but Larry Doby is
right. He always was the one guy.
____________________