Onetime S.F. player makes hall of fame 108 years after his death
ne of the new inductees into the National Baseball Hall of Fame was a smooth second baseman who once owned a barbershop on the Santa Fe Plaza. His name was Bud Fowler, a Black man who faced bigotry and barriers in every town and on every baseball diamond.
Fowler integrated the New Mexico Baseball League in 1888, its only year of existence.
He told the old Santa Fe Herald he arrived to find the New Mexico Territory anything but hospitable. Fowler had been barred from the dining room at the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, N.M.
He played in 22 games late in the season for the Santa Fe franchise. His team won the pennant, and Fowler made an off-field acquisition. He and a white partner bought a barbershop.
Business venture or not, it was on to the next town for Fowler when the New Mexico league folded.
Across 25 years, he played on teams in 22 states and Canada. His many moves were not by choice.
“The color of Fowler’s skin forced him into a more nomadic career than his white contemporaries,” the Hall of Fame staff in Cooperstown, N.Y., wrote of his career.
Being a terrific player might have been enough for Fowler to get a job. It often wasn’t enough for him to keep it.
He signed in 1887 with the Binghamton Bingos of the International League. The club fired Fowler when he was batting .350 and had stolen 30 bases in 30 games.
Excellent results didn’t matter. Complaints from fans, opponents and even teammates could stop integration.
The International League admitted as much a month after Fowler’s dismissal. The league secretary decreed that no franchise could “promulgate contracts with colored players.”
Fowler played in Santa Fe the following season. It proved to be an important stop in illuminating his life’s work.
The late Santa Fe teacher and author Jeffrey Michael Laing heard of a Black man playing a pivotal role on a championship team. He wanted to know more.
“I soon found myself immersed in the life of an African-American Renaissance man of the diamond,” Laing wrote in the preface to his biography of Fowler.
The book was published in 2013, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the pioneering player’s death. Titled Bud Fowler: Baseball’s First Black Professional, it called on the Hall of Fame to posthumously induct Fowler.
Laing wrote: “My fondest wish is that this consideration of Bud Fowler’s life and times will encourage others to study the man and his achievements on and off the diamond, and lead eventually to a reconsideration of the Hall of Fame’s decision to close the doors on African-American players who never played in the major leagues.”
Fowler’s induction will occur next summer. It expands an abbreviated mention of him in Cooperstown that read: “1878. First African-American Professional Player, Bud Fowler, plays for pay in Lynn, Massachusetts, on a team in the minor league International Association.”
Laing wasn’t alone in vouching for Fowler’s talents. Celebrated baseball historians such as Robert Peterson considered Fowler a player of majorleague caliber held back by a racist society.
Peterson wrote the book Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams.
Slavery was still alive when Fowler was born in 1858 in the village of Fort Plain, N.Y. His family moved to Cooperstown
during Fowler’s boyhood, decades before baseball’s hall of fame was established in 1936.
Fowler’s father was a barber. The young boy liked the shop well enough, but nothing could compare to a baseball field.
Fowler was of ordinary size for his era, 5-foot-7 and 155 pounds. There was nothing ordinary about his athletic ability. He could play every position at high levels of competition.
Business interested him, but many doors were slammed shut. No matter how skilled a Black player or entrepreneur was, he wouldn’t be allowed in Major League Baseball during Fowler’s lifetime.
Fowler in 1895 joined with a trio of white businessmen and Grant “Home Run” Johnson to form an allBlack pro team in Michigan, the Page Fence Giants.
Bigotry remained entrenched in America. Long after Fowler’s death in 1913, Black players were banned from the major leagues by unwritten rule.
If white America demanded segregation, Black America would have a league of its own.
Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston and hundreds of other great players performed in the Negro Leagues. Most never had a chance to play in the major leagues.
Change finally occurred in 1947. The Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson as their first baseman. He became the first Black player in the 20th century to reach the major leagues, playing well while withstanding death threats, taunts and protesting Klansmen.
Robinson was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1962. That was six years after his playing career ended.
Not every wrong is righted within a lifetime. Fowler’s selection came 108 years after his death.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich @sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.