Featured photo by Bettman via Getty Images

It was an interracial hug between two baseball players who helped win a World Series game in 1948 and a photo that you might say went viral in its day.  

Cleveland Indians pitcher Steve Gromek, a Hamtramck native, and his teammate, outfielder Larry Doby, embraced in a cheek-to-cheek hug in the locker room after Game 4. During the game, Doby hit a home run that gave Cleveland the lead and Gromek pitched the complete game. Both players were instrumental in helping the team win. The hug, captured in a photo published nationwide, showed the joys of victory and was also controversial at the time.

Doby was the second African American player to cross the color line in 1947, joining the Cleveland Indians a few months after Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The photo of Gromek and Doby hugging has become an iconic image of that season and a lasting symbol against racism nearly 80 years later.

After their World Series win, both Gromek and Doby played for the Detroit Tigers. 

One Detroit’s Bill Kubota talks with the sons of Steve Gromek, who live in metro Detroit, Pastor Jeff Nelson of Royal Oak First United Methodist Church who was inspired by the photo, Detroit Free Press columnist Neal Rubin who has been sharing the story, and Daily Detroit sports reporter Fletcher Sharpe.

Special thanks to video editor Joseph Barbarisi who resurrected some historic film for this story.