On Monday, every player in Major League Baseball will wear Jackie Robinson’s No. 42 to honor the player who broke baseball’s color barrier on April 15, 1947. The country is also marking the centennial of Robinson’s birth on Jan. 31, 1919 throughout the year.
But the first African American to play regularly in the big leagues wasn’t the Brooklyn Dodgers second baseman, it was Moses Fleetwood “Fleet” Walker.
On May 1, 1884, the 26-year-old Walker was the catcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings in their opening game in the then-major league American Association. Six decades later, while Robinson was hailed as a pioneer, Walker was seen more as a curiosity.
Before a June game against the original Washington Nationals, The Washington Post noted that Toledo’s catcher “is a colored man, and no doubt many will attend the game to see our ‘colored brother’ in a new role.” After Toledo won, The Post reported that Walker played in “fine style” catching star pitcher Tony Mullane.
Like many of Walker’s white teammates, Mullane respected the barehanded catcher as a player but not as an equal. Walker “was the best catcher I ever worked with,” Mullane said years later, “but I disliked a Negro, and whenever I had to pitch to him I pitched anything I wanted without looking at his signals.”
Walker first gained attention playing for Oberlin College in Ohio and then the University of Michigan, where he studied law. In 1883, the Toledo team recruited him to play in the new Northwestern League, a minor league. The club in Peoria, Ill., tried to ban Walker, but the demand “met with such disapprobation” that it was withdrawn, one newspaper reported.
The personable Walker was popular with many white sportswriters. The Sporting News later described him as “an avid reader of high-grade literature and a brilliant conversationalist.” But Walker faced discrimination on and off the field.
In Fort Wayne, Ind., a local newspaper reported, a “priggish head waiter” at one restaurant refused to seat Walker, who was said to be well-paid. Walker, the paper said, “receives more money in a week than the big-headed waiter had in six months, and is far more advanced mentally of the white man.” The waiter was fired.
Walker was never a great player, but was described as “a plucky catcher, a hard hitter and a daring and successful base runner.” He led Toledo to the Northwestern League pennant in 1883. The next season Toledo joined the American Association, which added four teams, including the Washington Nationals and the forerunner of the Brooklyn Dodgers.