A photo taken 75 years ago of two baseball players is now regarded as “a signature moment in the integration of baseball.” It might come as a surprise that Jackie Robinson was not in the picture.
Two players, cheek to cheek. Two players, smiling and celebrating the joy of victory in the World Series. Two players, the black one named Larry Doby, the white one named Steve Gromek.
Last week, Doby was awarded the highest civilian award in the U.S., the Congressional Gold Medal, on what would have been his 100th birthday. On the back of the medal was that photo, along with an inscription Doby’s family said was his credo: “We are stronger together as a team, as a nation, as a world.”
Doby, the hitter, and Gromek, the pitcher, were the heroes of a Cleveland Indians’ victory during the 1948 World Series. This was 18 months after Jackie Robinson was “in the picture” of baseball as the first black man to play in the majors.
The comparisons between these two friends (Doby was a pallbearer at Robinson’s funeral) will likely go on in perpetuity. Doby was always overshadowed. Robinson’s number was retired in baseball. Doby’s was retired in Cleveland. As the American League’s first black player, 11 weeks after Robinson, Doby faced the same racial slurs Robinson did. Yet he was the first black player to hit a World Series home run, one of only four to play in both the Negro League and Major League championship series. His place in baseball history, coupled with his naval service in World War II, led to the Congressional Medal.
Like Robinson, Doby had to bite his tongue. For part of one season, I had many of the same workplaces as him. It was his second go-round as the Montreal Expos batting coach, my third season covering the Expos for The Star, and it was a disaster for both of us. His hitters didn’t, or couldn’t hit, and the Expos won all but 107 games. They had one .300 hitter — pinch hitter Jose Morales, who batted only 165 times. One player had double figures in home runs, Larry Parrish (11). Doby’s task was impossible.
My “season” was marginally better. The sports department was run by a bean counter, and it was Olympic year in Montreal. No spring training. Few road trips. And a newspaper strike that lasted five weeks, in June.
So I didn’t get to know Doby. As a kid, I’d admired, in part because he played briefly for “my” team, the White Sox. With Cleveland, he’d broken the colour barrier at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, the first big-league park I ever saw. In his first start there, at first base, Doby had to borrow a first-baseman’s mitt from the Sox because none of his Cleveland teammates would loan him one. He was, after all, black.
Two decades later, as a baseball writer covering a fractured season, interviewing coaches on a bad team wasn’t a priority. I found Doby to be quiet, almost sullen. He never seemed to smile. Last week, as his son accepted America’s highest civilian honour on his behalf, I like to think that somewhere, Larry Doby was smiling.
Steve Gromek, too.
