Moses Fleetwood Walker, often called Fleet, was the first #African American to play major league baseball. On this day, Walker was injured (a common occurrence among catchers in the days before catchers mitts were invented) and was told to take the day off by his manager Charlie Morton. His biographical data, year-by-year hitting stats, fielding stats, pitching stats (where applicable), career totals, uniform numbers, salary data and miscellaneous . After Walker signed with Blue Stockings in 1883, Cap Anson, one of the most dominant white MLB players of the era, said he wouldnt play an exhibition game against Toledo if Walker played. Their experiences were often painful and very similar but separated by 63 years. Cloud Hotel yesterday morning at breakfast, when Walker was refused accommodations. Walker has a very sore hand, and it had not been intended to play him in yesterdays game, and this was stated to the bearer of the announcement for the Chicagos. In September 1898, postal inspectors charged Walker with mail robbery, he was found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail. Finally, Morton declared that if Anson forfeited the game, he would also forfeit the gate receipts. Despite the retroactive application of genetic rules, I believe that if Mr. White said he was white, we should consider him white. Coupled with an earlier patent for an exploding artillery shell, he was a bona-fide inventor. Young Thomas joined his sister, Cleodolinda, who had been born in December of 1882. He was reunited with and assisted by his brother Weldy. Swinging for the Fences: Connecticut's Black Baseball Greats However, one thing baseball historians note is that he refused to play in a game with Walker on the field. Farrell Evans is an award-winning journalist who writes about sports and history. We only write this to prevent much blood shed, as you alone can prevent."16. Then in September 1898 Walker was arrested, convicted, and sentenced for mail robbery. At this juncture and with the apparent support of the spectators, Fleet took to the field and prepared to enter the game. Walkers major-league debut, a baseball milestone game, saw him return to Louisville, where because of his race he had been forbidden to play three summers before. [6], Walker was inducted into the Oberlin College Hall of Fame in 1990. Born in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, in 1856, he was well educated and, by blacks and many whites, highly respected. Their times were very different and the results of their actions were very different. Moses Fleetwood Walker was born in the eastern Ohio community of Mount Pleasant, Jefferson County, on October 7, 1856. [6] As host to opera, live drama, vaudeville, and minstrel shows at the Opera House, Walker became a respected businessman and patented inventions that improved film reels when nickelodeons were popularized. However, an effort was made to end Walkers career in Organized Baseball before it started. William Voltz, manager of the Toledo entry in the Northwestern League, signed Walker as a catcher for the citys first professional team. That honor belongs to one Moses Fleetwood Walker, or Fleet Walker as he was known during his playing days. Before the end of the year, however, Walker left Oberlin to play baseball for the University of Michigan. Later in 1891 he returned to his roots in Steubenville. Moses Fleetwood Walker became the first African-American to play professional baseball. Fleetwood Walker was able to earn money as a catcher. Sixty-three years before Jackie Robinson became the first African American in the modern era to play in a Major League Baseball game, Moses Fleetwood Walker debuted in the league on May 1, 1884, with the Toledo Blue Stockings in a 5-1 loss against the Louisville Eclipse. We hope you will listen to our words of warning, so that there will be no trouble: but if you do not, there certainly will be. Already greatly weakened by the loss of their starting catcher, the visitors suffered a double whammy when Walkers replacement injured his hand in the first inning and refused to come out for the second. When Walker was three years old, the family moved 20 miles northeast to Steubenville, where his father . Welday) Wilberforce Walker was born in the eastern Ohio community of Steubenville on July 27, 1860. Monday is Jackie Robinson Day all around Major League Baseball. Moses Fleetwood Walker, generally called "Fleet" for short, was born in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, on October 7 th, 1856 to Dr. Moses W. Walker and Caroline O'Hara Walker, the third son and fifth-born among six children (or seven; it is not known how many for certain). Another contributing factor was, no doubt, romance. Moses Fleetwood Walker: 7 Things You Need to Know About Majors' 1st In his life after baseball, Walker became an inventor, cinema owner, author, newspaper editor and a fierce advocate for the emigration of African Americans to Africa. [18] Though Walker hit in decent numbers, recording a .251 batting average, he became revered for his play behind the plate and his durability during an era where catchers wore little to no protective equipment and injuries were frequent. The Western League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002). [9] How Walker first came to play baseball is uncertain: according to Zang, the game was popular among Steubenville children, and while in Oberlin's preparatory program Walker became the prep team's catcher and leadoff hitter. Lin Weber, Ralph Elliott, ed. Lesser known is the fact that the "color line" wasn't clearly established in baseball's earliest days in the late 19th century. On May 1, 1884, catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker signed up to play for the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association, a professional baseball league considered a "major league" in existence from 1882 to 1891 and was a rival to the National League. He continued to be attracted to and to play baseball. The transfer enabled him to pursue the study of law and to avoid any stigma of Bellas soon-to-be-apparent pregnancy in Oberlin. REVIEW: 'The Trial of Moses Fleetwood Walker' at Black Ensemble Theater Moses Fleetwood Walker - Wikipedia After one inning, his substitute claimed his hands were too badly bruised to continue, and Walker hesitantly walked on to the field for warm-ups. He never played for an all-black team. [28] Walker followed Newark's manager Charlie Hackett to the Syracuse Stars in 1888. At the time, he was working as a clerk in a Cleveland pool hall. Common terms and phrases. Walker worked under an unbelievable handicap with his batterymate that was held in secret by the pair until revealed by Mullane decades later when the New York Age of January 11, 1919, reported: Toledo once had a colored man who was declared by many to be the greatest catcher of the time and greater even than his contemporary, Buck Ewing. This article was written by John R. Husman. [6] According to Zang, Walker could afford the business venture after commanding a $2,000 contract as a major leaguer. Walker, a 26-year-old African American barehanded catcher from Mount Pleasant, Ohio, had abandoned his law studies a year earlier at the University of Michigan to play with the Blue Stockings. When the Toledo Blue Stockings jumped from the Northwest League to the American Association in 1884, catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker became the first . Walker, however, stayed the course and played in 42 games for the Toledos before being released late in the season because of injury. What's on TV & Streaming Top 250 TV Shows Most Popular TV Shows Browse TV Shows by Genre TV News . Stovey won 33 games while Walker, in spite of injuries, established career bests in games played, batting average, and fielding percentage. While most people don't know much about Walker, there are many fascinating . He ended a tumultuous decade, during which both his parents had died, with a year as a federal prisoner. Ultimately, the game went on as planned after Anson, unwilling to lose his share of the gate receipts,reneged on his threat. He mostly hit second in the lineup and is credited with a .308 batting average (BA). 13 Toledo Daily Blade, August 11, 1883, 3. Walker, the colored catcher of the Toledo Club was a source of contention between the home club and the Chicago Club. Walker was constantly subjected to abuse from fans, the press, players who did not want to take the field against him, and even his teammates. The Louisville managers decided that he could not play, and the Clevelands were compelled to substitute West. Fleet then latched on with the minor-league team in Waterbury, Connecticut, which played successively in three different leagues that year; he appeared in 39 games. He and his batterymate, Harlan Burket, led the junior class to a win over the senior nine. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. He soon established himself as the catcher and leadoff hitter on the Oberlin College prep team. [40] Despite these findings, baseball historians still credit Walker with being the first in the major leagues to play openly as a black man. The Negro Leagues | MLB.com The early history of both parents is unclear but by 1870 the family had moved to Steubenville, also in Jefferson County, where Moses W. Walker worked as a cooper. [20] After intense arguments, the motion was dropped, allowing Walker to play. The early history of both parents is unclear but by 1870 the family had . The Negro race will be a menace and a source of discontent as long as it remains in large numbers in the United States, Walker wrote. The athletes antipathy for interracial competition reflected the culture of professionalism emerging in late 19th-century America. [16] More issues arose during game time: members of the Louisville Eclipse protested Walker's participation; Cleveland relented and held him out of the lineup. Between May 1 and September 4, Walker played forty-two games for Toledo. 40 Unsung Heroes of Black History We Should All Learn About This Month Fleet Walker's Divided Heart: The Life of Baseball's Fi It is well known that the catcher of the Toledo club is a colored man. That honor goes to Moses Fleetwood Walker, who made his professional debut on May 1, 1884 with the Toledo Blue Stockings. Although he slumped at the plate during his two years playing for the Stars, he was popular among Syracuse fans, so much so that Walker was their unofficial spokesman and established business ties in the city. The local newspaper went onto say that during his warm-up, He made several brilliant throws and fine catches while the game waited.3 But some Eclipse players still objected to Walkers playing and two, Johnnie Reccius and Fritz Pfeffer, left the field and went to the clubhouse in protest. (The team was invited into MLB's American Association the following year, after winning its league pennant, but only lasted a season before reverting to the minors.) The Ann Arbor squad made good on the promise by winning 10 of 13 games. After the 1885 season, Fleet returned to Cleveland and assumed the proprietorship of the LeGrande House, a hotel-theater-opera house. Your donation is fully tax-deductible. The locals were a crack club that would enter the American Association as a charter member the following year. In August 1883, Adrian Cap Anson, manager of the Chicago (Illinois) White Stockings, stated his team would not play Toledo with Walker in the lineup. While Robinson is considered to have broken baseball's color barrier, the first black player on a major league team was Moses Fleetwood Walker, a catcher with the Toledo Blue Stockings of the . He hit a then-decent .251 but it was on defense that he shone and made his most significant contributions to Toledos pennant-winning season. Known as Fleet by early adulthood, young Moses most probably began his relationship with baseball as a youth in Steubenville. He never returned to the major leagues. However, none of it would have been possible had it not been for the contributions of Walker. Fleet Walker Career Stats Leagues Statistics - Baseball-Reference.com *Moses Fleetwood Walker was born on this date in 1856. In 1883, Moses joined the Toledo (Ohio) Blue Stockings, which joined the American Association the following year under the name of the. Professional baseball was soon over for Walker, as the American Association soon adopted the same unwritten rules the National League had: Unbeknownst to Fleet, the powers that be in the American Association had agreed with their National League counterparts to observe the N.L.s unwritten rule banning blacks from its rosters. The third of six children, it is unclear when Walker started playing baseball, but the first record of him playing organized baseball was when his father . That is when he and pitcher George Stovey formed one of the first black battery units in baseball history. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. It seems Ansons racism ran only as deep as his wallet, as this argument convinced him to play the game. When the Union Association slipped into oblivion, the overall talent pool available to the leagues increased, which lessened the need to explore manpower alternatives. Before Jackie Robinson, Moses Fleetwood Walker broke baseball's color background-color:#ba3434; Though he thought Black people had innate powers of mind and body that might blossom if they emigrated from America, it was a strange prediction inasmuch as they would have to show their capabilities in Africa, a place Walker astoundingly found no irony in labeling, the very midst of intellectual and moral darkness, wrote David W. Zang, the author of Fleet Walkers Divided Heart: The Life of Baseballs First Black Major Leaguer. During that inaugural contest, Walker caught and struck a memorable grand slam. Moses Fleetwood Walker's Legacy. On May 11, 1924, Moses Fleetwood Walker died at his Cleveland home of lobar pneumonia. Unlike Jackie Robinson, he had no ambitions to challenge the status quo in baseball's segregation. Moses Fleetwood Walker: The Forgotten Man Who Actually Integrated Toledos manager, Charlie Morton, who had replaced Voltz early in the season, called Ansons bluff, forcing the latter to the field to secure his interest in the days gate receipts. Moses Fleetwood Walker fans hope to one day see him inducted - WTRF Walker was born in 1857 "at a way-station on the Underground Railroad," according to a biographer.