The late Larry Doby was by all accounts a nice guy. He just had bad timing.

Doby was the second African-American player to make it to the Major Leagues, joining the Cleveland Indians in 1947, less than three months after Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Doby also followed another Robinson — Frank — when he was picked as the Majors’ second black manager in 1978.

Maybe that’s what made him so intriguing to award-winning filmmaker Bud Greenspan.

“This is an unknown black hero,” said Greenspan, whose documentaries on the Olympics have garnered him seven Emmys and a Peabody Award, among others. “He dealt with the same adversities and prejudices in his life and career as Jackie Robinson. But being second, he has been overlooked by many of us for a long time.”

Greenspan was on hand for the premiere of his latest project, Pride Against Prejudice: The Larry Doby Story, held Jan. 30 at the Yogi Berra Museum and Education Center at Montclair State University. The film made its television debut Feb. 1 on Showtime.

While acknowledging that his fame comes from presenting the stories of winners, he told NJ Jewish News, “I’ve also been known for doing films about people who came in second. Some of the most dramatic moments we’ve had are about those people.”

Greenspan, 80, was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Israel in 1995. Among his many films, he produced The 1972 Munich Olympic Games: Bud Greenspan Remembers, commemorating the terrorist attacks that ended in the death of 11 members of the Israeli team. “I like making films that make people say, ‘Gee, I didn’t know that,’” Greenspan said. For many, Pride Against Prejudice fits into both those categories.

The film chronicles not only Doby’s professional progress but the struggle for civil rights during the mid-20th century as well. Friends, family, teammates, opponents, and writers shared their thoughts on the discrimination, segregation, and loneliness Doby and other black athletes had to endure, even from their own teammates.

When Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, Hank Greenberg, baseball’s first Jewish superstar, offered words of encouragement. Stick with it, he told Robinson; there are people pulling for you.

Al Rosen, a teammate of Doby’s in Cleveland, has remained mostly in the shadows when it comes to recognizing the great Jewish players, falling behind Greenberg and Sandy Koufax. Raised in the South — he was born in Spartanburg, NC, and attended the University of Florida — Rosen grew up with a laissez-faire attitude on race, accepting the situation as “just the way things are.” But in Pride Against Prejudice, he tells about a fistfight he had at spring training with a Florida cab driver who refused to pick him and Doby up. “I wonder what the cabbie would have though if he knew I was a Jew,” Rosen says.

Doby, who died in 2003 at the age of 79, was a longtime resident of Montclair and a fixture in the community as well as at the museum. Several members of his family who attended the screening were moved to tears during the emotional presentation.