BRONXVILLE, N.Y. -- Like baseball fans across the country, on April 15, I'll celebrate the 70th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's Major League debut. But the player I'll be thinking about that day is the Cleveland Indians' Larry Doby, who, 11 weeks after Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers, became Major League Baseball's second African-American player.
As a child growing up in post-World War II Cleveland, I got to see Doby at the start of his career when the Indians, a mediocre team in 1947, still played in the Depression-era Municipal Stadium.
Doby's July 5, 1947, debut with the Indians made the breaking of baseball's color line real for me.