Major League Baseball announced the death but did not specify the cause. The Baltimore Sun recently reported Robinson was in the late stages of a long illness.
Playing for 21 seasons, mostly with the Cincinnati Reds and Baltimore Orioles, Robinson was the only winner of the Most Valuable Player Award in both the National and American Leagues.
He was an intense and often intimidating presence, leaning over the plate from his right-handed stance, daring pitchers to hit him (which they did, 198 times), then retaliating with long drives, “pounding pitchers with fine impartiality,” as baseball writer Roger Kahn once wrote.
As a player, Robinson insisted that teammates match his own will to win. As a manager, he had little patience with lack of hustle.
Robinson won baseball’s batting triple crown in 1966, hitting 49 home runs, driving in 122 runs and batting .316 in his first season with the Orioles and helping the team capture a World Series championship for the first time in franchise history.
He batted at least .300 in nine different seasons, had 2,943 career hits, drove in 1,812 runs and played on five pennant-winning teams. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, his first time on the ballot.
Robinson made his debut as the majors’ first black manager with the Cleveland Indians on April 8, 1975, 28 years after Jackie Robinson (no relation) first took the field with the Dodgers. Rachel Robinson, Jackie Robinson’s widow, threw out the ceremonial first ball.
Frank Robinson, who was still an active player, punctuated the historic occasion by hitting a home run in his first at-bat, as the designated hitter, leading the Indians to a 5-3 victory over the New York Yankees.
He managed for all or parts of 16 seasons, with the Indians (1975-77), the San Francisco Giants (1981-84), the Orioles (1988-91), the Montreal Expos (2002-04) and their successor franchise, the Washington Nationals (2005-06). He never managed a pennant winner, but the Baseball Writers Association of America named him the American League manager of the year in 1989, when his Orioles finished second in the East Division, two games behind the Toronto Blue Jays.
Frank Robinson was born Aug. 31, 1935, in Beaumont, Texas, and grew up in Oakland, California, the youngest of 10 children. He played baseball at McClymonds High School in Oakland, where he was also a basketball teammate of Bill Russell’s. He signed with the Reds organization in 1953 and made his major league debut as Cincinnati’s left fielder three years later.
When the Indians announced in October 1974 that Robinson would become their manager, he received a congratulatory telegram from President Gerald Ford.
“I don’t think I was hired because I was black,” Robinson said. “I hope not. I think I’ve been hired because of my ability.”
When Robinson lined up with his team in front of the Indians’ dugout at their 1975 season opener before a crowd of 56,204 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, he received a resounding ovation.
“One hundred thousand fans could not have been louder,” he recalled in his memoir. “It was the biggest ovation I ever received, and it almost brought tears to my eyes. After all the years of waiting to become a big league manager — ignored because so many team owners felt that fans would not accept a black manager — I was on the job and people were loudly pleased.”
Robinson’s wife was Barbara Ann Cole. They had a son, Frank Kevin, and a daughter, Nichelle. Information on his survivors was not immediately available.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.