Frank Robinson, the first African-American manager in Major League Baseball, died at his Los Angeles home on Thursday. He was 83.
The Hall of Famer was born in Beaumont, Texas, on Aug. 31, 1935, and grew up in Oakland, California, where he played high school basketball, writes ESPN. Robinson is also the first and only player to win the MVP award in both the National and American Leagues, according to the Washington Post.

“We are deeply saddened by this loss of our friend, colleague
Robinson won the National League’s Rookie of the Year award in 1956 during his first season with the Cincinnati Reds, and in 1961, he led the team to the World Series when he won his first MVP Award.
In 1975, he became the first Black manager of a Major League Baseball team, the Cleveland Indians.

“They said this was the chance for you to break that barrier,” Robinson told Outside the Lines in 2016. “Open the door and to let more African-Americans to have the opportunity to come through it.”
In 1982, he was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. President George W. Bush awarded Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2005.
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Teddy is a multimedia journalist who serves as the culture and political writer for EBONY. His work has appeared in NBC's Owned and Operated stations, as well as DNAInfo, which covered local neighborhood news in New York City. He received his Masters in Journalism from the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY in 2017.