Our Team by Luke Epplin

Author:Luke Epplin [Epplin, Luke]
Language: eng
Format: epub

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Unlike the season before, when his stifled emotions had tightened him up, Doby now channeled them into his performance in spring training, punishing the ball with unbottled fury. Pretty soon, Boudreau remembered, “base hits flew off his bat, his power was more controlled, his judgment noticeably better.” On the base paths his speed enabled him to take risks that other players wouldn’t dream of. Coach Oscar Melillo recalled one such incident: “Brother, that Doby—whoosh! Run? That guy doesn’t run. He simply takes off! He went from first to third on a single to center and when I saw him rounding second I said to myself, ‘That’s all. He’s a dead pigeon now.’ Right in front of the shortstop—and I’m not kiddin’—he left his feet. He had his hands out in front of him, just like a kid diving off a pier. I’ll swear he never touched the ground until he landed on third base. Sure he beat the throw.” Another time, Doby raced to the outfield fence to track down a towering fly ball. Harry Grabiner, the Indians vice president, pronounced on the spot: “There’s the best outfielder in camp right now.”

Still, Doby continued to be plagued with what sportswriter Ed McAuley called a “vague understandable dread of ‘doing the wrong thing.’” In one game, outfielder Hank Edwards smacked a home run with Doby on base; rather than waiting at the plate to congratulate him, Doby hustled to the dugout, unsure if Edwards would want to be seen shaking his hand in public.

It didn’t help that nearly everywhere the Indians traveled, Doby was shunted to separate lodgings. In Los Angeles, he boarded at the Watkins Hotel, a Westside Black establishment, while his teammates stayed at the stately Biltmore. Spud Goldstein, the Indians traveling secretary, claimed that the Biltmore refused to accommodate Doby, but a clerk at the hotel told a reporter that that wasn’t the case, that in fact two Black guests were staying at the hotel as they spoke. When Goldstein was reached for a follow-up statement, he “appeared hesitant, evasive and discourteous, refusing to commit himself.”

The worst for Doby came when the Indians and New York Giants embarked together on a cross-country tour to close out spring training, competing against each other first in Phoenix and Albuquerque before striking out for Texas. Around three in the morning on Friday, April 9, their train chugged into Lubbock, pulling over in the railyard so that the players onboard could sleep till sunrise.

The contrast between Feller and Doby was never starker than in Lubbock. Upon waking up, Feller was chauffeured to Sports Center, the city’s premier sporting goods store. Earlier, the Lubbock superintendent of schools had announced that any student who wanted to see the ballplayers in action would receive an excused absence, which enabled hundreds of boys to queue up outside the shop, several of them having waited there since dawn. For an hour Feller signed equipment and fielded questions, donating the proceeds to the American Legion Junior Baseball League.

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