‘Lift as you climb’: The Cleveland legacy of Larry Doby, Bill Willis and Marion Motley (2024)

CLEVELAND — America celebrates firsts.

Though in many cases, those who came second played a similarly important role.

So it is with three African-American athletes in Cleveland sports history, three men who opened doors, dealt with prejudice and hate and persevered to excellence with grace and dignity. Three men whose sons and grandsons look back on them and say they admired them not for their Hall of Fame ability, but for the men they were.

In 1947, Larry Doby became the second African-American player in Major League Baseball and first in the American League, joining the Cleveland Indians 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

One year earlier, two Cleveland Browns players re-integrated professional football, breaking a barrier that had been in place since an unannounced ban in 1933. Bill Willis and Marion Motley played in the All-America Football Conference three weeks before Kenny Washington and Woody Strode took the field for the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams.

Robinson is a household name, and rightly so. Yet, without Motley and Willis, Robinson might not have joined the Dodgers when he did.

In the documentary “The Forgotten Four” about those pioneering Browns and Rams players, former longtime Pro Football Hall of Fame executive Joe Horrigan tells a story about Branch Rickey, who in addition to working for the Dodgers in baseball, was part-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers football team that played at Ebbets Field in the AAFC.

“The story came to me from Motley,” said Horrigan, who worked at the Hall of Fame in Canton for 42 years before retiring last year. “He told me that he had carried a newspaper clip for years — he thought it was from an African-American paper in Pittsburgh — where Branch Rickey was quoted saying having Bill Willis and Marion Motley play for the Browns gave him the courage to bring Jackie Robinson up from the minors.

“If those two could play in a contact sport like football and not have any problems, then certainly the time may be right for baseball.”

Assuming the story Motley relayed was accurate, the decision by Paul Brown to bring African-Americans to professional football led to the integration of two sports.

“Because these men were able to integrate and keep their cool and be outstanding players, there was this sense of acceptance,” said Clem Willis, one of Bill Willis’ sons. “Sometimes folks that plant the seed, folks that break the barrier, don’t get the recognition that they quite often deserve. Because everybody is looking at the other guy.”

Pro football at that time was nowhere near as popular as baseball, boxing and college football. But in baseball, Robinson’s story has been told far more often than Doby’s.

“You can’t concern yourself with who doesn’t or does know about the story of what he was able to accomplish in Cleveland,” said Larry Doby Jr., Doby’s son. “Because the fact is that it’s history, and he couldn’t have done it without certain people in Cleveland. The city of Cleveland has never forgotten him, and I’m eternally grateful for that.”

In the middle of the 20th century, Cleveland was a thriving city fueled by its port and industries that included steel and auto manufacturing. At that time, it also was a confident city, buoyed by culture and growth. Finding itself between Chicago and New York led Cleveland to look inward for strength. The city welcomed those who moved there and protected its own, something it still does to this day.

“My father was never booed in Cleveland,” Doby Jr. said. “To me that was amazing. That meant, to me, that those people said, ‘This is our guy, whether he strikes out three times or hits a home run.’”

Cleveland welcomed the first black player in the AL perhaps because the city’s diverse immigrant community included neighborhoods of Irish, Italians, Germans and Slavs — as well as a thriving African-American community that grew throughout the 20th Century.

African-American breakthroughs became a part of the city’s history. Native son Jesse Owens won four gold medals in front of Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Bob Feller started his post-World War II “Barnstorming Tours” as a way to make money in the offseason and did so with a team of Negro League players led by Satchel Paige; these tours opened eyes to black and white players on the field together. Another native Clevelander, Harrison Dillard, won two gold medals in the London and Helsinki Olympics in 1948 and 1952. Jim Brown joined the Browns in 1957 and is still considered one of the greatest players in NFL history. Frank Robinson became the first African-American manager in baseball, Carl Stokes the first African-American big-city mayor. Today, Andrew Berry is one of two African-American general managers in the NFL.

Cleveland had 11 different Negro League teams that played at various times from 1924 through 1950 and hosted the Negro League All-Star Game in 1942.

“Jackie Robinson was in the media capital of the world in New York,” Doby Jr. said. “My dad might not have been as newsworthy, but integrity is what people do when they’re not being watched. Cleveland did not have the microscope and they still treated him well. That says a lot to me about the Midwest, the city.”

The men who ran the teams also played vital roles. Indians owner Bill Veeck was looking for an African-American at the same time as Rickey. Brown wanted the best players, regardless of color. Both were willing to take the step.

“Paul Brown didn’t care if players were black, white, green, Indian, Hispanic, whatever,” Clem Willis said. “He was all about winning the game, and he treated everybody equally.”

“Bill Veeck had the guts to sign my dad,” Doby Jr. said. “After that, players like Jim Hegan, Bob Lemon, Joe Gordon … those kinds of people who said to themselves, ‘We don’t care what color his skin is, we think maybe he can help us win his games. We’re going to open up our hearts to him and encourage him.’ No way could he have accomplished what he did without them.”

Doby always spoke glowingly of Veeck, saying the two developed a father-son relationship.

Doby Jr. said his father experienced everything that Robinson did. The vitriol, the racist comments, the brushback pitches, the separate hotels, the inability to eat at certain restaurants or use certain water fountains in the South.

“All of it,” Doby Jr. said. “He went through all of it.”

In his rookie season at a game in St. Louis, Doby made a move toward the stands when someone said something about his wife. “Deacon” Bill McKechnie, a coach who took Doby under his wing, grabbed Doby by the belt to stop him. According to the biography of McKechnie by Mitchell Conrad Stinson, McKechnie told Doby: “You’re going to have to go through a lot, but you’re going to have to grit your teeth. If you don’t stick it out, it might take a long time before another Negro gets the chance.”

Despite all he had to deal with, Doby never spent a lot of time talking with his son and four daughters about what happened. As a World War II veteran, Doby was a part of the greatest generation, where deeds were done with quiet dignity and because they were the right thing to do.

“The way I would hear the stories would be when reporters would call him, and he would go over them, and I would be listening,” Doby Jr. said.

Doby joined the Indians at the age of 23 on July 5, 1947, two days after Veeck bought his contract from the Newark Eagles of the Negro League. Paige was quoted saying Doby’s signing was more impactful to him than Robinson’s — because it meant adding black players was real, and not just a show.

Like Robinson, Doby was an accomplished player — he helped the Eagles win the Negro League World Series in 1946. Unlike Robinson, Doby had no time in the minor leagues to adjust to what he would face. One of the first calls he got was from Robinson, who tried to prepare him for what was ahead.

Veeck knew there would be resistance to the move, so he called a meeting and told his players if anyone did not want Doby as a teammate they could leave before he arrived, according to Joseph Thomas Moore’s “Pride Against Prejudice: The Biography of Larry Doby.” Manager Lou Boudreau released a statement saying “ability and character” were the ways Doby would be measured.

Doby joined the team when it was in Chicago to play the White Sox. He walked on the field before the game, then stood awkwardly, by himself.

“Nobody would play catch with him,” Doby Jr. said. “He stood there, feeling stupid and embarrassed. Until Joe Gordon yelled over to him and said, ‘Hey Kid, let’s have a warmup.’ The two played catch and warmed up together the rest of that season.”

Doby had just 33 at-bats in 1947, but his career took off the next season when he moved from the infield to center field and hit .301 with an .873 OPS. He played eight more seasons in Cleveland and made the All-Star team seven times. In 1954, the year the Indians won 111 games and made it to the World Series, Doby had an AL-leading 32 home runs and 126 RBIs and finished second to Yogi Berra in the MVP voting. Doby was the first player to go directly from the Negro Leagues to Major League Baseball, the first African-American player to hit a World Series home run (1948), the first to win a World Series (1948) and the first to lead the AL in home runs (1952).

To his son, one photo encapsulates Doby’s experience in Cleveland. It came after Doby’s home run in Game 4 of the 1948 World Series helped give the Indians and pitcher Steve Gromek a 2-1 win. A Plain Dealer photographer took a photo in the clubhouse of Doby and Gromek hugging, smiles beaming at the thought of taking a 3-1 lead in what would be the last World Series the Indians won.

To some in those days, a white man was not supposed to hug a black man. To others, the picture represented acceptance.

“That was probably the most special moment in his career,” Doby Jr. said. “It was just two guys who were expressing an unbridled joy over accomplishing a common goal. I think that picture really encapsulates what that journey and the hardships meant to him.”

Doby eventually coached in the majors and managed the Chicago White Sox in the second half of the 1978 season. That made him the second African-American manager in baseball, and he quipped that he again followed a Robinson (Frank in Cleveland).

“He was not disappointed to be number two, not disappointed that he didn’t get the recognition,” Doby Jr. said. “He was proud of what he did for the people that came after him.”

Brown never discriminated or looked at color when he put together a football team. He had black players when he coached at Massillon High School, at Ohio State, at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station during World War II and with the Browns.

The NFL had 13 African-American players before 1933, including Hall of Famer Fritz Pollard. But from 1933 to 1945 players of color were excluded, ostensibly at the urging of former Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall. A series of dominoes in Cleveland led to the barrier being broken in two football leagues.

When the Browns were formed in the AAFC, Cleveland Rams owner Dan Reeves moved the NFL team to Los Angeles to play in the Coliseum. The Coliseum Commission told Reeves that because the team was playing in a public facility, he had to have black players. The Rams added Washington and Strode.

Brown simply wanted the best players; a fair and equal opportunity was a given in his mind.

He knew Willis, a nose guard, from coaching him at Ohio State, so when Willis wrote him a letter expressing interest in playing professionally, Brown invited him to Bowling Green where the Browns were training. There, according to “The Forgotten Four,” Willis used his quickness to beat the center off the snap to the left and right. Then Willis leapfrogged the center and landed on the foot of quarterback Otto Graham.

Brown signed Willis but knew he would need a roommate. He was aware of Motley from coaching against him in high school (Motley averaged 16 yards per carry at Canton McKinley) and because he coached him in the Navy during the war. He invited Motley to camp, where he and Willis forged a bond.

“One of our favorite pictures is of Dad and Motley,” Bill Willis Jr. said. “It was in the locker room. They both had shirts off and had their arms around each other. It kind of reminds you of two kids in elementary school.”

When the team traveled, Brown made sure that it stayed in hotels that welcomed black players.

“Not only stay in the hotels but enter through the front door and go to the dining room like everybody else,” Clem Willis said. “There were many cases where the hotel owner said they could come in the hotel but they had to enter through the kitchen or loading dock or they couldn’t be seen in the lobby.”

If that happened, Brown would find a different hotel — or threaten to do so.

Their first game was Sept. 6, 1946, a 44-0 win over the Miami Seahawks in Cleveland. When the Browns went to Miami in December of that season, Willis and Motley were left behind because Brown had received mail with death threats to the players.

“Paul Brown held that information from them,” Clem Willis said. “But Paul Brown looked out for them.”

Motley said he often had his hands stepped on and rarely left a game in his first few seasons without bloody hands. Willis Jr. said his dad experienced after-the-whistle pushing and shoving and scratching.

In the book “Iron Men” by Stuart Leuthner, Motley said: “They found out that while they were calling us ‘nigg*rs,’ I was running for touchdowns and Willis was knocking the sh*t out of them. So they stopped calling us names and started trying to catch up with us.”

Their teammates stood by them, and because they did, no incident ever got out of control. “The Forgotten Four” shows a scene where Motley angrily shakes himself away from a defender after a tackle. As he does, Browns tackle Lou Rymkus steps in front of the defender while receiver Mac Speedie, recently elected to the Hall of Fame, races over and smacks Motley on the backside as the two walked back to the huddle. Defensive tackle Bob Gain was another teammate who was especially supportive, Willis Jr. said.

Motley told Horrigan he felt he had made it when the first flag was thrown against an opponent for unsportsmanlike conduct. Motley even remembers the name of the official: Tommy Hughitt, who played for the Buffalo All-Americans in the 1920s.

Willis, like Doby, rarely shared many of these stories with his sons.

“He would pour his life lessons into you from those experiences as the situation arose,” Bill Willis Jr. said. “If a situation came up where you wonder why somebody treated you some kind of way, he would say, ‘Here’s what you need to understand. All people are not the same.’”

Clem Willis said his father stressed “lift as you climb,” a way of saying bring others along as you climb the ladder of success.

“He was also never one to toot his own horn or accomplishments,” Clem Willis said. “That was not his demeanor. The stories that always resonated with me were the ones about his character, the type of man he was. There’s a lot to be said for being a genuine gentleman.”

Willis, a 215-pound middle guard, was about quickness and agility; Motley, a 235-pound running back, was size and power. They were part of Browns teams that won the AAFC title four years in a row. In 1950, the Browns were admitted to the NFL, where the league expected them to be a doormat. The Browns won the championship that year as well, beating the Rams in the title game. Willis was first or second-team All-AAFC or All-NFL every year he played. Motley played eight seasons in Cleveland, averaged 5.7 yards per carry and finished in the top 10 in rushing five times — and also played linebacker.

Willis retired in 1953, then went on to work helping kids as assistant director of the City of Cleveland’s Recreation Department and as chairman of the Ohio Youth Commission in his hometown of Columbus, where he worked to ensure incarcerated youths still got an education. Motley retired in 1953, spent time scouting for the Browns and eventually worked for the Ohio Lottery and the Ohio Department of Youth Services. Both were inducted into the Ohio Civil Rights Commission Hall of Fame in 2016.

“I can recall being at an event many years ago,” Clem Willis said. “I’m grown at this point. Dad and Marion Motley were talking about ‘the good old days.’ I remember my father said, ‘The good old days weren’t really all that good.’”

All three players eventually became Hall of Famers in their respective sports. Doby had to wait for the Veterans Committee to welcome him to Cooperstown in 1998, but the wait did not diminish the impact.

“The funny thing was he never thought about the Hall of Fame until 1997 when there was talk because it was the 50th anniversary of his joining the Indians,” Doby Jr. said. “Then he got in in ’98, and he was as proud as a peaco*ck.

“He felt like everything he went through had been worth it and recognized.”

Recognition followed. In 2002, the Most Valuable Player Award in the Futures Game at the All-Star Game was named the Larry Doby Award. In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in his honor. In 2018, legislation was passed to give Doby the Congressional Gold Medal.

“In 1977, he was coaching with the White Sox,” his son said. “Bob Lemon (Doby’s teammate in Cleveland) was the manager. The first time I met him, I said, ‘Mr. Lemon, was my father any good?’ He laughed and said, ‘Yeah, he was one of the best.’

“It’s weird. I grew up reading about Mantle and Ruth and all these people, and I never thought of my father in the same breath as them.”

In 2015, the Indians placed a statue of Doby outside Progressive Field alongside those of Feller and Jim Thome. Doby’s legacy became a permanent part of the city’s history. In his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, Doby said the city of Cleveland “treated me and my family with the greatest respect that any man could want.”

“It’s a love affair that started in 1947, and thanks to the people of that fine city, it has never ended,” Doby Jr. said.

The Browns have two statues outside FirstEnergy Stadium — of Jim Brown and Graham. The debate about the next statue has included Paul Brown and Lou Groza. Perhaps Willis and Motley should be part of the discussion, and perhaps they could be honored together. As great players, and as men who did much more than play football.

“What I’m most proud of,” Motley’s grandson Tony Motley said in “The Forgotten Four,” “is the man that he was.”

In the same way, the words of Bill and Clem Willis made their father’s character tangible.

“People would ask us, ‘Did we want to play football, to be like him?’” Bill Willis Jr. said. “Well, we wanted to be like the man he was.”

“He was a man among men who was about righteousness, doing the right thing, love of people,” Clem Willis said. “He was a man of faith and he always wanted to help others, especially those that were less fortunate. Which goes back to his working with the youth and then with those when he was with the youth commission, those kids who were incarcerated — making sure they had a second chance.

“As far as football prowess, the stats speak for themselves. He was an outstanding player. But I think there will always be outstanding players.”

He concluded with a sentence that could easily apply to all three men, brought together by sports in a particular Rust Belt city.

“You have to have a person at the right time at the right place with the right set of skills and the proper mentality to move society forward.”

(Top photo of Steve Gromek and Larry Doby: Bettmann via Getty Images)