3:23 AM UTC
PATERSON, N.J. – It’s been quite a week for the legacy of Larry Doby.
And on Friday, a block of Liberty Street that runs past Hinchliffe Stadium in his hometown of Paterson was renamed Larry Doby Lane by the city.
“Paterson was obviously a very special place for my father,” Larry Doby Jr. said on a bright morning outside the gates of the 91-year-old stadium. “The things that made him who he was happened here. When you’re a little kid and you decide what you want to be when you grow up, it’s somebody who had a profound effect on who you were. And what he wanted to do after high school was he either wanted to be a coach or a physical education teacher. So, that meant that those coaches and those teachers that took time with him, that inspired him, that helped him, that taught him, left an everlasting impression on him. That happened right here in this city. So we, as a family, thank Paterson for that, we thank you for this wonderful honor.”
Larry Doby Jr. holds up a street sign bearing his father’s name outside Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, N.J. (Dan Cichalski/MLB.com)
Doby said that when he asked his dad about baseball, he didn’t talk about breaking the American League color barrier in 1947 with Cleveland or winning the 1948 World Series, he talked about playing at Hinchliffe, where he starred in high school baseball and football and tried out for the Newark Eagles. The annual Thanksgiving Day football game between Doby’s Eastside High and its rival, Central (now John F. Kennedy) High, would fill the bleachers.
“That to him was the biggest athletic feat that he could achieve at the time,” Doby said. “And those memories and those friendships stayed with him his entire life, and it’s fitting that this street will be named after him.”
Then Doby – who still lives in the house in nearby Montclair where his family moved after he and his four siblings were born – climbed a ladder to reveal the orange-bordered blue street sign designating “Larry Doby Lane” in white letters. An American flag centered above “Doby” represent his service in the Navy during World War II and the logo of the Eastside Ghosts – whose colors are blue and orange – hovers in each corner.
The unveiling capped what Doby described as “a whirlwind” two days.
“It’s been stuff that you never thought would happen,” he said. “And you’re extremely proud that it did and humbled and [it’s] almost surreal. But I think the most satisfying thing to us is that this is saying something about the effect that he had off the field. They’re saying he was a pretty good guy, that he helped advanced this country, and so we’re extremely proud of that.”
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