Frank Robinson, who slid hard on the asphalt streets of Oakland, Calif. as a youngster and harder still in every game he played during a major league career that saw him become one of the game’s most feared sluggers and fiercest competitors, died in hospice care Thursday at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Robinson, the first African-American manager in MLB history and the only player to win MVP awards in both the American and National leagues, was 83 and had suffered from bone cancer.

A 14-time All-Star, Robinson’s career ranks among the best in the game’s history. He was the Rookie of the Year in 1956 when he hit a rookie-record 38 homers for the Reds, and won the Triple Crown in 1966 during his first season with the Orioles. Robinson won his MVP awards with the Reds in 1961 and the Orioles in 1966. He also led his teams to two World Series titles — winning with the Orioles in 1966, when he also was voted the World Series MVP, and in 1970. His 1961 Reds team lost the Series to the Yankees in five games while his 1969 Orioles lost that World Series to the Miracle Mets.

Robinson — who was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1982, his first year on the ballot — played 21 seasons in the major leagues with five different teams before retiring as a player in 1976 with 586 home runs. It was the fourth-highest total in baseball at the time, trailing just Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. He is now 10th.

Robinson is also one of just eight players in history to accumulate at least 2,900 hits and 500 home runs, and another 14 home runs and 57 hits would have placed him with Aaron, Mays and Alex Rodriguez as the only players in history with 600 home runs and 3,000 hits.

“I don’t rank guys, but I’d put him right there with the best ever,” Earl Weaver, the former Orioles manager who died in 2013, once said. “And he’d be a lot higher in those ranks if not for some of the artificial home runs that came out of those bats.”

Robinson was named the player-manager of the Indians for the 1975 season, the first black manager in the game. He marked the historic occasion by putting himself in the lineup as the DH on Opening Day against the Yankees and right-hander Doc Medich.

Originally, Robinson did not have himself in the lineup that afternoon at Municipal Stadium, but his boss, Tribe general manager Phil Seghi, talked him into it by saying “Frank, this is your day.”

“Then [Medich] throws me this bastard slider just off the outside part of the plate,” Robinson once said. “I thought, ‘This SOB is trying to strike me out on three pitches … on my day! He’s trying to embarrass me … on my day. No one does that to me.’ ”

Robinson then hit the next pitch into the left-center field seats for a home run.

No one embarrassed Robinson and no one intimidated him either. He famously crowded the plate and led the league in being hit by pitches seven times. During his career he was hit 198 times.

“Pitchers did me a favor when they knocked me down,” he said. “It made me more determined. I wouldn’t let that pitcher get me out.”

His ability to exact revenge on pitchers who knocked him down became so well known that Phillies manager Gene Mauch was said to have fined any pitcher who dared dust off Robinson.

Frank Robinson was born Aug. 31, 1935, in Beaumont, Texas, the youngest of 10 children. After his parents split up, his mother moved with her children to California’s Bay Area. Robinson attended McClymonds High School in Oakland where he was a basketball teammate of Hall of Famer Bill Russell and a baseball teammate of Vada Pinson, with whom he would play on the Reds, and Curt Flood.

“Frank Robinson’s résumé in our game is without parallel, a trailblazer in every sense, whose impact spanned generations,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “He was one of the greatest players in the history of our game, but that was just the beginning of a multifaceted baseball career. … We are deeply saddened by this loss of our friend, colleague and legend, who worked in our game for more than 60 years.”

Robinson also managed the Giants, Orioles and Expos and became the first manager of the Washington Nationals after the franchise moved from Montreal for the 2005 season. Later, Robinson spent several years working as an executive for MLB. The Reds, Orioles and Indians each have retired Robinson’s No. 20 and saluted him with statues at their ballparks.

Robinson is survived by his wife, Barbara Ann, and two children, Frank Kevin and Nichelle.