U.S. Mint had never made a Congressional Gold Medal like Larry Doby's

Note: Larry Doby was the first Black baseball player in the American League, signing a contract to play for the Cleveland Indians three months after the Dodgers started Jackie Robinson at first base.

mlb.com

For centuries, the bureau of the Department of the Treasury has been responsible for designing and casting the Congressional Gold Medal -- the highest civilian honor in the country. And as part of that process, the Mint’s team of artists will typically consult with recipients or their surviving family members to determine the proper way to present the individual’s achievements and contributions.

But Larry Doby Jr. didn’t just want his father on the coin. He wanted another man on it, too.

The story begins at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium on Oct. 9, 1948.

That afternoon, in front of more than 80,000 fans, Larry Doby hit the go-ahead home run and a right-hander named Steve Gromek threw a complete game in a 2-1 victory that gave the Indians a commanding lead in a World Series they would go on to win.

In the aftermath, Doby and Gromek embraced, cheek-to-cheek, in front of Gromek’s locker. A Cleveland Plain Dealer photographer snapped the image of the two triumphant teammates, and The Associated Press transmitted it to newspapers across the country. Americans saw a Black man and a white man brandishing big smiles, blissfully unbound by the widespread racial discrimination and segregation of the time.





https://www.mlb.com/guardians/news/larry-doby-congressional-gold-medal-celebrates-iconic-photo

Quite (from the link: "That is the first time that I can recall -- or many people can recall -- that a Black and a white embraced each other in that fashion, [and it] went all over the world,” said Doby, who passed away in 2003. “That picture just showed to me the feelings that you have. You don’t think about it in terms of color. It’s a feeling you have for a person.”

“I guess I dug my heels in a little bit,” Doby Jr. said of his request.