Today baseball is honoring Jackie Robinson who opened the doors to blacks in baseball. Doby followed by 2 1/2 months and integrated the American League. He is barely mentioned, yet lived through the same problems and hatred that Robinson did. How was he less important.? He was a very good player. Lifetime 283 and led the league in homeruns a couple times. Yet no love.
No one remembers the second person to do anything. (Quick, after the Wright Brothers, who was the second person to build a working airplane?*).
Doby was also the second black manager. But again, people remember Frank Robinson.
*Yes, someone going to probably post it here within an hour, but still the non-SDMB public doesn’t know.
- Doby is in the Hall of Fame, so he’s not slighted there.
- The Indians plan to honor Doby on the 60th anniversary of his entry into the AL later in the year.
History has turned Robinson into an iconic figure. Larry Doby, although he went through similar hardships as Robinson, never turned into that kind of a figure.
It’s sort of a Yuri Gagarin-Alan Shepard kind of situation.