Frank Grant: Negro Leagues Player was Enshrined in Baseball's Hall of Fame in 2006

Only 16 second basemen have been enshrined at the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. That's seventeen if you count Rod Carew. One of the 16 was a Negro Leagues player who was enshrined by the Veterans Committee in 2006, over a century after he hung up his spikes in 1903.

Born in the year the American Civil War ended in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Frank Grant started his baseball career in Meriden, Connecticut, then was picked up by the Buffalo, New York franchise in the Eastern League (now called the International League) for the 1886 season. The Easten League was the highest rung of the minor leagues (the equivalent of today's AAA ball) and while it wasn't exactly integrated at the time, it did have African American players. The local press was told that Frank Grant was a "Spaniard."

As a 21-year-old with the Buffalo Bisons in 1886, Grant batted .344 and led the Eastern League with 11 home runs. He also stole 40 bases, tops on the Bisons.

Frank Grant was prevented from moving up to one of the professional leagues by the imposition of Jim Crow segregation in pro baseball that kept African Americans out of both the major leagues and other "professional" leagues like the Eastern League for nearly three quarters of a century. The segregation of pro baseball lasted until 1945, when Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Montreal Royals, the Brooklyn Dodgers' minor league franchise in the now-renamed International League.

Jackie Robinson led the International League in batting with a .349 average, and also led the Royals to the IL title. Robinson made the major leagues the next year, becoming the first African American to play Big League Baseball since Fleetwood Walker was blackballed from the American Association in 1884.

Every team in the major leagues retired Jackie Robinson's number 42 as a sign of respect for the man. Robinson was the first African American inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 1962, his first year of eligibility. Larry Doby, the African American player who integrated the American League that same year, also is in the Hall of Fame. Doby was voted in by the Veterans Committee in 1998.

Blackballed

After playing the 1886, '87 and '88 season with Buffalo, Frank Grant was blackballed from "professional" baseball. He is the only African American in the 19th century to play three consecutive seasons with the same "professional" (that is, primarily Caucasian) team.

Like Jackie Robinson, Frank Grant was a keystone sacker. Grant generally is considered the greatest African American player of the 19th century, toiling the bulk of his career in the Negro Leagues.

The first African American to play pro baseball, John "Bud" Fowler, played all the positions including pitcher a nomadic career that saw him make the rounds of the minor leagues and semi-pro teams. Like Grant and Robinson, Fowler also played at second base, where he wore wooden shinguards to protect himself from the spikes of hard sliding white opponents.

Bud Fowler made his "pro" ball debut in 1878. Five years later, Moses Fleetwood Walker was signed by the minor league Toledo Blue Stockings. In 1884, the Blue Stockings were promoted into the American Association, a major league in competition with the segregated National League.

Because of the transfer of the Blue Stockings to the American Association, the 27-year-old Fleetwood Walker was the first African American in the major leagues. During the 1884 season, Fleet Walker appeared in 110 games. His kid brother Welday Walker joined the Blue Stockings in mid-season.

The college-educated Walker (Oberlin College) was a fine defensive catcher who hit .263. However, there were troubles throughout the season, as some of the Blue Stockings pitchers didn't want to be caught by a black man.

According to baseball historian Jim Overmeyer, co-author of the book Shades of Glory about black baseball, "Some of the pitchers wouldn't let Fleet Walker call pitches for them. They would throw whatever they wanted, even purposely trying to cross up Walker. What's interesting is that those players later admitted that Walker caught all the pitches anyway."

Fleet Walker and his brother Welday two were effectively blackballed from major league baseball when the American Association dropped the Toledo Blue Stockings from the league after the 1884 season.

Hall of Fame

Jim Overmeyer was one of the members of a special committee that voted Frank Grant and Negro League player/team owner/sportswriter Sol White into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.

Sol White played in the mostly white minor leagues in the 1880s. As a third baseman, White hit a lusty .381 while playing for the Wheeling, West Virginia franchise in the Ohio State League in 1887. The Ohio State League banned blacks the next season, so White moved on to the Eastern League that still permitted African American players, including Frank Grant.

After the 1887 season, the Eastern League put a ban on the signing of African American players, though those already in the league like Grant were allowed to remain under contract.

Frank Grant quit after the 1888 season. According to Overmeyer, he gave up, tired of fighting the racism and hostility that manifested itself on the playing field.

After 1890, no African Americans remained in "pro" baseball. Frank Grant and Sol White played for all-black teams. In 1902, Sol White helped create the all-black Philadelphia Giants and served as the team captain.

The Philly Giants became one of the leading teams in the Negro Leagues, winning the Negro League's World's Championship for three straight years from 1905-07. He then went on to manage the New York Lincoln Giants in 1911 and the Boston Giants in 1912 while writing on baseball for African American newspapers. White also managed the Negro National League Cleveland Browns in 1924.

In 1907 book, he published the first book about African American baseball, Sol White's Official Base Ball Guide.

Frank Grant played on the Philadelphia Giants in its inaugural seasons of 1902 and '03. He retired after the 1903 season. Grant died on May 27, 1937 in New York City, several months short of his 72nd birthday. He was buried in an unmarked grave. Fortunately for baseball, he not only is remembered as one of the finest players of the 19th Century, but is rightly enshrined in Cooperstown among his peers.

Sources:

New York Times, " Breaking a Barrier 60 Years Before Robinson "