Larry Doby in good spirits while recovery from surgery

Jet, Dec 1, 1997

Baseball legend Larry Doby, who missed throwing out a first pitch at the World Series, is in good spirits after he had surgery to remove his left kidney, which contained a cancerous tumor.

"So far so good," he told the New York Times two days after he left Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, NJ. "Everything is supposed to be O.K. It didn't spread or anything. So I'm supposed to be laid up eight or nine weeks before I'm back to my old self."

Doby, who joined the Cleveland Indians three months after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier, was supposed to throw the first pitch at Game 3 of the World Series at Jacobs Field in Cleveland. Instead he was at home preparing for surgery after a routine checkup detected a cancerous tumor.

Now that the tumor is Doby gone, he will be undergoing chemotherapy, which may be a problem for the active Doby.

"It gets a little boring just sitting around," said Doby, who turns 73, in December. "My problem is going to be when I really start feeling good to tone my speedometer down a little bit, because, thank God, I've never been sick, and this is the first time I've ever gone through anything like this."