Larry Doby remembers being introduced to the Cleveland Indians, walking past each locker and extending his hand. Some of his new teammates shook it, some pulled their hand back. Some just turned away.

Doby remembers standing on the field, alone in a crowd, for at least five minutes before second baseman Joe Gordon finally offered to play catch.

None of this surprised him. It was July 5, 1947, less than three months after Jackie Robinson became the first black player in the modern major leagues — with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the National League. Doby was 23, five years younger than Robinson, but wise enough in the ways of still-segregated America not to expect miracles.

“I’d like to say that Jackie made it easy for me,” Doby said, “but I didn’t see any difference in 11 weeks. People were not going to change all over the world in 11 weeks. . . . There were 25 guys on the team, and 23 of them had never played with a black player, so the way I looked at it, it was as tough for them as it was for me.”

Doby was breaking the American League color line.

“To me, Larry Doby put in just as hard a time as Jackie Robinson,” Willie Mays told ESPN. “Those two go hand-in-hand.” Mays made his debut with the National League’s New York Giants in 1951.

The All-Star Game, to be played in Cleveland this year, will be dedicated to Doby. Though Doby has been overshadowed by Robinson, he bore the same burdens to succeed and exhibit self-control when racial epithets were hurled at him. Had Doby failed on either front, the flow of black players to the majors might have been kept to a trickle, or even ended. By his estimation, it would have been 25 years before another opportunity was extended.

“Somebody had to be second,” Doby said. “The important thing that Jackie and I showed is that if you get the opportunity, that’s all you can ask for. And once you get the opportunity, what you do with it is up to you. Once we made it, you hoped it would be easier for the ones who came after.”

Doby was in the Navy — part of a segregated Armed forces — stationed in the South Pacific when he learned Robinson had signed with the Dodgers in October 1945. He was playing in Newark, N.J., with the Negro Leagues, when Robinson made his debut.

Doby was hitting .415 with 14 homers when Bill Veeck called in June. Veeck, the maverick owner of the Indians, was mindful of the record crowds the Dodgers were drawing, and was not about to let rival American League teams get a head start in recruiting from this newly available pool of talent.

But before signing Doby, Veeck issued a long list of don’ts that mirrored the conditions to which Robinson had agreed in joining the Dodgers. Doby was not to argue with umpires, or respond to any provocation on the field.

“You got hit, spiked, spit on — and you couldn’t fight,” Doby said. And he was told not to be seen with white women, or even to sign autographs for them.

Doby was a raw talent, not quite as ready for the competition as Robinson, and his manager, Lou Boudreau, worked him in gradually, preparing him to play regularly in 1948. Doby struck out as a pinch hitter in his first game, but doubled in a run in his second. He played in 29 games, hitting .156 and struggling with the shift to center field.

“Larry might have had it even tougher than Jackie Robinson, because he hadn’t played in the minor leagues, or spent as much time in the Negro Leagues,” said Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, who played for the Yankees in 1946-63.

Doby and Robinson spoke by phone frequently that year. Often, Doby found Bill McKechnie, who had been a championship manager in the 1920s and was now a Cleveland coach, seated beside him, offering the encouragement that his teammates were not.

“Larry could have been the first and handled it very well,” said Monte Irvin, a Negro League veteran who joined the Giants in 1949. “He had a rough time out in Cleveland because he didn’t have a friend on the team.

In an interview in February, the day baseball announced its plan to honor him, Doby remembered being surprised by how well Cleveland fans treated him in those early years. But he was reluctant to talk about the racial slurs, threatening letters and cold shoulders he received elsewhere.

Doby spent his first years eating and lodging alone on the road. The Indians brought in 42-year-old Satchel Paige from the Negro Leagues in 1948, and though they roomed together, a generation gap separated Doby and Paige.

Paige went 6-1 and Doby hit .301 with 14 homers and 66 RBI in 1948 to help the Indians win the AL pennant. The Indians defeated the Boston Braves in six games in the World Series. Doby’s homer provided the winning margin in Game 4. The Indians haven’t won a World Series since.

“You see, the name of the game is winning,” Doby said. “Jackie’s team won the pennant in his first year, and we got to the Series and won it in my second year. That made it more accepted, and teams started to go out and sign more black players after that.”

His best seasons were in the mid-1950s — he drove in 126 runs in 1954, the year the Indians won the AL pennant with a record 111 victories.

Like Robinson, Doby was more apt to fight back later in his career. In June 1957, after he was traded to the Chicago White Sox, Doby was knocked down by Yankees pitcher Art Ditmar and a memorable brawl between Doby and Billy Martin ensued. Doby finished his 13-year career with a .283 average and 253 home runs.

In the 1970s, Veeck returned to baseball. He bought the White Sox, and hired Doby as a coach. In 1978, three years after Frank Robinson became the majors’ first black manager, Doby became the second when Veeck promoted him. He was 37-50 before being fired.

In the 1980s, Doby returned to his New Jersey home and became director of community relations for the NBA’s New Jersey Nets. In 1990, he went back to work for the licensing department of Major League Baseball. The Hall of Fame Veterans’ Committee, which includes Irvin and Berra, strongly considered inducting Doby this year; he will certainly be a leading candidate when they meet again in March.