After removing Doby from the manager's role and reassigning him to batting coach, the position Doby held before being named manager, Veeck said, "Larry will always have a role on this team in some capacity." He served in that role for one additional season and resigned in October 1979. After retiring from baseball, Doby was named director of communications for the National Basketball Association's New Jersey Nets from 1980 to 1989 and also served as the Nets' director of community affairs until 1990. Doby was named special assistant to the AL's last president, Gene Budig, on April 17, 1995. "The New York Times" wrote, "In glorifying those who are first, the second is often forgotten ... Larry Doby integrated all those American League ball parks where Jackie Robinson never appeared. And he did it with class and clout." During the 1997 season, when the long-departed Jackie Robinson's number 42 was being retired throughout baseball, and the still-living Doby was being virtually ignored by the media, an editorial in "Sports Illustrated" pointed out that Doby had to suffer the same indignities that Robinson did, and with nowhere near the media attention and implicit support. Scoop Jackson in 2007 wrote, in response to the tradition of MLB players wearing jerseys in homage of Robinson, "Second place finishers in America are suckers. And so are those who make the story of history less simple than it needs to be. This happens sometimes in America. Those who don't come first or don't do things a certain way get lost. They disappear." "Jackie got all the publicity for putting up with it (racial slurs). But it was the same thing I had to deal with. He was first, but the crap I took was just as bad. Nobody said, 'We're gonna be nice to the second Black,'" Doby said. Doby served as one of the pallbearers at Robinson's funeral. As fellow Hall of Famer Joe Morgan wrote, "Anyone who knew Larry knew that he admired Robinson and was never jealous of the attention Robinson received." Former teammate Al Rosen said:  Jackie was a college educated man who had been an officer in the service and who played at the Triple-A level. Jackie was brought in by Branch Rickey specifically to be the first black player in major league baseball. Larry Doby came up as a second baseman who didn't have time to get his full college education, and was forced to play a different position in his first major league season.