Re: Tribute to Mr. Larry Doby -- Baseball Talk

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 10:18:06 10/26/07 Fri
Author: trey
Subject: Re: Tribute to Mr. Larry Doby
In reply to: Indians fans everywhere 's message, "Tribute to Mr. Larry Doby" on 13:51:17 06/19/03 Thu

VoyForums Special Announcement: New servers, free user accounts soon... click to read more!

Create a New ForumContribute & Create Your Member accountVoyUser Login (see contribute)VoyForums Directory/CategoriesNo-ads: Completely remove ads from your forumOwner LoginVoyForums HomepageVoyForums NewsHelp DeskVoyForums ExchangeFAQ - Frequently Asked QuestionsSearch VoyForums
* Notice: Posting problems? [ Click here ]

[ VoyUser Login optional ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4 ]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 13:51:17 06/19/03 Thu
Author: Indians fans everywhere
Subject: Tribute to Mr. Larry Doby

Tribe great Larry Doby dies

06/19/03

Bob Dolgan
Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporter

Hall of Famer Larry Doby, the first black baseball player in American League history, died last night in his home in Montclair, N.J.

Doby was one of the Indians' finest center fielders, a slugger with speed. He had been suffering from cancer. He was 78.

Doby was with the Indians in one of their most successful eras, from 1947 to 1955, during which they won two league pennants and a World Series, besides finishing second to the New York Yankees four times.

He hit a decisive home run as the Indians won their last World Series, in 1948.

He led the league in home runs and runs batted in when the Indians romped to the American League pennant in 1954, winning 111 games, the fourth-most in baseball history.

Doby survived and endured many racial insults after arriving in the majors only three months after the first black player, Jackie Robinson of the old Brooklyn Dodgers. He never seemed to hold any grudges because of the torment. "Life is too short for that," Doby once said. "People who judge others based on the color of their skin have more problems than I do."

When he first stepped onto a major league field on July 3, 1947, amid a deluge of publicity, he was an uncertain, nervous 22-year-old.

He knew that many fans and teammates resented his presence at Municipal Stadium.

There was no such thing as player counseling then. Shortstop-manager Lou Boudreau merely introduced him to the team and let him sink or swim. Some of his teammates refused to shake hands with him.

Joe Gordon, the Indians' brilliant second baseman, played catch with Doby so he would not have to stand on the field alone. In his first at-bat, in his first game, Doby pinch hit and struck out. When Gordon then struck out, he sat down next to Doby and smiled, as if to say, "It happens to everybody."

Doby batted only 32 times that first season and got five hits - a paltry .156 average.

"It was one of the toughest things I ever had to go through," he said in 2001. "I had never sat on the bench before and now all I could do was sit and watch."

Doby had come up as a second baseman with the Newark Eagles of the Negro League, where he was hitting .420. But he was not going to displace Gordon, the team's cleanup hitter who had been the league's most valuable player as a member of the Yankees in 1942.

Trash talk

He endured a lot of vicious bench jockeying. "They would yell anything you can think of," Doby recalled. "In those days, every team had bench jockeys. That was how they kept their jobs. But that's all right. Life has been good to me."

Doby survived because of the support he received from his late wife, Helyn, Indians owner Bill Veeck, who brought him to the majors, teammates Gordon and catcher Jim Hegan, and coach Bill McKechnie. They were the closest to him that first year.

Veeck held a special place in his heart. "He was one of the greatest people I ever met," Doby said. "I lost my father when I was 8 and I certainly would have liked him to be the same kind of man Bill Veeck was."

When he first met the dynamic Indians owner, he called him "Mr. Veeck." Veeck replied, "Call me Bill and I'll call you Lawrence."

"We remained friends until the day he died," Doby said. "He personified the phrase, 'human being.'�"

As a baseball pioneer, Doby also received encouragement from black celebrities of the era. Heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, singers Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington, and musicians Duke Ellington and Count Basie were among those who contacted him.

Moves to outfield

At the end of the 1947 season, fatherly coach McKechnie, who had won four pennants as a National League manager and was Boudreau's top aide, told Doby, "We've got a second baseman in Gordon. I suggest you get a book and learn to play the outfield, because when you come to spring training that's where they're going to put you."

"It was no big deal to me," Doby said. "I had played every position in high school and the Negro League. I just wanted to play every day."

He read Yankees star Tommy Henrich's book on playing the outfield, then received more instruction during spring training in 1948 from Hall of Famer Tris Speaker, who had led the Indians to the 1920 world title as centerfielder-manager.

"He talked to me about charging balls and throwing to the right base," Doby said.

Doby was thrown into the competition for the right field job among a platoon of players. He made the team, but not before a harrowing experience in an exhibition game in Texarkana, Texas. Fans threw bottles at him, driving him out of the game.

In an exhibition in Columbia, Ga., ushers refused to let him enter the front gate even though he was in full uniform. "You have to go in through the centerfield gate where the colored folks go in," he was told. So, Doby entered through centerfield.

Five whiffs

He started the season in right and had some early problems. Detroit left-handed pitcher Hal Newhouser struck him out five times in one game.

Slowly but surely, though, Doby began to hit.

When centerfielder Thurman Tucker was injured in May, Boudreau moved Doby into his spot. "I stayed there for 10 years," he recalled. "The Cleveland fans were great. They never booed me, even when I made a mistake."

His most-remembered error came in his rookie year, when he lost a fly ball in the sun at the Stadium. It glanced off his glove and hit him in the head, costing the Indians a game.

On another occasion, he tried to steal home against the Yankees with the bases loaded in the ninth inning and was thrown out. "I thought I could make it," he explained.

The pluses far outweighed the minuses for Doby, who was paid $5,000 in 1948. In Washington, he hit a long homer off Sid Hudson. The Plain Dealer report said the ball would have gone 500 feet if it had not hit a light pole in center and bounced back onto the field.

Doby thought the ball was in play and sprinted around the bases, sliding into home, where he was mobbed by awed teammates. "People said Babe Ruth had hit one there, too," Doby recalled.

Good year

Doby hit .301, with 14 homers, as the Indians won the 1948 pennant. In the playoff game against Boston for the American League flag, he belted two doubles.

His most famous homer came in the fourth game of the 1948 World Series at Municipal Stadium, when he connected to give Steve Gromek a 2-1 victory and the Indians a 3-games-to-1 lead over the Boston Braves.

After the game, Doby and Gromek were photographed hugging each other in jubilation. The picture is considered a civil rights milestone. It was the first widely-publicized photo of two baseball players of different races embraced in victory.

"We had won and we showed respect for each other," said Doby, who considered that incident the highlight of the season. "The picture showed that black and white people could get along and work together. I don't think too many people were ready for that type of picture in 1948."

Doby led the Indians in hitting in the series, with an average of .318.

Players soon accepted him because of his playing ability and he became a confident leader in the clubhouse as time went on. He was articulate and friendly on Jimmy Dudley's Dugout Interviews radio show and in television appearances.

Still an outsider

He seemed to be content and happy, but inside he struggled with the snubs and insults in the era's racial climate. He said he was seldom invited to socialize with teammates. On occasion, when he disagreed with an umpire's call, he would point to his hand, as if to say, "You called that a strike because of my color."

Doby and other black players who later joined the team were not permitted to stay with the Indians in team hotels in some cities. Eventually, that practice was eliminated.

Doby, 6-1 and 180 pounds, quickly established himself as a first-rate player. In 1950, when he hit three homers in a game, batted .326 and drove in 102 runs, The Sporting News chose him as the best centerfielder in baseball, ahead of Joe DiMaggio and Duke Snider.

On June 4, 1952, he became the fourth Cleveland player to hit for the cycle. He homered and doubled off Boston's Mel Parnell in Fenway Park, then tripled and singled against Paul "Dizzy" Trout, driving in six runs. The left-handed hitter led the league in slugging (.541) and homers (32) that season.

"I always had good luck in Fenway," Doby said. "Certain places put you in a good frame of mind. I felt comfortable there. Maybe it was the closeness of the park and the fans."

Good glove

The right-handed throwing Doby was also an excellent fielder, once playing 166 straight games without an error. He had a powerful arm and made many spectacular catches. Maybe the most memorable came on July 31, 1954, when he raced to the Stadium fence in left-center, leaped and grabbed a drive by Tom Umphlett of Boston. His body was half-draped over the fence when he caught the ball.

He topped the league in homers (32) and runs batted in (124) in the pennant year of 1954, when the Indians won 111 and lost 43 for a winning percentage of .721, a league record that still stands. (Seattle won 116 games in a 162-game schedule in 2001).

Doby would have won the Most Valuable Player award in many years with those numbers, but he finished second to Yankees catcher Yogi Berra because the Cleveland vote was split among the many Indians players who had great seasons.

Indians second baseman Roberto Avila won the league batting title with a .341 average, and pitchers Early Wynn and Bob Lemon both won 23 games.

Berra wound up with 230 points in the MVP balloting. Doby was second at 210, Avila third at 203, Lemon fifth with 179 and Wynn sixth with 72. There was no such thing as a Cy Young Award for pitchers at that time.

Series failure

Doby had a bad World Series in �'54, as did the rest of the team, hitting just .125 as the New York Giants swept in four games.

"We lost, but we know how good we were," Doby said. "No other team in the league ever won 111 out of 154 [games]."

But Doby chose the�'48 Indians as the better of the two great Cleveland clubs. "They won it all," he said.

He was still only 29 years old in 1954 and appeared to have many fine seasons ahead of him. But that season was his apex.

In 1955, he pulled a leg muscle and suffered a hand fracture, but still had a good season, hitting .291 with 26 homers. His RBI dropped to 75, however.

The Indians traded him to the Chicago White Sox for shortstop Chico Carrasquel and centerfielder Jim Busby on Oct. 25, 1955. It was a bad deal for the Indians.

Doby rebounded with 102 RBI for the White Sox in 1956, his fifth and last season over the century mark. He also hit 24 homers, his eighth straight year over 20.

From there it was a steep drop. He went to Baltimore in a six-player deal and then came back to the Indians in 1958 in another trade. In 1959, Cleveland sent him to Detroit for Tito Francona. Injuries to his back and rotator cuff ended his career at age 34.

All-star regular

Doby was chosen for seven All Star teams in his career. His lifetime stats show a .283 batting average, 253 home runs and 969 RBI.

Former Indians owner Veeck contended in his autobiography that the sensitive Doby never realized his full potential because of the emotional turmoil he harbored inside. "If he had come up just a little later, he might have become one of the greatest players of all time," Veeck wrote.

Al Lopez, Doby's manager for most of his career in Cleveland, said, "Larry had tremendous ability, but he could have been even better. Being the first black player in the league, he over-tried. He'd get real mad at himself when he didn't do well."

Doby, whose top salary was $36,000, brushed off such speculation. "I'm happy with the career I had," he said.

He was praised by former teammates. Bob Kennedy said, "He could carry a team for a week when he got hot." Bob Feller recalled, "Doby would put his spikes in that Cyclone fence [at the Stadium] and leap up and make great catches. He got a lot of clutch hits."

Allie Reynolds of the Yankees gave him more trouble than any other pitcher. "He threw a rising fastball," Doby recalled. "He'd strike me out and give me a little smile. I'd say to him, 'One day, you'll get old.' And he did."

Busy retirement

After retiring, Doby worked for many years for Major League Properties and also as an assistant to American League President Gene Budig.

He managed the Chicago White Sox in 1978. Under him, the team won 37 and lost 50.

He received many honors in his later years. The Indians retired his number 14 on July 3, 1994, the 47th anniversary of his debut in Cleveland. He is one of six Indians to receive that honor. The others are Boudreau, Feller, Lemon, Earl Averill and Mel Harder.

Team owner Larry Dolan said last night that Doby's death has left a void in the Cleveland Indians family. "He was a keystone to the history of this franchise," Dolan said. "Now he's gone and that's a big loss."

In 1998, Doby was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame, becoming the fifth player from the�'48 Indians to reach Cooperstown. The others were Boudreau, Feller, Lemon and Leroy "Satchel" Paige.

When he was 72, Doby was stricken with cancer and his left kidney was removed. His wife, Helyn, to whom he was married for 52 years at the time, suspected the cancer was caused by radon, a soil contaminant that was ordered removed from the street where they lived by a government environmental agency. The Dobys had lived in the house in New Jersey for 39 years at the time.

Half the street where the Dobys lived was dug up by the government because of the radon.

"I have no idea if the radon caused my illness or not," Doby said. "My wife and five children lived here, too, and they're all healthy."

Shortly after, Helyn Doby contracted liver cancer. Doby then became ill with bone cancer. "I have my good days and my bad days," he said.

In 1998, the Indians held a 50-year reunion of the�'48 team. Doby was the center of attention as a new inductee into the Hall of Fame. Then-team owner Richard Jacobs presented the old player with a replica of his 1948 World Series ring, which had been stolen.

"Two great things happened to me this year," Doby said at the time. "I was voted into the Hall of Fame and I got my ring back."

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Replies:

Re: Tribute to Mr. Larry Doby -- Jason, 16:57:20 06/22/03 Sun

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]