Martin Sicker - The Making of a Pariah State: The Adventurist Politics of Muammar Qaddafi

Cover

Page i

PRIDE AGAINST PREJUDICE

Page ii

Celebrating in triumph, Steve Gromek and Larry Doby embrace and laugh after the fourth game of the 1948 World Series in Cleveland. Doby hit the home run which decided the outcome, 21, making Gromek the winning pitcher. The picture, one of the first to show affection between black and white athletes in the era of integration, became one of Dobys most cherished mementos. (Photo courtesy of Wide World)

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THE BIOGRAPHY OF LARRY DOBY

Joseph Thomas Moore

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Moore, Joseph Thomas.
Pride against prejudice.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Doby, Larry. 2. Baseball playersUnited States
Biography. 3. Segregation in sportsUnited States.
4. Afro-American baseball playersCase studies.
I. Title.
[GV865.D58M66 1988] 796.3570924 [B] 8732874
ISBN 0-275-92984-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)

Copyright 1988 by Joseph Thomas Moore

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any
process or technique, without the express written consent of Greenwood
Press, Inc. For information address Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West,
Westport, Connecticut 06881.

A hardcover edition of Pride Against Prejudice: The Biography of Larry Doby
is available from Greenwood Press (Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies:
113; ISBN 0-313-25995-X).

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 8732874

ISBN: 0-275-92984-1

First published 1988

Paperback edition 1988

Praeger Publishers, One Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010
A division of Greenwood Press, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.481984).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Copyright Acknowledgment

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission
to reprint previously published material.

Excerpts from The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B.Du Bois. Copyright 1973.

Reprinted by permission of Kraus-Thomson Organization Ltd., White Plains, N.Y.

Page v

For the late Ben Marmo,
and for Joan, whose encouragement
brackets my lifelong interest in Larry Doby

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To begin the preface of the biography of one man with reference to another may seem peculiar, but because Larry Doby has lived his life in the shadow of Jackie Robinson, it seems a necessity to do so. Robinson has been the subject of a voluminous literature. Fifteen books, parts of at least 23 others, innumerable magazine and newspaper articles, even a Broadway musical, make Robinson one of the most storied athletes in history.

Certainly Robinson deserves it. His symbolic importance to black Americans, and his significance in the social history of the United States, is unquestioned here, and richly told elsewhere. As Jules Tygiel put it, Robinsons triumph had ramifications that transcended the realm of sports, influencing public attitudes and facilitating the spread of the ideology of the civil rights movement.1

Robinsons is not the whole story, of course; nor will the addition of Dobys make it complete. But Dobys story has not been told at all, even though he followed Robinson into the major leagues by just 11 weeks, and subsequently became the second black man to manage there, and the second former major league player to play in Japan. The point is that Dobys story has been neglected, unduly so, for a variety of reasons.

Foremost, of course, is that Robinson was first. He played in New York, not Cleveland. He became a spokesperson for a large segment of black America, while Doby remained publicly silent. He played on a team immortalized as The Boys of Summer, not the mortal Indians. He was enshrined in the Hall of Fame, while Doby was not. And in a society where most people cannot name the most recent, or perhaps even the current, vice-president of the United States, we relegate number two to an often undeserved obscurity.

Nevertheless, Larry Doby is a significant American. He, as much as Robinson, was a civil rights pioneer. After all, he integrated the American