July 14, 1887: Baseball Draws the Color Line

Moses Fleetwood Walker

July 14, 1887: Professional baseball commits its greatest crime: Drawing "the color line." It was something that was already in the works for a while.

On August 10, 1883, the Chicago White Stockings (the team now known as the Cubs) were scheduled to play an exhibition game against the Toledo Blue Stockings, then running away with the Pennant in the Northwestern League. The Chicago 1st baseman and manager was Adrian Constantine Anson, known as "Cap," short for "Captain." He was the best player in baseball, and the most popular.

He was also the most openly racist. And the Blue Stockings' catcher was Moses Fleetwood Walker. "Fleet" Walker was black. While Bill White, who played 1 game at 1st base for the Providence Grays in 1879, was black, he passed as white, making Walker the 1st player known to be black on any previously all-white team. Anson refused to play the game.

Blue Stockings manager Charlie Morton told Anson that if they refused to play, they would forfeit the gate receipts. Anson decided that the color green was more important than the color white, and the game was played. But he used the N-word throughout the game, and declared he would never play another game against a black man.

(It wasn't just black people that Anson hated. He eventually wrote a memoir in which he told of growing up in Iowa, and saying rotten things about Native Americans living nearby.)

Moses Walker was born on October 7, 1856, in Mount Pleasant, on the Ohio side of the Ohio River, across from West Virginia, and not far from the Pennsylvania line and Pittsburgh. The family moved to nearby Steubenville, Ohio, where his brother, Weldy Wilberforce Walker, was born on July 27, 1860. Both graduated from Steubenville High School.

Moses had been an athlete as Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio, the 1st racially integrated college in America; and at the University of Michigan, where he became the 1st black athlete to earn a varsity letter. Weldy also played baseball at Oberlin and Michigan. In 1883, both brothers signed with the Blue Stockings.

Having won the Northwestern League Pennant in 1883, the Blue Stockings were invited to join the American Association, then a major league, for the 1884 season. That season, they scheduled another exhibition game where they were supposed to host the White Stockings, for July 25. But a showdown was avoided, because Moses Walker had an injured hand, and was unable to play.

Not wanting to deal with it anymore, the Blue Stockings caved in to the bigots. Weldy last played for them on August 6, and Moses on September 4. Both were released after the season. Moses had batted .263 in 42 games, with his RBIs not recorded. Weldy batted .222 in 5 games, with 2 RBIs. Not surprisingly, given the era, neither hit a home run.

Which brings us back to July 14, 1887. Again, it was the Chicago White Stockings and Cap Anson involved. The White Stockings were in Newark, New Jersey, to play an exhibition game against the Newark Little Giants of the International League, then as now one of the top minor leagues. This team included both Moses Walker and George Stovey, a 21-year-old pitcher and outfielder from Williamsport, Pennsylvania. This made Walker and Stovey the 1st all-black "battery" (pitcher & catcher combination) in otherwise-white baseball history.

The best picture of Stovey I could find

Going in, Anson was not aware that Walker was on this team. But he read the Newark News, and saw that Stovey was the scheduled Newark starting pitcher, and the article mentioned that Stovey was black. Anson objected, and Stovey did not pitch. Walker did not play, either. The Little Giants beat the White Stockings, anyway.

The News' evening edition -- my parents both grew up in Newark, and were ardent readers of the Newark Evening News until it went out of business in 1972 -- wrote, "Stovey was to have pitched for Newark, but he complained of sickness, and so (Mickey) Hughes was substituted."

On July 17, the Newark Sunday Call said, "Stovey was expected to pitch in the Chicago game. It was announced on the ground that he was sulking, but it has since been given out that Anson objected to a colored man playing. If this be true, and the crowd had known it, Mr. Anson would have received hisses instead of the applause that was given him when he first stepped to the bat." The New York Telegram published this, word-for-word, the next day.

Also on July 14, the IL team owners had a meeting in Buffalo, and voted 6-to-4 to exclude African-American players from future contracts. Despite going 34-14 with a 2.46 ERA, Stovey never played in what would eventually be called "organized ball" ever again, although he continued to play in black leagues. Nor did either of the Walker brothers play any more pro ball.

In the years to come, baseball team executives tried to sneak black players onto their roster by claiming they were Native Americans or, if they were light-skinned enough, either Cuban or possibly even white. It never worked: The only way they could even try to get away with it would have been in Spring Training, and any black baseball fans in town would give the player away, by cheering especially hard when he came to bat or made a play in the field.

Moses Walker died on May 11, 1924, at 67; Weldy on November 23, 1937, at 77. Both brothers had been involved in various businesses in the interim, including together. Stovey died on March 23, 1936, at 69. And Bill White died on March 29, 1937, at 76. (As far as I can tell, he had no connection, other than race and profession, to later star 1st baseman, broadcaster and National League President Bill White.)

In 1942, Brooklyn Dodger manager Leo Durocher charged that there was a "grapevine understanding" keeping black players out of baseball. He was summoned to the Chicago office of the Commissioner of Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Afterward, each man addressed the press. Durocher said that he had been misquoted -- not the biggest lie he would ever tell, but neither was it one he enjoyed telling. Landis went next: 

Negroes are not barred from organized baseball by the Commissioner, and never have been in the 21 years I have served. There is no rule in organized baseball prohibiting their participation, and never has been to my knowledge. If Durocher, or if any other manager, or all of them, want to sign one, or 25, Negro players, it is all right with me. That is the business of the managers and the club owners. The business of the Commissioner is to interpret the rules of baseball, and to enforce them.

Officially, Landis was telling the truth: Aside from the 1887 International League vote, there had never been a rule keeping any player out of the major leagues, or the minor leagues, because of his race. Unofficially, it was a bald-faced lie. Landis' word was law in baseball, and there was never going to be a black player in the professional ranks as long as he lived.

Landis died on November 25, 1944. On October 23, 1945, 331 days later, Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, having looked over existing reports, sent out his scouts, read their reports, and deciding that he had found his man, signed Jackie Robinson to a contract. On April 15, 1947, Robinson made his major league debut.

It had been 63 years since a black man had played in the major leagues. Cap Anson had been dead for 25 years, Moses Walker for 23, George Stovey for 11, Bill White and Weldy Walker for 10, and Judge Landis for 2 1/2.

*

July 14, 1887 was a Thursday. There was 1 game were played in the National League that day: The Detroit Wolverines beat the Boston Beaneaters, 7-4 at the South End Grounds in Boston. The Wolverines won the Pennant, but that led to their players demanding higher salaries for 1888. Owner Frederick K. Stearns couldn't keep up, and the team folded at the end of the season.

The Beaneaters went through a few name changes until in 1912, when they took on the name they have since carried to Milwaukee and Atlanta: The Braves.

These games were played in the American Association:

* The New York Metropolitans beat the Louisville Colonels, 18-9 at Eclipse Park in Louisville. The "original New York Mets" went out of business after this season. The Colonels joined the NL in 1892, after the AA folded, and but were contracted out of it after the 1899 season.

* The Brooklyn Grays lost to the St. Louis Browns, 6-4 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. This was not the first ballpark in St. Louis to bear that name, nor would it be the last. The Grays joined the NL in 1890, the Browns in 1892. The Grays would go through a few name changes, before becoming the Dodgers in 1911. The Browns became the Cardinals in 1900.

* The Washington Nationals beat the Pittsburgh Alleghenys, 5-3 at Swampoodle Grounds in Washington. Swampoodle was the name of a neighborhood in Washington, and also of a neighborhood in Philadelphia. These Nationals went out of business in 1889, and bear no connection to the current NL team of the same name. The Alleghenys joined the NL in 1890, and a move they made a year later was described by another team as "piratical," they became known as the Pittsburgh Pirates.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Cleveland Blues, 5-2 at National League Park in Cleveland. The Blues became the Spiders in 1889, and moved to the 1st League Park in 1891. They and the Orioles both joined the NL in 1892, and both were contracted out of it after the 1899 season.

* The Cincinnati Red Stockings beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-2 at League Park in Cincinnati. This was the 1st of 4 ballparks on land on which the team now known as the Cincinnati Reds would play from 1884 to 1970, the last being built in 1912 and known for most of its existence as Crosley Field. The Reds joined the NL in 1892, but this version of the Athletics folded with the AA after the 1891 season.