Planning for the Democratic and Republican national conventions began in December with media tours, the usual mayoral speeches and technical briefings — and, buried within the familiar quadrennial routine, a surprise.  The Times’s delegation to the winter tours (perambulations known as “convention walk-throughs”) usually consists of editors and managers who are tasked with deploying our team in July, reporting to the politics editor and the newsroom’s administration. We also offer technical support and logistical advice for our colleagues in the editorial department, whose columnists, editorial writers and editors are managed separately from the newsroom.  Covering political conventions is expensive and involves logistical challenges that exceed even those connected with the Olympics and presidential inaugurations. The advance work involves several scouting trips, a stout budget and more than six months of planning, mostly during the primary election season when the political news staff is already busy.  Dozens of editors and technicians from agencies around the world attend the walk-throughs. Our little delegation consisted of a photo editor or two, the deputy political editor, the national desk manager and me; our mission is to avoid surprises when 80 to 100 Times reporters, columnists, photographers, editors and support staff members show up in July.  If The Times hangs a remote-controlled camera from the rafters, we figure out how to get the images to the editors; if our social media journalists are wasting precious minutes traveling between the convention hall and the press center, we have to shave as many seconds as possible off the journey; and if our reporters and columnists don’t have the right credentials to be where the news is happening, we have to find a solution.  The Republicans are out of the White House, and so by recent tradition their convention will be held before the Democrats’. Once the police and the Secret Service set up their security cordons shortly before each convention, further explorations will be impossible. There are just four days from gavel to gavel, so there is little room for large news organizations to extemporize at either convention site.  Our worst nightmare: The nominees might hastily decamp to a nearby stadium for glorious open-air acceptance speeches, scrapping our carefully choreographed and equipped indoor coverage. Senator Barack Obama did this in Denver eight years ago, and if not for inclement weather President Obama would have done it in Charlotte, N.C., four years ago.  Before journalists poke into convention halls and the surrounding neighborhoods, party organizers and city officials typically provide maps, seating diagrams, pricing, media guides and other tools of the news trade at the walk-throughs, followed by sundry enthusiastic speeches and an overview of the event planning. Snacks and trinkets are also part of the ceremonies.  Among the freebies at this year’s walk-throughs were the usual local products: Democrats served steaming Philadelphia cheesesteaks, meaty hoagies and assorted Tastykakes; the Republicans filled hefty black souvenir bags with Cleveland T-shirts and the addictive popcorn known as Campbell’s Dichotomy Corn, plus a surprise.  At the bottom of each bag was a largish box emblazoned with the Cleveland Indians logo and a photo of a determined-looking baseball player, and within was a bronze-colored resin statuette of none other than center fielder Larry Doby (some assembly required). Dozens of reporters, editors and news producers expressed bafflement, often accompanied by a puzzled “Who is Larry Doby?”  Doby was the first black player in the American League, and without any comment from the Republican Party or the city leadership, his likeness was nestled among the Cleveland bottle openers and beer-can cozies.  On this day, Doby was easily mentioned more times than Donald J. Trump.  While we toured proposed shooting locations for photographers, whispers of “Who?” were discerned. Under the stands, others wondered whether Doby was a Democrat, a Republican or, worse, a designated hitter. Back at my hotel, another attendee admitted, “I was wondering who he was.”  Perusing the AT&T rate card — numbing tables of prices for circuits that carry broadcasts and high-speed data — I recalled Doby’s electrifying statistics on a team that went from sixth place in 1946 to the World Series championship in 1948. Whose deft political touch put Lawrence Eugene Doby in my goody bag at Quicken Loans Arena that day? A baseball-savvy political operative, perhaps? The answer was more prosaic.  Doby, a veteran infielder of the Negro leagues, joined the Indians in July 1947, some three months after Jackie Robinson’s shattering National League debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Although Doby is no longer instantly recognizable by many baseball fans, in the 1940s he famously tolerated racist abuses similar to those heaped upon Robinson, and he also became an All-Star player and a major league manager.  There was, in fact, a time in the late 1940s when the names Doby and Robinson were celebrated in the same breath: Brownie McGhee’s rollicking 1948 song “Robbie-Doby Boogie” contains the refrain “Cleveland’s got Larry Doby, Brooklyn’s got Jackie Robinson.” Doby had the higher batting average of the two that year, too.  Curtis Danburg, a spokesman for the Indians, said that his team gave 500 Doby statues to Destination Cleveland, the city’s tourism organization.  “After evaluating our inventory, we did determine it would be a great fit to include Larry Doby statues as a great historical education opportunity, knowing he is an iconic figure in our organization’s history because of his role in integrating the American League,” Mr. Danburg said.  In 1998, Doby was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and in 2003 he died in Montclair, N.J., at age 79. The resin Dobys were manufactured for an Indians marketing promotion in July when a much larger statue was unveiled at the team’s stadium, only a block away from the convention site. This was also a sobering reminder that the baseball stadium’s proximity might tempt the Republican nominees to deliver their acceptance speeches there. The possibility will gnaw at me until July, like so many bags of over-salted peanuts.  Times political correspondents are no strangers to baseball. As recently as the 2012 Democratic National Convention in North Carolina, a group of Times reporters and editors spent an evening consuming affordable hot dogs and beer at a Charlotte Knights minor league game. There was never a question that the bronze-hued Doby would end up on my desk at The Times; the only question was whether I could fit him in my carry-on luggage.  Somehow I did, and he did.
Walter Baranger, who participated in a convention site walk-through in Cleveland, writes about campaign coverage and surprise swag.