Larry Doby Hits One for History

It was Black History Month [2]. I was working with children and youth in an after-school program in the Clarksdale housing projects in Louisville, Ky. Spike Lee's film Malcolm X had just been released. I sat around a table with a group of teenagers discussing Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcolm X and James Cone’s Martin & Malcolm & America.

One student was not impressed.

"What do you have against Martin and Malcolm?" I asked my student.

"I got nothing against them,” he said. “It's just that we've been learning about MLK since kindergarten and all people are talking about now is Malcolm. I just want to learn about someone in black history that I've never heard about before."

I wanted to encourage his enthusiasm to learn. So I made an assignment:

"Let's go out and look for people, places and things we didn't know about black history and come back and share what we learned next week."

As a result of my search, I discovered a story from baseball history.

It was Oct. 9, 1948. Cleveland Municipal Stadium held 81,897 people to watch Game 4 of the World Series between the Cleveland Indians of the American League and the Boston Braves of the National League. More people were at that game than at any other game in the history of the World Series up to that time. The Indians held a shaky 2-1 lead in the best of seven series.

In the bottom of the fourth inning, with two outs, the Indians were clinging to a 1-0 lead. Larry Doby, 24, of the Indians dug into the batter’s box at home plate to face Braves’ pitcher Johnny Sain.

Doby threw right and batted left. His arcing swing was a beautiful thing that helped him hit .301 with 14 home runs in 121 games during the season. He had hit .396 over the last 20 games. That helped his team beat out the Boston Red Sox and make it to the championship series.

Larry Doby was a black man—the first in the American League.

The great Jackie Robinson [3] broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947 when he played for the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers.

On the second pitch, Sain wound up and threw the ball toward home plate. Doby swung his bat and, “crack!” The ball took off toward right center field. The crowd let out a mighty roar as the ball sailed 420 feet into the stands for a home run. It was the decisive run in a 2-1 win for the Indians. That victory put them ahead 3 games to 1 in the series. They clinched the series with a win in Game 6 in Boston.

The next day, a picture of Doby and pitcher Steve Gromek [4] hugging tightly and grinning cheek to cheek was broadcast over the three major networks and published in the country’s newspapers. It was a revolutionary picture that illustrated one way white supremacy and racism could be overcome.

There are so many people and events to learn about and share with our students. Celebrating the accomplishments of a diverse group of people gives us peace in our individuality, builds respect for those unlike us, develops wisdom to discern human values and offers courage to act upon them.

My student from Kentucky rewarded my initial effort.

"Now this is what I'm talking about," he said. “I never heard of Larry Doby. Wow, what was it like to be second? Usually, we overlook second place, don't we? But we found him."

We did, indeed.

It’s one of the many lessons my students helped teach me. Had it not been for the challenge of my student, my outlook might have remained limited. Thanks to him, I've been looking, finding and sharing ever since.

Barton is an elementary school teacher in South Carolina.