David Ortiz is not the only baseball luminary set to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in July.
Alongside Ortiz, who was the only inductee elected this year by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) in voting results announced Tuesday, will be a bust of Bud Fowler, labeled by the Hall of Fame as a true African-American pioneer.
Fowler, born John W. Jackson Jr., got in on the ground floor of the game’s development. His active years began less than 20 years after the Civil War ended, and with Blacks still newly emancipated. He was born in upstate New York and lived outside of Cooperstown for a while. But by high school, his family had matriculated to Chelsea, and his proximity to the North Shore is what brought him to Lynn to play.
“This is a huge deal,” said state Sen. Brendan Crighton (D-Lynn), who was on a committee that resulted in a plaque detailing Fowler’s accomplishments outside the main gate, Locust Street side, of Fraser Field.
Nahant sculptor Reno Pisano, who also created statues of Frederick Douglass and Mary Baker Eddy, designed Fowler’s plaque.
“There has been a movement for quite a while to get him into the Hall of Fame, so it’s cool that he’s going to be inducted,” said Crighton.
Fowler is seen as the nation’s first Black professional baseball player. It happened in a roundabout way. He had been playing for an amateur club out of Chelsea in 1878, and the team defeated the reigning National League champions from Boston. In May of that year, Fowler and another player, who was white, were rushed into action to play for the Lynn Live Oaks, who were professional members of the International Association. The IA had been formed a year earlier and it operated in cooperation with the National League.
“Thus, Fowler became the first African American to integrate a team in minor league history, and thus the game’s first African-American pro and the first in what would become known as Organized Baseball,” wrote Brian McKenna in a biography of Fowler that appeared in a publication of the Society for American Baseball Research.
The game, and Fowler’s involvement in baseball in general, did not go smoothly. Although he was known as a slick-fielding second baseman, Crighton said, he did pitch one game against the London, Ontario Tecumsehs. He was winning, 3-0, and had given up only two hits, when the opposing team walked off the field en masse. McKenna writes that there was speculation — never articulated — that the reason was that the Ontario players were unhappy about playing a team with a Black member.
Although the plaque stands outside Fraser Field, Crighton said there’s really no firm knowledge of where the games were played in 1878.
“We thought it might be the Barry Park area, but we’re not sure,” he said. “There was an area over by where English is now that was actually a race track, and it could have been there. We had the plaque put at Fraser just to show his contribution to the sport.”
The local newspaper reporting on the Lynn-London game was in its infancy, having been established the previous December. The Daily Evening Item summed it up thusly:
“The Tecumsehs left Lynn in a very disgusted state. To be whitewashed by a club which they felt morally certain of vanquishing with ease, as they had the day before, was too much. It was evident to all the spectators that they were ready to jump at a chance to forfeit the game, which they saw they were incapable of winning.”
Later, in the same story, The Item wrote that Fowler was “a very fine pitcher, and it is a pity he cannot be permanently secured.”
It went on to explain that Fowler’s parents did not want him to play organized ball, but he said he’d play anywhere and anytime the Oaks wanted him.
Fowler, however, suffered from the prejudices that kept Major League Baseball segregated until 1947, when Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
McKenna wrote, “His nickname was ‘Bud’ because that’s how he referred to everyone, but more often he was identified in print as the ‘colored’ ballplayer, or ‘darkey’ or merely ‘the coon.’
“One newspaper sarcastically referred to him as ‘not a blonde.’ He was occasionally expelled from his club in midseason because his teammates objected to playing with a Black man. Opponents objected, too, even more so; hence, Bud started wearing wooden slats to cover his shins from sliding base runners. Not surprisingly, Fowler’s stays with white clubs and leagues were typically short.”
Fowler died in 1913 at the age of 54.
Fowler and Buck O’Neil, another African-American pioneer, were chosen for the Hall of Fame by the Early Baseball Era Committee. Also being inducted, after having been elected by the Golden Days Era Committee, are Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso and Tony Oliva.
