I’m way too young to have seen Doby play, but I’ll always remember him because of a 1948 baseball almanac my father bought as a kid and gave to me many years later. Poring over that season’s statistics, I discovered that Doby, in his first full season in the majors, helped the 1948 Cleveland Indians win their last World Series by batting .301 with 14 home runs.
He got even better. Doby was a 7-time all star in a 13-year major league career, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.
Jackie Robinson may have been the first to break the color barrier, but Doby dealt with the same prejudices in a different league and thrived nonetheless.
Such a shame. I feel that Doby deserves a bit more recognition for being the first modern era black to integrate major league stadiums in Cleveland, Detroit, Boston, Yankee Stadium, and Comiskey, among others.
I remember first learning about baseball - where I grew up, baseball wasn’t as big as football, so I didn’t learn as a kid, but have come to appreciate baseball’s subtle complexity - and I learned about Doby. What accomplishments.
He will forever be the Buzz Aldrin of baseball integration - as important to the accomplishment as Jackie Robinson, but not nearly as remembered, just like Buzz is a distant second to Neil Armstrong…
They were saying on the radio this morning that he had to eat, sleep and even practive apart from his team. It wsa under conditions like that that he generated his accomplishments.
