Baseball should honor Larry Doby, another pioneer in integrating the sport

Larry Doby, the second Black player to integrate baseball and the first Black player in the American League for the Cleveland Indians, later joined the Chicago White Sox as an outfielder and became Major League Baseball’s second Black manager for the Sox. Doby is shown here in March 1957. (AP)

Seventy-five years ago, on a cloudy day in Comiskey Park, Larry Doby stepped out of the shadows into an exclusionary world. On that day — July 5, 1947 — the unassuming 22-year-old Paterson, New Jersey native joined the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians). 

Only 24 hours earlier, Doby had hit a home run in his last at-bat for the Newark Eagles in the Negro Leagues, whose plucky existence emanated from apartheid in America’s pastime.