Larry Doby, left, with Satchel Paige, was the American League's first Black player.
Photo Credit: Sporting News, via Getty Images
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"Our Team: The Epic Story Of Four Men And The World Series That Changed Baseball," by Luke Epplin is more than a book about the 1948 World Series, the last time the Cleveland Indians won a World Series.
It’s actually a splendidly written, meticulously researched, and upbeat social history about the expansion of Black American baseball players into Major League Baseball.
Heaps of attention has historically been paid to Jackie Robinson in becoming the first African-American baseball player in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, while Larry Doby, a 23-year-old outfielder for the Newark Eagles, (the first American League African-American player to smash the color barrier 11 weeks later), often receives little attention or becomes a mere footnote by baseball historians.
Epplin, a New York City writer, centers this American social saga on four individuals: two Black, and two white, all of whom changed the face of baseball forever. Biographical sketches presented of Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Bill Veeck, and Bob Feller become, knowingly or not, the unsung heroes of the integration of baseball.
Had it not been for Doby and Satchel Paige breaking the color line, many argue, the Indians might not have won the 1948 World Series.
Luckily for baseball, the integration of Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, and others, wouldn’t have been possible without two color-blind owners: Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers and of course, Veeck of the Cleveland Indians, who bought the Indians in June, 1946.
The progressive thinking Rickey reportedly said: “the greatest untapped reservoir of raw material in the history of the game is the Black race.” “The Negro,” Ricky observed, “will make us winners for years to come.”
Bill Veeck, meanwhile, not only wasn’t afraid of welcoming Black players into the big leagues, he enthusiastically widened his net with the hiring of Black security guards, vendors, janitors, groundskeepers, ushers and musicians, along with offering a front office job to Olympic gold medalist, Harrison Dillard.
Despite the overabundance of promising talent in the Negro Leagues, it would take years before the rest of baseball would sign Black players, including the New York Yankees who didn’t sign a Black player until 1955, the Detroit Tigers not until 1958, and the Boston Red Sox were the last to the party, by not signing a Black player until 1959, more than ten years after the game was officially integrated.
Alabama born, Satchel Paige, 42-years-old, came on board in July, 1948 during the Indians stretch run of the pennant race. Epplin underscores how Satch during his first month with the Indians, only surrendered seven runs over 38 and a third innings, while generating rock star status. His first three starts in MLB, attracted more than 200,000 fans, inspiring sports columnist for the Cleveland News, Ed McAuley, to write that Paige was “the greatest drawing card in the history of baseball”
Overall, Paige pitched 21 games in the 1948 regular season, including seven starts with two complete game shutouts. His ERA that year was an impressive 2.48.
Larry Doby became the first Black player to belt a home run in a World Series in Game 4 of the Boston Braves and Indians Series. The Indians disposed of the Boston Braves in six games. Doby additionally led the Indians with a .318 batting average in the 1948 Series.
Not many people associate Iowa native Bob Feller with progressive thinking in race relations, especially in 1948. Rapid Robert, in fact, told reporters during his barnstorming tours that he didn’t think many Black players had the right stuff to make it in MLB, including Jackie Robinson.
Cleveland owner Bill Veeck witnesses the signing of ace pitcher Bob Feller to a contract for the 1948 season. Despite the high hopes for the staff ace, the right-hander won 19 games and led the AL for the seventh and last time, while the velocity on his blazing fastball began to wane.
Photo Credit: The Rucker Archive
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But if not for Feller’s widely reported barnstorming tours in the offseason, many in America wouldn’t be aware of the explosive talent of many Black players.
During the barnstorming tours, Joe DiMaggio, the “Yankee Clipper,” would say that Paige was the “best and fastest pitcher he ever faced.” Of course, many mainstream newspapers never published DiMaggio’s comments for fear it would imply Black players were better than whites.
For three consecutive barnstorming tours, Satchel Paige and Bob Feller met head-to-head.
Because of Feller’s major contribution with showcasing marquee Black ball players of the era through different sections of the country, Negro League players invited him to their Negro Baseball League Reunion in Kentucky.
Most fascinating about Epplin’s book of the 1948 World Series is that many of the progressive elements of the 1948 Cleveland Indians was mirroring many events and individuals outside of the diamond during the same year.
In 1948, for example, Atlanta, Georgia hired its first Black police officers at a time when a quarter of the Atlanta police department were reportedly members of the Ku Klux Klan. But much like Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, Black Atlanta police officers in 1948 had to tolerate racial taunts and abuse, they couldn’t lose their temper, they couldn’t ride police squad cars, and they couldn’t arrest white suspects. They had to call for assistance.
Additionally, in 1948, Alice Coachman Davis won the high jump at the Olympics in London, England, becoming the first Black woman to win an Olympic Gold medal.
In 1948, Johnny Ritchey became the first African-American baseball player to play in the Pacific League as a member of the San Diego Padres.
Most importantly, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which directed the armed forces to provide “equality of treatment and opportunity for all personnel without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.”
Epplin chronicles how Larry Doby had to endure the humiliation of segregation in the military while serving his country. Robert H. Meyer, Professor Emeritus at Moravian College, observed that “Black vets, having just fought against Hitler and vicious bigotry, returned to the country to find themselves treated with a similar bigotry.”
Victoria W. Wolcott, Professor of History at the University of Buffalo, tells me, “1948 was an important milestone in the civil rights movement. It was a period of what historians refer to as “racial liberalism” following World War II.” “Because of migration,” Wolcott said, “during the war years large numbers of African Americans migrated to northern cities, where they could vote. The NAACP also grew significantly during the 1940s and even had some successful voter registration drives in southern cities like Atlanta—as well as legal victories that lead up to Brown v. Board of Education.
In his State of the Union address in 1948, President Truman made a major push for civil rights. Such progressive thinking lost him support in different sections of the country, but as it turned out, it was the Black vote he received which decisively helped him win the 1948 presidential election over Republican governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey.
Gregg Ivers, Professor of Government in the School of Public Affairs at American University, depicts the 1940s as a “period underappreciated by the general public and even by educators, journalists, and others, who believe that the civil rights movement began with Brown and Rosa Parks.” “Nothing just happens,” Ivers stressed.
Ivers additionally pointed out that 1948 was the last year of the Negro Leagues, which opened up a fresh pool of Black players who were no longer bound to their teams and their domineering owners. Willie Mays played his last game in the Negro Leagues in 1948 as a member of the Birmingham Black Barons.
Progress with civil rights, however, ran into a major roadblock in the 1950s.
Jim Ralph, Professor of American History and Culture at Middlebury College, said so much of the progress with race relations in the mid and late 1940s, came to a screeching halt with the emergence of the Cold War and McCarthyism, which narrowed the activist tendencies of the country. “Left-leaning CIO unions,” Ralph observed, “which had often been pioneers in fighting against racist practices, were on the defensive. A powerful voice for civil and workers’ rights like Paul Robeson found himself under attack for his sympathetic disposition toward the Soviet Union. “
As fascinating as Epplin’s book about the four central pillars in the integration of baseball is, the book, from this observer, is more a valentine to the City of Cleveland in 1948 during a time when industry was thriving, the city was prospering economically; a time when downtown Cleveland was bustling with restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues, and when civic pride was at an all-time high. It was the last time the Cleveland Indians were world champs, the toast of the town.
The years after 1948 in Cleveland, would usher in crushing heartbreak and disappointment.
As Epplin points out, “the year after Veeck departed, attendance dipped to below two million. Six seasons later, the Indians drew fewer than a million fans, second worst in the American League.”
Satchel Paige, moreover, would never taste another World Series appearance again. Ol’ Satch was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1971 as the first electee of the Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues. He passed away on June 8, 1982.
Despite being the first African-American player in the American League, Larry Doby’s number wasn’t retired by the Indians until 1994, four years before he was elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Many argue that Doby, for one reason or another, never lived up to his full potential.
Bob Feller would appear in only one All-Star game after 1948; 1951 would be the last year the Indians one-time staff ace would win more than twenty games (the same year he threw his third and final no-hitter) and would start in only 15 games in his final two seasons with the Tribe before retiring in 1956 with 266 wins, ranking him 28th in history. Feller never won a World Series game.
Due to an impending divorce and wanting to set up his children with a trust fund, Veeck sold the Indians after the 1949 season. He would later emerge as owner of the St Louis Browns and the Chicago White Sox.
John A. Kirk, Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, summed up the year 1948 best, when he told me: “1948 was certainly a year of hope, in terms of the direction of race relations, and of liberal and progressive movements more generally.”
--Bill Lucey
June 27, 2021
