The Iconic Black Athletes Who Changed the MLB and NBA

As the first Black MLB player, Jackie Robinson, who started at first base for the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers in April of 1947, is practically a household name. But we must not forget about the second Black player to break the color barrier: Larry Doby.

While he was the second Black player in the entire MLB, Doby was first in the American League, having been traded from the Negro National League’s Newark Eagles to the Cleveland Indians on July 4, 1947. Recruited by Cleveland co-owner "Wild Bill" Veeck, Doby was a 23-year-old superstar who’d helped lead the Eagles to the 1946 Negro League World Series, with many assuming he would be the first Black man in the MLB. However, once in Cleveland, he struggled from day one, with the team, the fans, and his game.

In a 2012 interview with Newark Star-Ledger columnist Jerry Izenberg, Doby recalled meeting his teammates for the first time. “I stuck out my hand, very few hands came back in return. Most of the ones that did were cold-fish handshakes, along with a look that said, ‘You don’t belong here.’”  

Doby got just one at-bat in his first major-league game and struck out, foreshadowing a season of struggles — his game was off. On the field, he dealt with players who refused warm-up exercises with him, and off the field, he faced racial prejudice and degrading language from the public, as well as segregation at hotels and restaurants the team would visit while away. 

But in 1948, Doby's first full season in the big leagues, everything changed: he finally found his game, batting over .300, and became the Indians' starting center fielder. The same year, Veeck signed 42-year-old Negro League legend Satchel Paige, who was the oldest rookie in major-league history. That fall, the Indians won their first World Series in 28 years and set an all-time record by drawing 2.6 million fans.

It was game four of the 1948 World Series and Doby hit a homerun — the first homerun by a Black player in a World Series game — leading to the Indians' victory against the Boston Braves. Doby and Paige were the first Black players to win a World Series title.

Following the win, a photo of Doby and pitcher Steve Gromek joyfully embracing went public. While many found the photo heartwarming and unifying, there were publications that refused to print it. Gromek received threats and lost friends over the controversy, but was unbothered by the outrage. Doby and Gromek remained friends for decades and would go on to play for the Detroit Tigers together. As a symbol of their mutual respect and care for one another, both men reportedly kept the photo on display in their respective homes for the rest of their lives.

Doby bounced around the last of his playing years. He went to the Chicago White Sox in 1956, returning to the Indians for the ’58 season. He spent the following year with the Detroit Tigers, and then was back in a White Sox uniform in ’59. After he retired, he returned for the ‘62 season with the Chunichi Dragons in Nagoya, Japan.

Over his 17 seasons in the game, Doby twice led the American League in homeruns. In 1954, he was the AL's RBI leader and homerun champion. Doby retired from playing with a career .288 batting average, 273 homeruns, and played in nine All-Star games. He was just one of three players to ever win a World Series in both the Negro and Major Leagues.

Doby would go on to score another ‘second.' in 1978, he returned as manager of the Chicago White Sox, the second Black manager in the major league. In 1998, he was selected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Hall's Veterans Committee. 

In 2003, Larry Doby died in Patterson, New Jersey at the age of 79.  

In 2024, in honor of what would have been his 100th birthday, Larry Doby became just the third baseball player to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor. And the image on the back of the award?  That 1948 photo of his celebratory hug with Steve Gromek.

In the fall of 1950, three players were ready to suit up and take the court. Chuck Cooper was the first Black player to be drafted by an NBA team, and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton was first to sign a contract with the league. However, on October 31, it was Earl Lloyd who became the first Black American to play in an NBA game when he entered the court to take on the Rochester Royals as a member of the Washington Capitols. 

Standing at 6’6”, Lloyd had been a two-time All–American player at West Virginia State University where he'd helped lead the team to an undefeated 1948 season. A high school standout, Lloyd was named to the All-South Atlantic Conference three times and the All-State Virginia Interscholastic Conference twice before picking West Virginia State. After graduating with a B.S. in physical education, Lloyd found himself in the lineup for the Harlem Globetrotters, next to Cooper and Clifton, before his ninth-round pick in the NBA draft. 

Chuck Cooper would make his debut with the Boston Celtics just one day later, and Nat Clifton played his first game for the New York Knicks on November 4. The NBA’s season opener schedule had determined which of the three would be the first Black player in the league.

With the MLB's acceptance of Black players years prior, the debut of African-Americans in the NBA was not met with the same level of tension. Baseball was the more popular sport, and many college teams were already integrated.  

“Mr. Lloyd, and my dad too, gave Jackie a lot of credit for making things easier for them,” said Chuck Cooper III. “Certainly not easy, but easier.”  

The three men leaned on each other that first year. Earl’s son Kevin Lloyd said in an interview, “There weren’t as many teams, so they played against each other a lot. Every time my father went to Boston, it was Chuck’s responsibility to take care of my father. And vice versa. Same with New York, ‘Sweetwater’ would take care of either one of them. They had to. They were tight-knit.”  

The Harlem Globetrotters not only gave Black players a working wage, they also forced change on the league. 

Today, nearly three quarters of NBA players are Black, and diversity doesn’t end on the court. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida (UCF) 2023 NBA Racial and Gender Report Card gave the league a combined grade of an A. That same year, there were 16 head coaches and 13 general managers of color, and 48.5 percent of assistant coaches were of color.