Robinson performed in semipro ball, then launched into his skilled baseball profession with the Valdosta, Ga., workforce of the Georgia-Florida League in 1939. After a number of seasons within the minors, he made his main league debut in a quick stint with the 1942 Indians. He entered the Navy in World War II and was assigned to play for its baseball groups.
Robinson performed within the Indians’ 1948 infield with Joe Gordon at second base and Lou Boudreau, their supervisor, at shortstop. Larry Doby, who had grow to be the American League’s first Black participant in 1947, was the middle fielder and Bob Feller, Bob Lemon and Gene Bearden, who bested the Red Sox in a one-game playoff for the A.L. pennant, have been the aces of their pitching employees. All of these teammates apart from Bearden are within the Hall of Fame.
The Indians drew big crowds to their cavernous Cleveland Municipal Stadium that season, and greater than 80,000 followers turned out for 2 of their three World Series video games there.
“I’m from Paris, Texas, population 20,000,” Robinson informed The Plain-Dealer of Cleveland 50 years later. “I remember thinking, ‘Man, we’ve got four times as many people watching me play baseball.’”
Robinson performed a job in a poignant baseball occasion in the summertime of 1948.
When Babe Ruth, dying of most cancers, was about to take the sector at Yankee Stadium on the afternoon of June 13 for a ceremony retiring his No. 3, Robinson was in Cleveland’s dugout.
“He looked like he needed help physically, and I took a bat out of the bat rack and gave it to him,” Robinson informed Major League Baseball in a 2020 interview. “He carried it up to home plate, and he used it as a kind of a crutch. When he came back, I got the bat and had him sign it.”