Such was the ugly world in which Fleet Walker competed. Neither a mascot nor a boy, he had to endure teasing and abuse as a man. And, unlike professionals on all-black teams, he had to go it alone, without the strong support of fellow players who understood, or cared, what he was enduring in integrating baseball. To be sure, there were some white players capable of rising above racial prejudice who quickly came to respect Walker. At Columbus in 1883, the members of the city’s American Association ball club invited Fleet to join them at their newly inaugurated downtown clubhouse, where they liked to hold impromptu concerts. Pitchers Frank Mountain and John Valentine were fine singers, and left fielder Harry Wheeler was said to be one of the best harmonica players in the country. Walker fit right in. “He is a great favorite with his fellow associates,” the Ohio State Journal reported. “He favored the boys with some excellent piano solos at the club room last night. Give him a good reception, boys, he is a perfect gentleman.”
The biggest baseball star in Chicago, though, had no desire to share songs, the ball field, or anything else with Walker. Cap Anson was too stern a man, too much invested in the old school, to condone racial integration. On August 10, Anson and his men—including second baseman Fred Pfeffer, who had put up such a stink about Walker two years earlier in Louisville—took the field at Toledo’s Presque Isle Park, which was located near the mouth of the Maumee River on land that later became the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad’s coal-loading dock. Anson made a point of stressing to Blue Stockings manager Charles Hazen Morton that he and his men would be playing “with no damned nigger” that afternoon. Morton was roused to anger and ordered Walker to warm up; he would play right field. The “beefy bluffer,” as the Toledo Blade called Anson, “was informed that he could play his team or go, just as he blank pleased.”
When Walker came out, the managers bickered violently, and each side threatened to walk away. The Blade found Anson’s conduct disgraceful, given that Walker was “a gentleman and a scholar, in the literal sense[,] . . . entirely lacking in the bummer instinct” and obviously “the superior intellectually of any player on the Chicago club.” Anson, having already spoiled his off day with this obnoxious stop in Toledo, finally backed down; there was no sense throwing away the gate receipts at this point. But he was boiling mad, and he would never forgive the insult. “We’ll play this here game, but we won’t play never no more with the nigger in,” he vowed. Even the National Police Gazette savored the captain’s humiliation, cracking that “Anson weakened like a whipped cur and went on to play the game, with nothing more to say.”
There is no record of Walker’s reaction to the day’s events. But the game proved to be a grueling one for the Chicago men. Toledo hammered pitcher Fred Goldsmith for sixteen hits and pushed the contest to extra innings—the last thing Anson and his men wanted or needed. In the tenth, the Blue Stockings actually seized the lead, but in the bottom of the inning Chicago scored twice to salvage an ugly 7–6 victory. A foul mood permeated the air. The insult of Walker’s appearance would be branded on Anson’s heart, and what would have otherwise been just another meaningless exhibition game became one of the most consequential games of baseball ever played.
Anson vowed that he would never again share a field with a black man. He was determined to devote his considerable influence, for the rest of his career, to making sure that no other white professional would, either. Regrettably, he succeeded. One year later, when the White Stockings arranged another exhibition with Toledo, Chicago took care to extract an ironclad pledge from Morton that Walker would not play. Although “the management of the Chicago Ball Club have no personal feeling about the matter,” club secretary Jonathan Brown assured Morton, “the players do most decidedly object and to preserve harmony in the club it is necessary that I have your assurance in writing.” This time, afraid of losing a big gate draw, Morton complied.
These were difficult years for African Americans. Reconstruction was coming to an end, southern Democrats were cracking down on black opportunity and rights, and, in 1883, the Supreme Court delivered a stunning setback to civil rights in a decision that stated that, though states could not deny blacks rights, under the Fourteenth Amendment, private businesses could. Yet even as the lines of segregation were hardening, Fleet Walker was preparing himself to step into a role that no black man had ever played—crossing major-league baseball’s color line.
When the American Association expanded in 1884, adding the Toledo club to its ranks, Walker became the first recognized black major-leaguer—sixty-three years before Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Midway into the 1884 season, another black player, Walker’s brother Welday, briefly joined the Toledo team, filling in for five games in the outfield. Fleet’s title as the first black major-leaguer has been challenged: William Edward White, a Brown University student who played one game for the National League’s Providence Grays—on June 21, 1879—was the son of a white Georgia businessman and, evidently, a mulatto slave mother. But Fleet Walker was the first major-leaguer to be seen as a black player, recognized as such by everyone on and off the field. It seems only fitting that the American Association, the first major league to market baseball to immigrants and working people, making it more truly America’s game, was also the first to welcome a black star into its ranks.
Still, during Walker’s brief tenure at this level of competition, his considerable strength of character was severely tested. His 1884 battery mate, hard-throwing Tony Mullane, deliberately tormented Fleet that season. Walker was “the best catcher I ever worked with,” he admitted years later, “but I disliked a Negro and whenever I had to pitch to him I used to pitch anything I wanted without looking at his signals.” One day, Walker signaled for a curve, and Mullane dangerously crossed him up by firing a fastball. The catcher walked out to the pitcher’s box. “Mr. Mullane,” Walker said, “I’ll catch you without signals, but I won’t catch you if you are going to cross me when I give you a signal.” And for the rest of that season he caught everything Mullane pitched “without knowing what was coming.” Walker endured other slights from his teammates as well. In that season’s team portrait, Fleet Walker was nowhere to be seen. Only white players appeared, as if Walker never existed.
Late in the season, prejudice against Walker grew markedly more sinister. In September, Toledo manager Morton received a letter from Richmond, Virginia, home of another American Association team. “We, the undersigned, do hereby warn you not to put up Walker, the Negro catcher, the days you play in Richmond, as we could mention the names of seventy-five determined men who have sworn to mob Walker if he comes on the ground in a suit. We hope you will listen to our words of warning so there will be no trouble, and if you do not, there certainly will be. We only write this to prevent much bloodshed, as you alone can prevent.” By the time Toledo arrived in the capital of the late Confederacy, Walker had suffered a fractured rib and might not have played in any event. But, given that roving gangs had taken to terrorizing and lynching blacks in order to reassert white supremacy in the South, Morton took the threat seriously and made sure Walker sat the game out—as he would do again, after another letter from Richmond warned Morton not to start Walker when the Virginia club came to Toledo.
By the end of September, the Toledos decided the time had come to give Walker his release—ostensibly because of his injuries, but quite possibly because the management was tired of the controversy. His parting reviews were as warm as those that had greeted him at the start of 1883. “During his connection with the Toledo club, by his fine, gentlemanly deportment he made hosts of friends who will regret to learn that he is no longer a member of the club,” said the Sporting Life. The Toledo Blade called him “a conscientious player” who was “very popular with Toledo audiences.”
For the next five years, Walker played for a succession of minor-league teams: Cleveland of the Western Association; Waterbury of the Eastern League; and Newark and Syracuse of the International League. He did so well that he o
pened a saloon at the corner of High and Sheriff streets in Cleveland. In 1887, at Newark, Fleet Walker teamed up with George Stovey, a superb pitcher, to form the first all-black battery in organized baseball. During that season, some seven African Americans played in the International League, including Bud Fowler, demonstrating that black ballplayers were every bit the equal of whites. Yet white players began to grouse about having to mix with blacks. Many, no doubt, were worried that talented blacks would squeeze them out of their jobs. Some threatened to bolt to other leagues where they would not have to share the field with Negroes. On July 14, at their midsummer meeting in Buffalo, International League directors chose the way of least resistance. “Several representatives declared that many of the best players of the League were anxious to leave on account of the colored element, and the board finally directed Secretary White to approve no more contracts with colored men,” said the Newark Daily Journal. Only those already playing could remain, ensuring that blacks would eventually be phased out.
Five days later, Cap Anson’s shadow fell across black baseball again. Anson brought his White Stockings to Newark for an exhibition game and once again demanded that the blacks—Stovey and Walker—be removed. That same season, Anson blew up when he learned that Newark was about to sell Stovey to the New York Giants—which, had the deal gone through, would have meant Chicago would have to play against the black star. At the last minute, “a howl was heard from Chicago to New York,” recalled Sol White, an early player who published a book in 1907 documenting the struggles of his fellow blacks. “This same Anson, with all the venom of a hate which would be worthy of a Tillman or a Vardaman [southern senators] of the present day, made strenuous and fruitful opposition to any proposition looking to the admittance of a colored man into the National League.” New York backed off and refrained from hiring Stovey.
Anson’s lobbying had lasting consequences. In 1888, the Ohio League’s owners voted to bar black players, including nineteen-year-old Sol White, who had batted .370 for its Wheeling club. The decision drew a powerful and measured objection from another of the league’s players, Fleet Walker’s brother Welday. “The law is a disgrace to the present age,” Welday wrote, “and reflects very much upon the intelligence of your last meeting, and casts derision at the laws of Ohio—the voice of the people—that says all men are equal.” If it was against the rules for blacks to play ball, he argued, it should be against the rules for black people to buy tickets and patronize the local club. Otherwise, only a man’s character and talent should count. But such logic could not convince the lords of baseball, and the color line was drawn. In 1888, the International League limited its teams to one black player each—two, in the case of Syracuse. After the 1888 season, black infielder Frank Grant left that minor league; in 1889, only Fleet Walker of the Syracuse Stars remained. When Walker retired at the end of that season, the curtain fell. More than fifty years would pass before another black was accepted into the International League.
Black players could not fully explain the vicious crusade that had been waged against them. They only knew that Cap Anson was their tireless enemy, working to keep them out of organized baseball. “Just why Adrian C. Anson, manager and captain of the Chicago National League Club, was so strongly opposed to colored players on white teams cannot be explained,” wrote Sol White. But the afternoon of August 10, 1883, seemed to have fueled Anson’s determination. He could not stand losing, and he never forgot being shown up that day by being forced to take the field against a black man.
Anson had his way when he was alive, and partly because of him it took baseball many more decades to integrate. Until his death, he was regarded as a paragon of virtue and a man who had greatly elevated baseball’s reputation. Anson’s virulent racism, his crusade against a culture of merit in baseball, either made no impression on many of his white contemporaries or won their quiet approval—since many shared his belief that blacks degraded the game.
But now history stands over the great player’s memory like the two silent braves at the foot of his bed, sternly rebuking the meanness of a man who would seek to feed his own ego by bullying and intimidating others. In showing that he feared to meet African Americans on the ball field—where any questions about equality are quickly settled—Anson left an indelible stain on his own character.
11
FLINGING THE WATCH
IT WAS PROBABLY THE WORST DECISION THAT ATHLETICS CAPTAIN Lon Knight had made all season. For days now, his ace, Bobby Mathews, had just about heaved off his arm—pitching a three-hitter against the New York Metropolitans on Wednesday, July 26, 1883; giving up fifteen hits while losing to the same club on Thursday; beating the hard-drinking Pittsburgh Alleghenys on an eight-hitter on Saturday; and beating them on another eight-hitter on Monday. “Mathews as a pitcher seems to be all gone,” O. P. Caylor, the Cincinnati sportswriter and Reds official, opined that week. “We feared Philadelphia would be too much for him.” As dogged a competitor as Mathews was, he had absolutely nothing left on Tuesday, July 31, after throwing four complete games over a six-day stretch. But Knight started him anyway—not in the pitcher’s box, but in right field, instead of giving him a much-needed rest. It proved a disastrous move.
The Philadelphia crowd had much to cheer that afternoon, as the home team beat the Alleghenys in a 16–12 slugfest. But in the second inning, when Mathews tore off to steal second base, he slammed a leg into the bag and collapsed in agony. He had twisted his ankle so badly that he could not even limp off the field. His teammates had to carry him. This was terrible news for the first-place club. For weeks to come, in the heat of the pennant fight, the Athletics would have to muddle through without their ace pitcher, the man who kept them from being an “ordinary” team. The injury might have been devastating, had it not been for the luck of the schedule: during Mathews’s convalescence, the Athletics faced the very dregs of the American Association—Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Columbus. Making the best of the situation, Knight replaced Bobby with a rotation of hurlers: Fred Corey, Grin Bradley, and a rookie from New Jersey named “Jersey” Bakley, who was rushed back from Harrisburg in the Inter-State Association, where he had been out on loan. Though none of them was as good as Bobby at flummoxing professional hitters, together they managed to get the Athletics through the immediate crisis.
Harry Stovey
(Library of Congress)
Someone else also came to the rescue: the team’s twenty-six-year-old first baseman. Tall, slender, speedy Harry Stovey—clocked that summer rounding all four bases in an impressive fourteen seconds—had been a fine player in the National League. Now he was blossoming into a superstar.
In early August, worshipful fans presented Stovey with a handsome badge depicting a baseball diamond, with ivory insets for bags. On the bar were the words “Home Runs, 1883,” with the number to be filled in later. Harry would go on to club a record fourteen of them, while also leading the Association in doubles (31), runs scored (110), total bases (213), extra-base hits (51), and slugging percentage (.506). Stovey’s energy, daring, and panache rallied his teammates as the pennant race neared its climax, and his daring, hard-driving style of play beautifully captured the spirit of the American Association.
“Gathering Them In,”
by John Reilly, Cincinnati
Commercial Gazette, August 13, 1883
(Library of Congress)
After three weeks trying to heal, Mathews finally attempted his return on August 21 in an important home game against the still dangerous Cincinnati Reds. That morning, he strode onto the field at Athletic Park and began to warm up. But when he attempted to let loose, possibly favoring his sore ankle, he badly strained his back. In agony, he found it impossible to pitch that day. The next day, Bobby gamely tried again, toughing it out this time, but lost to the Reds, 8–6. There was worse in store. In his next start, two days later, Mathews’s still-painful ankle gave way in the fourth inning, and he hobbled off the field, injured again. “The Athletics are los
ing their grip,” the Boston Globe observed, after Philadelphia dropped its third straight to Cincinnati.
On August 28, the recuperating Mathews stopped in Providence to visit with his old friend Joe Start, then turned up in the stockholders’ box at Boston’s South End Grounds, where he had pitched so splendidly the year before. The people there who knew him well could instantly tell that something was seriously wrong when they saw his exhausted face and pained movements. “He does not look as well as he did when a Red Stocking,” the Globe reported. “His nine, the Athletics, is meeting with hard luck of late and it does not seem as if they could win a pennant.” Without a healthy Mathews, or a pitcher to replace him—which, surely, would be a miracle at this point in the season—it was difficult to see how the Athletics could hold back Chris Von der Ahe’s Browns, even with the redhot Stovey.
THOUGH HIS PLAYERS WERE CAROUSING AT NIGHT, AND HIS BOSS was undermining his authority on an almost daily basis, Ted Sullivan steadied his men and kept the team unified, focused, and aggressive on the ball field. After his Browns suffered defeats in Louisville and Cincinnati, they won all four games in Columbus, three of four in Baltimore, and three of four in Pittsburgh. On the morning of August 27, the standings showed that the Browns had actually moved one half-game ahead of the Mathews-less Athletics:
The Summer of Beer and Whiskey Page 19
