Story behind first segregated professional baseball team and its ties to South Florida

Peter Dobens just wanted to verify what his dad, Ray, had told him all those years about the 1940s, and integrating professional baseball in Nashua, New Hampshire.

So, Dobens, then the assignment editor at WPBF-25 in West Palm Beach, heard Don Newcombe would be at a golf tournament in Stuart. Dobens told his sports reporters he'd be tagging along to talk to the former NL MVP and Cy Young Award winner.

One of Dobens' first questions - "How was your time in Nashua?" - drew a curious look from the former Dodgers legend.

"He kind of looked at me like, 'How did you know that?' " Dobens said.

Dobens then told him his name.

Newcombe's response: "Are you Ray's boy?"

Newcombe was very familiar with the Dobens name, including Ray, a man whose contribution to integrating professional baseball has been overlooked.

In 1946, one year before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier, Dodgers owner Branch Rickey hired Fred Dobens as president, and his brother, Ray, as general manager, of the Nashua Dodgers. Their mission: running the first racially integrated baseball team based in the United States.

With Robinson and Johnny Wright playing on the Dodgers International League affiliate in Montreal, Rickey anticipated the organization signing more Black players. He and Dodgers executive Buzzie Bavasi started looking for the most progressive community for their New England League club.

The scouting mission took them to Nashua because of its French Canadian population — they believed they would be more accepting of Black players — and progressive newspaper. They spoke with Fred Dobens, then the editor of that newspaper.

Fred assured Rickey and Bavasi that Nashua was a progressive town and would welcome a team with Black players. When Rickey asked Fred if he had a suggestion for a GM who would help those Black players be accepted, Fred immediately thought about his brother, Ray, who pitched for the Boston Red Sox in 1929.

Once the Dobens brothers were in place, Rickey placed Newcombe and Roy Campanella on the Class B farm team.

"Uncle Fred said, 'Sure, absolutely, we'll back them 100 percent,' " Peter Dobens said. Peter was raised in Manchester, N.H., about 20 miles north of Nashua. He now lives in Boca Raton and works for the city of West Palm Beach.

"It was nothing to us. Blacks were accepted, that's the way that area was. There was no segregation. There was no problem."

Peter, 72, knew that was true, but he wanted to hear it from Newcombe. He also wanted to hear about how his dad put his reputation on the line for one of the most iconic franchises in sports.

"He said 'Those were our best years in the minors because we could go anywhere, we could do anything. We were 100 percent accepted,' " Peter said. "They could eat in any restaurant. They were treated as people. It wasn't, 'they're Black, we're white, we can't mix.' It was nothing like that. The people embraced them."

And they were successful. Rickey hired Walt Alston as the team's manager. Campanella, a catcher, batted .291, hit 13 home runs and was named team MVP. Newcombe was 14-4 with a 2.21 earned run average, and hit .311. They won the New England League championship by defeating Lynn, Mass., which helped propel all three to the Dodgers' big league club. Alston later managed 23 seasons in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, winning four World Series.

During the season, Campanella managed one game in Lawrence, Mass., after Alston was ejected, becoming the first Black to manage an integrated professional baseball team.

Newcombe, who died in 2019 at 92, and Campanella, who died in 1993 at 71, would follow Robinson to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Campanella made his debut in 1948, Newcombe a year later.

Historical Holman Stadium saw history made

In 2023, Holman Stadium was recognized for its role in integrating baseball when the venue was added to New Hampshire's Black Heritage Trail. The stadium, the same name of the structure that was built in 1953 in Vero Beach and served as the Dodgers' spring training home until 2008, was built in 1937 and holds 2,800 people.

Nashua mayor Jim Donchess said Holman Stadium is where Campanella and Newcombe "made history" and is an important location for "the history of American baseball."

A marker was unveiled at the stadium where the numbers of Campanella and Newcombe are visible on the left field brick wall and where surrounding streets are named in their honor. A large mural already had been painted on the side of a downtown auto business in Nashua commemorating Campanella and Newcombe.

Newcombe’s widow, Karen, was present for the ceremony and was presented with a key to the city.

"Every time Don did an interview that he was talking about the beginning of his career, Nashua was always part of that story,” Karen Newcombe said that day. “It was a place that he loved. He felt safe.

“All in all, it was something that started his major league career, otherwise he and Campy wouldn’t have gone on the way they did. So that makes me very proud. Made him proud. Made him very proud to be here. He always said nothing but good things about being in Nashua."

Don Newcombe lived with a white family in Nashua and reportedly was given his first car by a dealership in the city.

The Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire promotes awareness and appreciation of African-American history and life to build more inclusive communities.

Newcombe and Campanella, and many of their peers, were appreciated in a different way recently when Major League Baseball announced it would include statistics from the Negro Leagues in its record books. Campanella played a decade in the Negro Leagues before joining the Dodgers organization. Newcombe played two years.

Peter Dobens called the decision, "amazing." His dad surely would have agreed.

'That was the norm up there'

Ray Dobens, a left-hander, appeared in 11 games for the Red Sox. In 28.1 innings, he was 0-0 with a 3.81 ERA.

After baseball he went into business with Ted Williams and became close friends with the Hall of Famer.

Ray was living in Manchester when he started running the Nashua baseball team. After retiring, he moved to Stuart. He died in 1980.

Peter Dobens started a career in journalism at the Manchester Union Leader at 14. In 1976, he joined the Sarasota Journal as a reporter before going into broadcasting. It was while in Sarasota that Peter met Williams during spring training in Winter Haven where the Red Sox trained. The two swapped stories about his dad.

Before leaving Manchester, Peter was named sports information director at Nathaniel Hawthorne College in Antrim, N.H. Just before taking that job he accompanied the basketball team on a trip to Florida.

It was on that trip, in an establishment in Vero Beach, where Peter first experienced racism.

Peter was in a restaurant with the team's coach, two Black players and their girlfriends. A bartender approached them and said only the whites could stay.

"That was my first experience with segregation," he said. "It was like, 'You got to be kidding me.' We walked out (and said), 'I'm sorry.'

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"We all felt so small they had done that to them. These were great kids. It was like, 'How can they do this here?' "

That was not how the Dobens children were raised.

"Kids would go to school together, they would play together," he said. "Nobody made anything of it because it was normal. That was the norm up there. If Blacks took the bus in town, they didn't have to sit in the back. They could sit anywhere they wanted on the bus."

Which is exactly what Newcombe told him 25 years ago at that golf tournament in Stuart.

Tom D'Angelo is a senior sports columnist and golf writer for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at tdangelo@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe broke MLB color barrier with Nashua Dodgers