Frank Robinson, the Hall of Fame outfielder who hit 586 home runs and became a racial pioneer as the first black manager in the major leagues, nearly three decades after Jackie Robinson broke modern baseball’s color barrier playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 83.

Major League Baseball announced the death but did not specify the cause. The Baltimore Sun recently reported that Robinson was in the late stages of a long illness.

Playing for 21 seasons, mostly with the Cincinnati Reds and the 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 the baseball writer Roger Kahn once wrote. He broke up double plays with fearsome slides.