Bud Fowler...Baseball Nomad
"Baseball, of course, was not born in Cooperstown, but Bud Fowler, one its unwanted children, was."
-Jules Tygiel in 'Baseball's Great Experiment'
When it comes to nineteenth century Black baseball players - hell, any baseball players during this time - few, if any, can rival the resume of Bud Fowler. An early baseball evangelist, he was perhaps the first play the national game across the nation. Between playing, managing, coaching, promoting, advocating, mentoring, organizing, and scouting, Fowler's career in baseball spanned over three decades with approximately forty teams. Why so many teams? Without question, the color of his skin greased many a railway out of town and forced him to a premature exit. Early independent Black baseball was also often fraught with instability and precariousness.
No matter. Bud Fowler was doggedly determined to make a living playing the game the best he could, circumstances be damned.
As a byproduct of the aforementioned instability, he was an early champion of an all-Black baseball league. Fowler correctly reasoned the league would be made stronger by the pooling of resources. He understood the logistical side of baseball as well as anyone; he himself would often fulfill most major administrative roles found both within a team and even a league office - sometimes simultaneously (while probably playing second base, too). Though his vision of a Black baseball league wouldn't be realized during his lifetime, it would come to fruition on the back of Andrew 'Rube' Foster and others in the form of the Negro National League, founded in 1920.
Born John W. Jackson in Fort Plain, New York on March 16, 1858, Bud was primarily raised in Cooperstown (where one should find his plaque some day). Though much information about his upbringing has yet to be discovered, it is known that his father supported the family by picking hops and cutting hair as a barber, and that young John reputedly learned the game of baseball on the grassy fields of the Cooperstown Seminary. When and why he changed his name to 'Bud Fowler' is the subject of speculation; one theory is the baseball alias was adopted to avoid strife among his family, who may not have approved of the sport. It's also possible 'Bud' was bestowed upon him, as he allegedly referred to everyone else by the name.
His baseball career began in 1878 when he was 20. His season began playing for a amateur team out of Chelsea, Massachusetts, but he was soon inked to pitch for the Lynn (MA) Live Oaks of the International Association (IA). The IA, in some respects anyway, represented an early minor league, which made Bud the first Black professional ballplayer among the ranks of 'organized baseball' (parlance for 'white baseball').
In post-Civil War America, the sport of baseball was burgeoning and quickly sweeping across the country - finding particular growth with marginalized populations such as immigrants and African Americans. Bud, who would soon garner the reputation of having the ability to play virtually anywhere on the diamond (with a penchant for making high rates of contact at the plate), fully committed himself to a nomadic baseball life. For a Black man in the sport, already shuttered from a majority of teams and leagues, this willingness to be mobile was merely a prerequisite for a prolonged career. After the 1878 season Bud spent the next seven years (1879-1886) on the road at a damn near dizzying array of locales:
1879
Malden, Massachusetts (Malden Club)
1881
Ontario, Canada (Guelph Maple Leafs)
1882
New Orleans, Louisiana (Pickwick Club)
Richmond, Virginia (Richmond Black Swans)
1883
St. Louis, Missouri (St. Louis Black Sox)
Niles, Ohio (Niles Grays)
1884
Stillwater, Minnesota (The Stillwaters)*
1885
Keokuk, Iowa (Keokuk Hawkeyes)*
Pueblo, Colorado (Pueblo Pastimes)*
1886
Topeka, Kansas (Topeka Capitals)*
*integrated teams that played in otherwise white minor leagues
The Color Barrier Takes Hold
For the 1887 season, Bud (now 29) had secured a spot playing second base on his home-state Binghamton Bingos (also referred to as the 'Crickets') in the International League. It was during that season that a color barrier in baseball, though more than just sporadically enforced previously, quickly became Teflon strong. On July 14, Chicago White Stockings star Adrian 'Cap' Anson, among the most famous ballplayers in the entire country, refused to play an exhibition against an integrated Newark Little Giants club if the projected starting battery of George Washington Stovey and Moses Fleetwood Walker took the field. Both Stovey and Walker were Black.
As it were, it was during Bud's time with Binghamton that he took to stuffing his pants with wooden slats to protect himself from sliding baserunners with their spikes raised high at the Black man. In doing so, Bud appears to be the first baseball player in history to don shin guards. One International League player later claimed Bud would intentionally muff fielding chances, fearing injury if he attempted to tag certain runners out. 'About half of the pitchers,' the unnamed player shared, 'Try their best to hit the colored players when they are at bat.'
Truthfully, it wasn't just his opponents Fowler had to look out for. The very month of Anson's public protest, a number of Bud's teammates staged their own - refusing to take the field with Fowler manning the keystone sack. He was soon out of a job in Binghamton.
Anson's (and Bud's teammates) lead was quickly followed. Within a few short years, nearly all the Black players in every major and minor league circuit had been snuffed out, and baseball's infamous color barrier would be in-place for nearly six decades. The barrier was constructed not by way of any actual written rules, but rather a 'gentleman's agreement' among white team owners and league commissioners.
Bud, who also supported himself as a barber, would stay mobile. His tactic of simply outrunning the color barrier actually worked for a time. In fact, after leaving Binghamton, he landed a gig with a semi-pro team in Montpelier, Vermont - where he became the first Black manager of an integrated ball club.
After a brief stopover in Indiana in early 1888, Bud headed west once again, suiting up for the Santa Fe (New Mexico) Ancients. He would return east and spend most of the next several years back in the Midwest. Even now in his thirties, Bud still seemed to possess the endurance of a marathoner. Though barred from the white teams and leagues that could have earned him a much more lucrative salary, Bud was always hitting the pavement to find new sponsors, form new teams, find talented players, and schedule games against teams that would then draw fans in. Bud would be forced to do everything the hard way - with little support from anyone - fueled only by a tenacious and purposeful resolve to make a living playing the national game.
“My skin is against me. If I had not been quite so black, I might have caught on as a Spaniard or something of that kind. The race prejudice is so strong that my black skin barred me.”
-Bud Fowler, 1895
One such team that was formed by Bud was called the Page Fence Giants, an all-Black team based in Adrian, Michigan in 1895. The Giants, sponsored by the Page Woven Wire Fence Company, were wildly successful and have broken into the pantheon of most successful Black franchises of the nineteenth century. Though Bud left the team during the 1895 season, the Giants continued play through 1898. To help promote the team in whatever city they happen to be playing in that particular day, Bud had the fellas ride bicycles through town to drum up interest in their games. The showmanship that would become a staple of the Negro Leagues can be traced, in part, back to Bud.
The Muncie Londons
The Team Forms Up...
Heading into the 1896 season, Bud announced his plans to reorganize an all-Black team from Rock City, Tennessee and relocate them to Muncie, Indiana. Taking advantage of the central Indiana gas boom, the population of the Hoosier city had quadrupled over the previous two decades, and boasted a population of over 20,000 around the turn of the century. Muncie, which rests about fifty miles northeast of Indianapolis, is probably best-known as the modern-day home of Ball State University.
By 1900, the Black population of Muncie numbered exactly 739 - a figure that had also grown exponentially due to the gas boom - having tripled during the previous two decades.
Sponsored by the local London Clothing Company, the team would be known as the Muncie Londons. A perk of being sponsored by a clothing company? The team would look damn fine on the field, too. According to the February 15, 1896 issue of Muncie Evening Press, the uniforms consisted of "tan pants and shirts, maroon stockings, caps, belts and maroon sweaters trimmed in red and with 'London' in red letters on the breast."
The old professional, soon to be 38, relegated himself to first base in addition to managerial and scheduling duties.
The Londons, in addition to Fowler himself, featured some of the very best Black baseball players of the time, including a pair of standout Harrys in third baseman Harry Hyde and ace pitcher Harry Buckner.
Catching duties would be handled by Nashville native Haywood Rose. While it's not known how he acquired his nickname of 'Kissing Bug', as a ballplayer he would later be dubbed 'worth the price of admission himself'.
After the team had trained for the spring in Nashville, reportedly crossing bats in an exhibition with HBCU Fisk University (of which five Londons were said to be alumni), the club now looked to begin their reputed nationwide schedule (plus Canada). They arrived in Muncie by train on April 21.
Successes and Failures Against the Fort Wayne Farmers
The swaggering Londons first home games (April 27-28) would be a challenge; a two-game set against the Fort Wayne Farmers (also known as the 'Colts') of the Interstate League. The Farmers of 1896 were a Class C minor league team stocked with a dozen past or future major leaguers. If the team carried a loose affiliation with the Cleveland Spiders of the National League, it was made stronger by the fact that the Farmers were managed by first baseman George Tebeau, the older brother of Spiders manager/first baseman Patsy Tebeau. At the major league level, the younger Tebeau (widely-regarded as an excellent baseball mind) held court over a Spiders team that boasted two future members of the Baseball Hall of Fame in pitcher Cy Young and center fielder Jesse 'Crab' Burkett.
The Farmers handed the ball to southpaw Phil Knell for the first game on April 27. Knell, on the other side of thirty, had spent much of the previous eight years at the major league level, compiling 79 career wins. Rounding out the battery was someone on the other side of the baseball string, Lou Criger. Criger, age 24, would make his major league debut later that season with the Spiders, and would spend the next decade as Cy Young's personal catcher.
Fowler handed the ball to the right-hander Buckner to square off against the seasoned Farmers.
Between 300-400 patrons clicked through the Westside Park turnstile, having paid a quarter each, to watch the Monday, April 27 game (the very day future Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby was born in Texas). The crowd was not disappointed by the 3:00 pm contest that the Muncie Morning News called a 'brilliant game', and 'one of the best games ever witnessed in Muncie'. The Cleveland farmhands, despite being outhit by the Londons five to three, nipped the Blackballers by a final tally of 4-3. Though Buckner had limited the Farmers to just a few hits, he walked eight batters to keep the basepaths busy. Though the local rags complimented the Londons infield defense, it was also written that the game would have been no contest if the Londons could have scratched out a few timely hits.
The following day, Tebeau handed the ball to 'Doughnut Bill' Carrick, a future five-year major leaguer (63 career wins). According to the scribe of the Muncie Morning News, Carrick was 'as fresh as a mushroom after yesterday morning's shower.' So there was that. Bud handed the ball to his pitcher Hart.
After Bud walked and advanced to second base in the third inning, Farmers catcher Criger, noting Fowler's extended lead off second base, attempted to pick him off. Criger's throw was an errant one, and the ball to skirted into the outfield grass. Bud, flashing some speed, scampered home to give the Londons a 1-0 lead.
The Farmers countered with seven runs over the next three innings themselves, and Carrick tightened the reins on the Londons - striking out 11 hitters in an eventual 8-1 rout.
Bud (pictured in problematic cartoon) went 1-for-2 with a walk and scored the team's only run, made his displeasure vocally-known on a number of close plays that went against his team, particularly during the Farmers five-run fourth inning. The Muncie Evening Press voiced their support of Fowler, stating that 'in two or three close decisions yesterday it seemed to this grandstand witness the umpire gave the colored boys the worst of it.'
Two days after the games were played, the Muncie dailies began to suspect folks were staying away from the ballpark due to the Londons being an all-Black team.
'The attendance at the opening games was not satisfactory,' the Muncie Evening Press crowed, 'Last year, people clamored for a baseball team. Now they have two fine teams and should give them their support.'
Though the Muncie Morning News offered a practical reason for the low attendance ('a shortage of quarters'), they also didn't mince words during their April 30 edition, stating that '(just) because the Londons are colored players is no reason for people to stay away from the park. They play fast ball and deserve patronage.'
Despite the disappointing losses compounded by lackluster attendance, Bud and the Londons traveled to Fort Wayne to square off against the Farmers again on May 1. After a 10-2 defeat in game one, Harry Buckner guided the Londons to a 7-2 victory in game two. After the Londons had taken an early 5-0 lead, the Farmers 'subjected the (Londons) to the most inhumane treatment (on the field),' which apparently prompted even the Fort Wayne fans to cheer for the visiting club and deride the home team. The Fort Wayne newspapers lauded the Londons for their composure and were highly critical of the local team antics, such as the Farmer baserunners who slid into bases needlessly with their spikes high. Also drawing particular ire were the actions of shortstop Thomas Earley, who, after Buckner sat him down on strikes, threw his bat halfway across the diamond.
'Only the widespread prejudice against a colored baseball player prevents the recognition of Buckner as a star of the first magnitude,' the Muncie Evening Press reported after the game, 'He is without a doubt one of the best pitchers in the country, and if he were white he would be in first-class company.'
Next, the team traveled to Anderson, Indiana for a weekend series on May 2-3. Unfortunately, after losing the Saturday game, more issues arose for Fowler and the Londons; a local constable and deputies crashed the game on May 3, arresting both teams for violating an ordinance which forbade Sunday baseball (or any other recreational activities). The team appeared to be held in the Madison County jail for a day, which forced them to miss their scheduled game on May 4 against a Warsaw, Indiana-based team.
The Final Straw
By any estimation, Fowler's 1896 season with the Londons was not going well; poor attendance, sporadic on-the-field success, dangerous racially-charged tactics exercised by opposing teams, being jailed for playing ball on Sunday, missing games due to aforementioned jailing...you get it. To make matters worse, it would appear as though Bud was having issues collecting his team's share of the gate receipts when they were playing out-of-town. On at least one occasion, he had to settle for a lesser amount than originally agreed upon (the Anderson team only gave Bud and the Londons $35 of the $50 the team was promised).
On Friday, May 8, during a 35-9 Londons pulverization over a team from nearby Alexandria, Indiana, one of Bud's worst nightmares was realized - only 50 fans showed up at the ballpark. Though a decisive victory, the game was a complete fiasco; several members of the visiting Alexandria team quit midgame, while others entered the stands to plead with the few fans to stop their jeering. Bud respected
On the Sunday, May 10 edition of the Muncie Daily Herald, it was announced that the Londons secretary Teddy Whiteman had jumped ship, and that the team was 'short on cash, owing to poor attendance and may go (belly-)up at any time...it is a shame that such a good team should be disbanded.'
After the disastrous Alexandria game, Bud, seeing the clear writing on the wall, left Muncie and 'was not thought to be returning,' reported the local rags. Fowler's whereabouts were confirmed by a front page story on the May 11 edition of the Muncie Evening Press (left).
Incredibly, Fowler's time in Muncie had lasted less than three weeks.
It was reported that Bud had taken the paltry gate receipts from the Alexandria game and left town. The Londons were able to continue play for a time, but soon, predictably, folded. While it is not possible to know what Bud did with the gate funds, it is possible that they went to creditors, opposing teams, or even the Madison County jail. In speaking with the Sporting News magazine in October of 1896, it seems even more likely that Bud had more than likely sank most of his own money into the endeavor:
"It was hard picking for a colored player this year. I didn't make a living; I just existed."
-Bud Fowler, 1896
The impact and inequity of baseball's color barrier is spelled out plainly - Bud was one of the most famous Black baseball players in the country, yet he could hardly scratch out a living playing the game.
Bud continued to toil among the amateur and semi-pro ranks of baseball. He found himself in Galveston, Texas the following year (a driver and stakeholder in the short-lived Lone Star Colored Baseball League), along with suiting up for a team based in Lima, Ohio. He stayed in the game for nearly the rest of his life - even trying to organize a team to take a trip to Hawaii.
Fowler died on February 26, 1913 at his sister's home in Frankfort, New York, just weeks shy of his 55th birthday. Despite his lifelong commitment to the advancement of baseball and the Black player's place in the institution, he died with little money and in relative obscurity. For nearly eight decades, Fowler's grave remained unmarked until a local SABR chapter purchased and dedicated a headstone for him in 1987 - exactly 100 years after Cap Anson's inflammatory proclamation.
What is his rightful place in baseball history? For his contributions, nothing short of a induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame as a 'Pioneer' to the game. Yeah, admittedly I am a fan of Fowler's, but there are no delusions of grandeur or hyperbole attached to this view. In fact, just last year, the Society for American Baseball Research named Fowler their 'Overlooked 19th Century Base Ball Legend of 2020'.
His biographer Jeffrey Michael Laing asserts:
"..Bud Fowler never wavered in his passion for the national pastime and held on to the ever-receding dream that there was a future for African Americans in the national pastime, if not on integrated teams at the highest level of the game at least owners and managers of all-black (sic) clubs."
Baseball historian Peter Morris echoes this sentiment:
"Despite the treatment he received, Bud Fowler never lost his passion for baseball and never gave up on the hope that the day would come when ballplayers would be judged on their merits rather than the color of their skin."
Though Bud Fowler wouldn't live to see the formal establishments of the Negro Leagues, nor obviously their recent classification as 'major leagues', all who followed him unequivocally stood on the shoulders of the wiry second baseman...who fortunately never knew when to quit.
Additional Reading:
Now that we all have a newfound or sharpened appreciation for Bud, I can't recommend his 2013 biography enough. Written by Jeffrey Michael Laing, Bud Fowler: Baseball's First Black Professional is easily the most comprehensive work done on Bud to-date. It's pretty much available anywhere, but here's the McFarland link. If you want to understand Bud's efforts in baseball, or have a better understanding of nineteenth century baseball at-large, Laing will help.
If you are looking for an excellent overview/summation of Bud's career, Brian McKenna wrote his biography for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), and you can find it here.
If you really want to dig into the primary sources here (which I used liberally for this tale), the Londons are covered extensively by the Muncie papers in 1896. All are found on Newspapers.com.