Weekend Question 2: Was Jackie Robinson The First Black Player in Major League Baseball?

ANSWER. Surprise — NO.

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Put this into the “Stuff I didn’t know” list (there’s a lot of that) — from a letter in the October 23 edtion of Business Week:

Robinson Wasn’t The First Black Big-Leaguer

“The racial gap in the grandstands” (Sports Biz, Oct. 2) states that Jackie Robinson was the first black big-league ballplayer, in 1947.

But the origins of Major League Baseball are considered to date back to 1869, when the National Association of Base Ball Players began allowing professional play. At that time, blacks were on the teams. The (white) owners struck a gentlemen’s agreement in the mid-1870s to bar nonwhite players from professional baseball. The exception was that American Indians were allowed to play. Clubs dropped their black players gradually and did not sign youngsters. It wasn’t until the 1890s that there were no teams with black players.

Some owners resisted the ban. Still, it held until 1947, when Jackie Robinson joined a major league team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, after a 55-year gap.

Ben Fisher
Houston

Here’s more readily available confirmation (scroll down to “Part Two” at the link):

Baseball was originally a “gentleman’s game” played by members of rival athletic clubs for recreation. In the aftermath of the Civil War, baseball enjoyed a great surge in interest, activity and growth. Americans of all classes, creeds and races joined in the game that became our national pastime. Baseball was then still an amateur sport and some black Americans played on all-black ballclubs while others played on integrated teams.

However, black ballplayers were excluded from participation by the National Association of Baseball Players on December 11, 1868 when the the governing body voted unanimously to bar “any club which may be composed of one or more colored persons.” This was the first appearance of an official “color line” in baseball.

When baseball attained professinal status the following season, pro teams were not bound by the amateur association’s ruling, and during the 19th century black ballplayers appeared on integrated teams and some black teams played in integrated leagues. Two brothers, Moses Fleetwood Walker and Welday Walker, even played in the major leagues in 1884. But gradually, black players began to be excluded from the white leagues and by the beginning of the new century, there were no black players in organized baseball.