- [Narrator 1] Coming up on "One Detroit," we'll meet a Detroit man who turns metal into works of art.

Plus we'll tell you the story behind a controversial photo of two World Series baseball players in 1948.

And a special performance by Detroit jazz bassist, Marion Hayden.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

- [Narrator 2] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator 3] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Narrator 2] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(gentle upbeat music) - [Narrator 1] Just ahead on "One Detroit," we'll have the story of how a hug between two baseball players after a 1948 World Series victory caused an uproar.

Plus we'll close out the show with a performance by Marion Hayden in recognition of Jazz Appreciation Month.

But, first up, creating art from metal.

That's what Detroit artist Jay Elias has perfected over a decade of practice.

Elias specializes in creating art objects from iron.

"One Detroit's" Bill Kubota spent time with Elias to see the metalworking process and learn the inspiration behind his works of art.

(gentle music) - [Bill] Jay Elias's backyard in Detroit, the Near Eastside.

- [Jay] I'm a self-declared un-artist.

- [Bill] Elias started casting metal a little over a decade ago.

This day he's pouring bronze.

- [Jay] You know, it's such a subjective term.

It's because I feel like it's somewhat pretentious in a lot of ways, in a lot of circles.

(flame whooshing) - [Bill] There's a community around here that does this kind of thing.

- [Jay] You know, back, I guess the Bronze Age, right?

That's when man discovered how to manipulate metal.

It was used for like tools and weaponry and stuff.

But then, you know, like when you think of industry, you think of like iron and steel, right, which came later.

(metal clunking) - I think it is a little bit industrial.

It's like a microcosm of the Detroit ambiance.

This whole city was built on like different types of metal, and here we are in the backyard.

- This is as industrial of a process as the iron.

But you know, we do iron too, right?

There's lots of iron stuff here.

That's what I really prefer is the iron.

- [Bill] February, 2025, Cranbrook, Bloomfield Hills, the cradle of mid-century modern design.

An iron pour is about to happen facilitated by Jay Elias.

- It's like very humbling.

It's still kind of surreal almost.

Man, in 2017, I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

I never had run a furnace before.

And now here I am bringing a crew together to help these guys at Cranbrook - [Bill] Pouring iron for art's sake, an undertaking that doesn't happen too often.

The College for Creative Studies in Detroit does a couple of pours each year, but this will be the first for Cranbrook in many decades.

(gas booming) (observers cheering) It looks like the interest for iron is picking up.

- I think that's happening because we spend so much of our time with like screens on our phones, computers, where it's really exciting to be able to create something out of material that like you put labor and love into it, and then an object comes out.

- The legacy of iron pouring at Cranbrook is deeply connected to Julius Schmidt who was an artist in residence in the 1960s.

He built six furnaces that became a part of what was formerly the Cranbrook foundry which is now where the sculpture department is located.

- [Bill] Julius Schmidt, called the grandfather of cast iron sculpture, would spread his expertise to other art schools across the country.

He died in 2017.

- If, in order to pour iron, you're making the furnace and making the tools, making the torches, making everything, to then pour the molds that you, it's like so very from scratch, everything.

- Cast iron is so hard.

It's also super brittle.

So if you get it out of the mold, and you hammer too hard, you break it.

In that aspect, it's a very finicky material, and it has its own conditions.

- It's come back, you know.

Jay's bringing it back here, and that really means a lot to the community, that it was first started here, and now we're bringing it back.

- [Bill] Elias comes to this with a dark past revealed in his studio in Detroit.

Abused as a child, he says, a Marine Corps vet with post-traumatic stress, then 11 years in prison for aggravated assault!

- That was the impetus for everything, for Evolution Art Studio, was learning how to pour iron and really just expressing myself non-verbally through a lot of the stuff that I was making.

It was just a very cathartic process for me.

It was a pivotal moment in my mental shift to realize that I wasn't a victim.

That's when I realized I was a survivor.

- [Bill] What's on that paper?

What do you got going on?

- Just sketching out a project that I'm doing that's gonna be installed at the Carrie Furnaces in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The focus is gonna be a set of jail cell doors that I harvested from the old 3rd Precinct in Detroit, and I'm going to use them as the focal point of a large-scale sculpture.

(children chatting indistinctly) - [Bill] Pittsburgh, like Detroit, a shiny downtown and a legacy of iron: steel.

The Carrie Blast Furnaces date back to the 1880s, shut down 40 years ago.

Now a group called Rivers of Steel provides a backdrop for artists and iron pours like this one with Elias in the middle of it.

- So this entire region that's referred to as the Rust Belt did the innovation for the entire world.

Detroit, you know, you've got Chicago, you've got Pittsburgh, you've got Ohio cities, you've got Buffalo, New York, and I mean that's pretty much the people who wrote and built the modern era.

- [Bill] Elias oversees the furnace, firing up to 3,000 degrees.

(observer cheering) - I train for this.

I go to the shvitz like every day.

(laughs) So I'm in the sauna every day.

It helps me withstand the heat up there.

- [Bill] Hundreds of pieces to be cast including elements for Elias's project.

Where are these folks from?

- [Jay] All over the country, man.

Got people from different schools: Penn State University, Alfred University, Shepherd University, Wayne State University.

- [Bill] Wayne State?

That's Elias's school, graduating with a psychology degree this spring.

- [Jay] So that's coke right there.

That's super-heated coal, and they use that as fuel.

And then we throw those brake rotors in.

They get donated from the local scrap yard.

We just melt down the brake rotors.

- [Bill] All told, two and a half tons of brake rotors.

- So every one of those brake rotors was on a car or a truck or some sort of vehicle.

So, (steam hissing) when you think about all the stories that are attached to all those brake rotors.

They drove people to the hospital when their kids were sick.

They drove trucks to work every single day.

Those brake rotors are part of the reason why the system works the way it does, and they get discarded, you know.

It's kind of metaphorical to take stuff that's been discarded by society, and take it and then put a lot of pressure on it and transform it into art, right, something very visceral that really you could touch it, you could feel it, you could smell it.

The heat's there.

Like it's, this is a full-body experience.

- I kind of, people run towards it or run away from it because it's somewhat dangerous, but, to me, it's very zen.

I get very peaceful when I'm around it.

(mallet bashing) - [Jay] Some regular weld gloves that we're (indistinct) - [Metalworker] Going in.

(brush scraping) (hammer tapping) There'll be various smaller sculptures welded in place.

Oh man!

what do you think, Bill?

- [Bill] What do you think?

- It's sick.

It's beyond what I could have ever imagined in my head.

The steel doors are really heavy, and all the iron's really heavy, which lends itself to the weightiness of the story and the idea of incarceration.

(tractor revving) The nonprofit here at Rivers of Steel, they suggested, "Hey, we want you to install sculpture "in the Iron Garden," which kind of blew me away.

Like, next to Ken Payne and Vaughn Randall, like that, in itself to me, is like an honor 'cause I'm a relative newcomer to the cast iron game, you know.

(coal banging) - [Bill] Elias calls this work "Unfinished Business," now on display in the Iron Garden behind the Carrie Blast Furnaces.

- This piece, unlike some of the others, really draws you in, and you want to interact and read the text and not just walk by it.

- Celli, Marcelli, you gotta go in.

It could be interpreted as art.

I feel better if other people call me an artist than if I call myself an artist.

I do it more for myself, you know, to satisfy like some creative urge that I have inside of me that fortunately facilitates a healing process which is is why I embrace it so deeply.

It's not so much for the creation of the thing, but it's in the creation of the thing, the fellowship with my community, the learning that takes place, the growth that takes place, all the humility that takes place.

So this is kind of a way to just initiate dialogue, and a lot of people can relate to this story from all walks of life.

- [Narrator 1] The Detroit Tigers take on the Chicago White Sox on Friday for opening day at Comerica Park.

It's a matchup between two of the league's oldest teams.

The Tigers' history includes a roster of notable players including outfielder Larry Doby and pitcher Steve Gromek from Hamtramck.

Both men also played for Cleveland when the team won the 1948 World Series.

But it was a locker room photo of Doby and Gromek hugging after the victory that grabbed a huge amount of attention.

"One Detroit's" Bill Kubota explains in this report.

(gentle music) - [Bill] Troy, home of the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame.

It's ballot-counting time for this year's inductees.

- A number of individuals from Hamtramck in Detroit got together to form the organization, and Stan Musial was our first inductee.

- [Bill] That was 52 years ago.

Stan the Man, one of the greatest hitters of all time, from Pennsylvania.

But there's representation from around here, Hamtramck, and baseball in particular.

- Art Pinky Deras, who was considered the greatest Little Leaguer of all time.

- [Bill] Art Deras, great pitcher, great hitter too.

His Hamtramck team won the National Championship in 1959.

Then there's Tom Paciorek, on several teams in his 18 years in the Majors in the seventies and eighties.

- I think one of the really neatest pieces we have in our Hall of Fame is the jersey, a Cleveland Indians jersey, back when they were the Indians, of Steve Gromek.

(bright music) - [Baseball presenter] Johnny Sain and Steve Gromek, two right-handers will face each other today in the fourth game of the World Series of 1948.

- [Bill] A record-setting crowd in Cleveland, eyes on Gromek, a good pitcher among greats: the rocket arm future Hall of Famer, Bob Feller; Bob Lemon, also destined for the Hall of Fame; and up-and-comer Gene Bearden.

Gromek, an occasional starter, surprised some when he was picked for such a crucial game.

Nearly eight decades later, Detroit Free Press columnist Neal Rubin has been recounting his story.

- I knew Steve Gromek's name basically tied to those '48 Indians.

Then, over time, as I lived here, I learned that he was a Hamtramck guy 'cause Hamtramck has a huge athletic tradition and a big baseball tradition.

- [Commentator] Steven Joseph Gromek, 28-year-old right-hander, of Polish ancestry, entered pro ball as an infielder in 1939.

- I've personally done a lot of research on Steven Gromek.

He's one of my favorite Hamtramck-born Major League players.

Very interesting guy; great family.

- [Bill] The Hamtramck Historical Museum just got this photo album from one of Gromek's sons.

Pictures from Hamtramck Day at Briggs Stadium when Cleveland came to play the Tigers.

And here's a news photo with Gromek and Cleveland teammate Larry Doby.

- Yeah, it's such a great photo.

I mean, especially for the time period and how race relations were, it's such an an iconic photo, you know.

- 1948, baseball had only been integrated for two seasons.

Larry Doby was the second Black man to play Major League baseball.

- [Bill] And Doby the first in the American League.

As Cleveland won game four, the photo of Doby and Gromek made the papers across the country.

- So there's the picture signed by our dad and Mr. Doby.

And, you know, when I saw this picture for years, I thought it was a huge group in the locker room, just everyone mulling around.

But then an associate of mine's wife found the picture of them here.

You see, the two of 'em are standing alone in the locker room.

Nobody else is around 'em.

So this is just the two of 'em embracing, you know.

So it's not like their "Ah!"

in a second right.

It was like a real hug.

- [Bill] Steve Gromek's boys, quite young during their dad's playing days, but the photo always sat prominently among the sports trophies.

A happy moment recorded for history, but, for Steve, not without consequences.

- He doesn't even think anything about this picture.

They didn't pose for it.

It was spontaneous.

But he gets home after the season, he's back in Hamtramck seeing old friends, and some people wouldn't talk to him.

They were so appalled by this photo of a white man and a Black man that people he had known for decades froze him out.

(church organ music) - [Bill] A January Sunday in Royal Oak.

Pastor Jeff Nelson with the First United Methodist Church and a sports fan.

He's been thinking about that photo with Doby and Gromek.

- I've been holding this story since Neal shared it with me, knowing that it's the kind of story that needs to be told.

To be a servant of Christ is to defy gravity, and defying gravity changes the world, and we need images of what that new world might look like.

Here's an image that defied the gravity of its day.

Meet Larry Doby and Steve Gromek.

It combines all my favorite things.

It's got baseball.

It's got social justice and doing the right thing.

And it's just a great human story, and it's local.

And I just think that's pretty cool.

This snapshot defied the gravity of a racially segregated world.

And I'm here today to tell you, that picture made neither of these men popular.

- He came home, and his friends, old teammates didn't want to talk to him, and it's because after that World Series win, took a picture with his arm around Larry Doby.

And during the time that it was, people saw that and were like, "Nope."

- Gromek found hate mail waiting for him in his mailbox and longtime friends who would no longer have a drink with him at the bar.

One former buddy even quipped, "Man, why couldn't you just shook his hand?"

- There was a lot of fallout in 1948.

- (laughs) And you look at that photo, and go, "Yeah, I'm not talking to that guy anymore."

That's weird to me.

And I mean I'm sure there's probably a stronger word than weird, but like weird is the best thing I can think of right now.

- [Commentator] And that brings to the plate Larry Doby, Doby who's had 4 out of 11, hitting a 364, currently the leading hitter in the series.

- You think about it now, and it's like, how could this happen back then?

And it's like, oh, very simply.

They did not want someone like this to be here.

It kind of makes your head hurt.

'cause you try to think about like, why does that make sense?

- It's interesting because in our family we just saw two ball players, and it was a World Series.

- In Hamtramck, my dad, he would go and play baseball wherever there was a game.

He used to play, you know, with the Black players too.

You know, they had great baseball players too.

So my dad would play with everyone when he was there, you know, in Hamtramck - [Commentator] 1-0 Cleveland, last half of the third inning.

An overhand fastball, swung on, hit high and deep into right center field.

The ball is going, going; it is gone!

- Even to Larry Doby, where they added him to this team, and you add a player like that who helps your team get over the hump.

But in sports, like it is literally a win-loss business when you want to do everything you can to win.

- [Commentator] Larry Doby just teed off for the first home run of the 1948 World Series, and the Indians lead 2-0.

Lou Boudreau is up, a right-hand batter.

- [Bill] Cleveland these days.

The team; they're the Guardians now.

Around Progressive Field, some heroes victorious in 1948, cast in bronze.

Rapid Robert Feller, player manager Lou Boudreau, and Larry Doby.

At the Baseball Heritage Museum, a small Doby display with artifacts from the Newark Eagles, Doby's Negro League team before coming to Cleveland in 1947 just 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson joined the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers.

Doby the second one in.

Have we forgotten?

Who doesn't know about him?

- Not so much Clevelanders, but when we get people from the West Coast or even, you know, a couple of states out of Ohio, yeah, people are surprised to hear about Larry Doby's story and his place in American League baseball history.

(feet stomping) - [Bill] The effort to not be forgotten.

December, 2023, a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony.

Although Larry Doby died in 2003, his likeness joins Roberto Clemente and Jackie Robinson as just the third baseball player to receive the honor.

- The photo was a huge deal to Larry Doby's family to the point where his son insisted that it be on his Congressional Medal.

(audience applauding) And he was told, "Oh no, "we don't put two people on that side of the medal.

"That's just for the honoree."

And he said, "Well, that's a very nice policy, "and if you don't use that photo, "there's not gonna be a medal."

- But the names that I heard in my house were the guys who looked out for him, the guys who made what he did possible.

That was Steve Gromek.

That was Joe Gordon.

That was Jim Hegan.

That was Bob Lemon.

Those guys accepted him, and they were lifelong friends, and I'm just sorry I didn't get to meet some of them to thank them for their friendship.

- Here's a replica of the Congressional Gold Medal.

It really has a nice message on the back too.

It says, "We are stronger together as a team, "as a nation, as a world."

- And I thank all you guys from the bottom of my heart.

(audience applauding) - [Bill] Steve Gromek died in 2002, but some of the Gromek family attended the ceremony, including Steve's wife, Jeanette Gromek, age 99.

- And it turned out great because my mother was still alive, and that was really- - My mother was still alive too.

- Huh?

- My mother was still alive too.

(Carl laughing) - Why do you always say, "My mother"?

I said, "What about my mother?"

Our mother.

- [Bill] Janette Gromek died last February, her husband probably not destined for the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, but he's cast in history in a way few other ball players will ever be.

- [Commentator] In the ninth inning of the fourth World Series game of 1948.

Mr. Gromek is firing the ball a lot harder and faster and more deliberately in this half inning than in any so far.

The pitch; there's a drive to right field, and it goes right to Kennedy!

(crowd cheering) Cleveland wins.

And the margin was Larry Doby's home run.

(crowd cheering) - He couldn't have written the script.

He wouldn't have believed this.

If somebody's writing a movie or how they say, "Oh that's too unbelievable.

"You know, you can't make that story up."

(crowd cheering) - Because it wasn't game seven, it wasn't the last game of the World Series, but Steve Gromek, he understood what the photo showed, that moment of joy, but he also came to understand what it represented.

That was important to him also.

- He could have very easily said, "It's never gonna happen again.

"No more pictures of me "and my teammates of different races, never."

So the fact that he leaned in was the mark of a standup guy.

And, I mean, people throw this term around a lot, but like that's like what an ally looks like.

That's someone who has his back.

- I just think that it's a story that Detroiters in particular need to know and be proud of and just kind of own.

Let's continue to be a movement that defies the gravity.

If these two guys could do it, a local kid from just down the street, then maybe we can do it too.

Let us pray.

Gracious God, we thank you for this chance to be together here this morning.

- [Narrator 1] That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thanks for watching.

April is Jazz Appreciation Month, and we'll leave you now with a performance by jazz bassist Marion Hayden, this year's Kresge Eminent Artist.

(jazz bass music) (jazz bass music continues) (jazz bass music continues) - [Narrator 2] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator 3] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Narrator 2] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(gentle upbeat music) (bright music)