Imagine major-league baseball without such stars as Albert Belle, Ken Griffey, Jr., or ‘Mo Vaughn, three of the best players in the game today. Deprived of the tremendous skills that they and many of their African-American colleagues display, this country’s national pastime would be a mere shadow of the game loved by so many. Yet, had Jackie Robinson not broken baseball’s color line in 1947, these players–simply because of their race–might never have gotten the chance to play. Indeed, for many of the nation’s best ball players before 1947, this unfortunate scenario was the reality.

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Segregated baseball lasted sixty years, from 1887 when Adrian Cap Anson, the Babe Ruth of his day, tried to order a black opponent off the field, until 1947 when Jackie Robinson took his place in the infield at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. During that time, many of the most gifted players ever to grace a baseball diamond pitched, hit, and ran their way into baseball immortality, with much of America unaware of their existence.

Some of these great players–men like Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, and later, Henry Aaron–having benefited from Robinson’s historic move to the big leagues, followed him there. However, many other black standouts, including Josh Gibson, John Henry Lloyd, Smoky Joe Williams, James Thomas Cool Papa Bell, and Oscar Charleston missed out.

African Americans have played baseball since the game’s beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century. They can trace their professional ties within the sport to John Bud Fowler, who was born, appropriately enough, in Cooperstown, New York, in 1854. Fowler played briefly for a white professional team in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1872, but was eventually forced to admit that My skin is against me. The second black professional, Moses Fleetwood Walker, a graduate of Oberlin College, played for Toledo in the American Association in 1883. When the Association became a major league for one year in 1884, Moses and his brother Welday became the first two black big-leaguers, beating Jackie Robinson by 63 years.

Following Walker’s lead, several other black players quickly joined minor-league teams. A diminutive second baseman, Frank Grant, played with Buffalo in the International League from 1886 to ‘88, batting .340, .366, and .326 in his three seasons there. Grant drew a lot of walks, as pitchers tended to aim at his head rather than at the catcher’s mitt. The International League also produced pitcher George Stovey, a black Canadian who won 33 games for Newark one year, while losing only 4. When the white leagues passed a rule ousting black players, Grant and Stovey joined the Cuban Giants, the first black, major-league-caliber professional team.

In 1902, Andrew Foster, a preacher’s son from Texas then pitching for the black Philadelphia Cuban X-Giants, defeated the Philadelphia Athletics’ star pitcher, Rube Waddell in an exhibition game. That feat earned Foster the nickname Rube, which he carried the rest of his life. By 1905, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ star shortstop, Honus Wagner, was calling Rube the smoothest pitcher I’ve ever seen. Foster later went on to form one of the great teams of all time, the Chicago American Giants. And in 1920, he assembled eight teams into the Negro National League, the first successful black baseball league and the model for the Negro Leagues that flourished for many years.

In an age of unlettered, rough-neck ballplayers, a gangling shortstop from Florida named John Henry Lloyd, whose foulest oath was Gosh bob it!, was the gentleman of black baseball, much as Christy Mathewson was the model gentleman of white baseball at that time. Lloyd scooped up ground balls, dirt and all. He cradled his bat in the crook of his elbow and hit stinging line drives to all fields. His lifetime average of .350 was the third highest in the history of the Negro Leagues, and during games against white big-leaguers he batted .306. Inevitably, Lloyd was dubbed the black Wagner, leading Honus to reply softly that he was proud to be compared with such a great player.

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