LYNN — Sunday, when the likes of David Ortiz and Jim Kaat are inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame, one of the game’s true pioneers, and one with strong Lynn connections, will join them.
John W. Jackson Jr., otherwise known as Bud Fowler, is acknowledged to be the first African-American professional baseball player. And the first game he played as a professional was in Lynn, on, or close to, the site that is now Barry Park.
Friday, prior to their game with the Vermont Mountaineers, the North Shore Navigators paid tribute to Fowler, in conjunction with the Lynn Museum/Lynn Arts and the North Shore Juneteenth Association.
Fowler 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.
“It shows you,” said North Shore Juneteenth President Nicole MacLean. “How important Lynn was to the whole issue of African-American history. So much happened here.
“And not only that it happened,” she said, “but what he went through. It’s really amazing.”
“I think about the courage it took for him to do that,” said Doneeca Thurston, executive director of the Lynn Museum. “For me, being a Lynn kid and learning about history, you learned about Martin Luther King, but there really wasn’t any connection to the city. Something like this reminds people of how much has happened.”
MacLain pointed to things like the Frederick Douglass monument as positive steps in ensuring that the city’s legacy is preserved.
Fowler’s notoriety 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, 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.
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.
