Larry Doby Marquee Hall of Fame 1998

Cleveland bought his contract and put him on the field on July 5, 1947, with no minor-league apprenticeship. He had hit .340 in five seasons for the Newark Eagles, 182 hits in 535 at-bats, and led the Negro National League in hits and in triples in 1946. He was a second baseman, and Cleveland made him a center fielder.

He played 1,342 games in center and led the American League in home runs in 1952 and 1954, with 32 each time, in runs in 1952 with 104, and drove in a league-leading 126 in 1954. Cleveland won the World Series in 1948, and the home run he hit in it was the first a Black player had hit in one. Across seventeen seasons in both leagues he had 1,697 hits, 273 home runs and 1,093 runs batted in.

He met what Robinson met without the attention that came with it. He made seven straight American League All-Star teams from 1949, yet the writers gave him ten votes of 292 in 1967, and he waited until 1998, when the Veterans Committee elected him. In 1978 he managed the Chicago White Sox, the second Black manager in major league history.