Lawrence Eugene Doby was an American professional baseball player in the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball (MLB) who was the second black player to break baseball's color barrier and the first black player in the American League. A native of Camden, South Carolina, and three-sport all-state athlete while in high school in Paterson, New Jersey, Doby accepted a basketball scholarship from Long Island University. At 17 years of age, he began his professional baseball career with the Newark Eagles as the team's second baseman. Doby joined the United States Navy during World War II. His military service complete, Doby returned to baseball in 1946, and along with teammate Monte Irvin, helped the Eagles win the Negro League World Series.
Doby with the Indians in 1953
A 1951 Bowman trading card of Doby
Doby at the Baltimore Orioles' spring training camp in 1958. He was traded to the Cleveland Indians before appearing in a regular season game for Baltimore.
The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues".
Octavius Catto, black baseball pioneer
Bud Fowler, the first professional black baseball player with one of his teams, Western of Keokuk, Iowa
Moses Fleetwood Walker, possibly the first African American major league baseball player
Chicago Union Giants in 1905