Washington DC
Professional Separation
“Base ball is business now, Nick, and I am trying to arrange our games to make them successful and make them pay,” Harry Wright, the manager of the professional Boston Red Stockings, wrote to Nicholas Young in 1872.1 The concept of “making baseball pay” was not, of course, an entirely new one. Gate receipts, gambling revenues, and covert payments to players had long been part of the game. The broad acceptance, however, of a club paying its players for their baseball services represented a departure from the game’s long-held ideals of amateurism. The acceptance of professionalism in baseball changed the game forever, paving the way for the National League (and later the American League), the World Series, and the modern game of baseball.
That baseball’s professionalization served also to entrench racial segregation in the game might seem contradictory. With market forces unleashed, wouldn’t white baseball club owners take advantage of all available baseball talent? Yes, eventually.2 But during the 1870s describing a ballplayer as a “professional” became another, new, way of saying he was white. Building on the decisions and customs of the 1860s, the NAPBBP set an example of racial segregation that would be adhered to by more than 99 percent of white ball clubs, for the next eighty years. While the National Association of Professional Base Ball Clubs itself was composed of only a few clubs, the organization became the focus of the baseball press and baseball fans.3
Professionalism bolstered racial exclusion in many arenas of American society. Specialization and certification often begot separation. When the American Library Association (ALA), for example, formed in the mid-1870s, the move to create an organized, hierarchical, and respectable profession led also to a declaration on racial separation. Reconciliationist overtures, in the name of creating a national (white) body, quickly surfaced. Meeting in Atlanta in 1876 to encourage the growth of librarianship in the South, the ALA leadership decided against allowing noted bibliophile W. E. B. DuBois to speak, reasoning that there existed “the need to be very careful and conservative on the negro [sic] question at this time.”4 The ALA did not allow black membership. Professional, ALA-credentialed librarians would not only possess training and codified skills, but be, without exception, white.
The baseball community for its part did not give up on amateurism easily. The New York Clipper had long worried about the influence of money and gambling on the game. Henry Chadwick weighed in frequently on the topic. Chadwick did not object to professionalism per se, but rather feared that professionals would be the “tools” of politicians and gambling rings.5 As the first NAPBBP convention approached in March 1871, the Clipper opined that professionalism meant a decline in equal opportunity. The dominance of professional clubs, the Clipper editorialized, would create a situation of “arbitrary control exhibited by a small minority over a large majority.” The paper denounced this “abuse of power” and warned that professionalism would ruin the game.6
The rise of professional baseball clubs made baseball more like the rest of the working world. Movements toward specialization and certification in professional associations—trends that would be borne out further during the Progressive Era of the late nineteenth century—resulted in higher wages but also new barriers of entry for one seeking to join a profession. To become a paid, expert baseball player became more difficult with the establishment of the NAPBBP. Again, the reality of money changing hands between club owners and players was not the most important change—indeed, these transactions had been occurring for many years. Rather, the establishment of a profession was, at least to an extent, the monopolization of certain skills, resources, and opportunities.7 Professional baseball created a “closed shop” of sorts.
Many black ballplayers had experienced workplace discrimination. Charles Douglass’s brother Lewis waited nine months for an up-or-down vote on his application to the Columbus Typographical Union. The union never rejected his application outright; instead (dealing with the issue in a somewhat similar manner to the way in which the Philadelphia Base Ball Association dealt with the Pythians), the organization tabled the application indefinitely.8 Similarly, the District of Columbia Medical Association denied three black physicians from Howard University membership in 1869. To then enforce its segregation stand, the DCMA decided shortly thereafter recommended that two Georgetown University doctors be fired for associating with Howard University.9
In terms of unskilled laborers, “muffins” in baseball jargon, blacks looking for union representation also faced rampant discrimination. When the National Labor Union—supposedly open to all laborers—refused to address the needs of black workers, the Colored National Labor Union emerged. Lewis Douglass served as secretary for the organization, and Frederick Douglass accepted the presidency of the CNLU in 1871. After a lengthy debate on the issue, the Knights of Labor also adopted segregationist policies.10 So although it has been argued that professionalism created a tendency for an industry “to organize itself less and less in terms of territory or race or hereditary status, and more and more in terms of function,” in baseball and many work arenas precisely the opposite reality emerged.11 Professionalism did not diminish racial bias in baseball; it became another layer of separation.
New Precedents of Baseball’s Racial Segregation
During the final months of 1870, it became increasingly clear that baseball’s strictly amateur days had ended. Not coincidentally, several additional nails in the coffin of baseball’s racial segregation were also pounded home during this period. On the latter front, in mid-September 1870 Chicago baseball organizers rejected an application from the city’s African American Blue Stocking Club to participate in a citywide tournament for reasons of race. Officially, Chicago’s white baseball leaders excluded the Blue Stockings “because the Blue Stockings were not deemed of sufficient strength to be entitled to consideration.” The Chicago Tribune also admitted, however, that “[the Blue Stockings’] social standing had somewhat to do with the matter.”12 The decision became another precedent supporting the increasingly ubiquitous idea that white and black baseball clubs should not commingle in organized events or associations.
Two months later the New York State Base Ball Association made waves for its own dealings with race. The NYSBBA was in decline. Only a handful of organizations made the effort to attend the November 10, 1870, meeting. The meeting agenda centered on selecting delegates for the upcoming NABBP convention. According to the New York Times, however, dissension arose due to the fact that the “leading professional club of New-York [the Mutual Club] was enabled to control the entire business of the convention in the interests of the professional class.”13 The amateurs had lost their positions of leadership. In this context and with the rise of professional baseball seeming inevitable, the role of black baseball somehow entered the discussion. The professional clubs used their disproportionate influence “to introduce a bone of contention into the councils of the fraternity,” reported the New York Times. A delegate representing the Star Club of Brooklyn pushed to clarify, further than had ever been done before, that black clubs should be kept out of white baseball associations.14
The Brooklyn Star Club delegate, a Mr. MacDiarmid, proposed a statute: the “prohibition of the admission of colored clubs into the National Convention.”15 A majority of the present delegates agreed; the motion passed. This policy undoubtedly went beyond the segregationist decisions of the 1867 conventions. The Pythians had been individually excluded by the Pennsylvania Association, but without the matter ever coming to an official vote or the issue of black clubs in general being addressed. Similarly, the nominating committee at the national convention of the same year, with their “it is not presumed by your committee that any club who have applied are composed of persons of color” statement, provided something less than an official measure delineating segregation. New York State’s sparsely attended convention, dominated by newly ascendant professional baseball clubs, wanted to make racial segregation more official.
National reaction came swiftly, decrying the proposal. The New York Times exhibited a schizophrenic sense of disbelief over the development. “Hitherto this subject [segregation] has been prevented from being breached in the Convention,” the Times declared, falsely. Never before had “questions of political bearing” been so directly introduced. The Times correspondent further worried that a truly candid discussion of racial segregation might mean the end of the National Association altogether. “One effect of this partisan and political action by our New-York Convention,” the Times predicted gravely, “will be the introduction of an acrimonious and exciting discussion at the National Convention, which will result in divided and discordant councils, if not the entire breaking up of the National Association.”16
The white baseball community, here given voice by the New York Times, evidenced a strange understanding of the day’s racial climate and the game’s racial history. In 1870 the “torrent of public opinion” favored “the equality of every human being before the law,” according to the Times. Therefore, the influential newspaper conceived of a formal ban on black participation as “a return to the usages in vogue in the days of human slavery.”17
In a description that echoed the British Parliament eighteenth-century claims that the American colonists had not needed official delegates or recognition because they had “virtual representation,” the Times also puzzlingly claimed that “colored clubs” had been “practically recognized as being on an equal footing before the law of the ball field.”18 After all, black clubs had played against their white counterparts in Washington DC and Philadelphia (as mentioned in previous chapters). This “practical representation,” according to the Times, was all that had been necessary or possible.
“Political questions” caused dissension, which had always scared baseball organizers. Additionally, no black clubs, according to the white press, had proved themselves worthy of joining the white baseball community. The Pythians had failed to impress on the ball field against white opposition, as had the Washington Alerts and Mutuals, so the rationale went. Thus, again using the Times as a barometer (since white baseball leaders did not elaborate on why they acted as they did in terms of race relations), the possibility for future inclusion hypothetically existed. “If a colored club is good enough to play ball with in order to make gate money, they are good enough to enter the National Association. But, as yet, no club has attempted to seek admission to the Base-ball Associations, and therefore this premature refusal to associate with them comes as a needless and gratuitous insult.”19
The reaction to the Star Club’s overt opposition to black inclusion in the National Association was dichotomous. There existed a seemingly progressive condemnation of overtly offensive statements toward black clubs, but also a fierce desire to avoid discussing baseball as it related to civil rights at all. Slavery had lost; new times mandated that black Americans enjoy similar freedoms and protections as whites. The conviction that discussing the issue of black baseball clubs’ place in the white baseball hierarchy should be avoided at all costs, however, reigned supreme. Even with the reconciliationist agenda having largely failed to bring the South fully into the fold, a paranoid fear still existed about introducing political dissension into the ranks of baseball. A paradoxical consensus emerged: statements of direct discrimination against black clubs should not take place because the discussion of black ballplayers’ place in the National Association should be avoided.
Recognizing the firestorm its delegate had created, the Brooklyn Star Club quickly tried to make amends. The club had a reputation to protect. The Star Club had formed in 1856 and won many National Association games. Among its historic contributions, the Brooklyn Star helped introduce the curveball to baseball and also the box score. Thus, the club disavowed its delegate for introducing a “question of political nature.” Agreeing that the move “cannot fail to prove prejudicial to that harmony which is so essential to our success as an organization,” the Brooklyn Star Club put forth a public resolution stating that it did not sanction the discriminatory measure.20
Heading toward the already scheduled convention of the National Association of Base Ball Players, further reaction to the New York State snafu arose. The Brooklyn Eagle, relatively supportive of black baseball in the past, bristled at the notion that the story deserved coverage at all. “Considerable unnecessary agitation” had been created by “political agitators,” the Eagle complained.21 The decision on black baseball had already been made. “It would have been better, perhaps, if the subject had not been broached, especially in view of the fact that the question had been fully disposed of in the National Convention of 1867, in Philadelphia.”22
The difference between the coverage of the NYSBBA meeting in these two influential newspapers, the New York Times and the Brooklyn Eagle, is worth noting. The Times argued that racial issues should be avoided because no black club had ever tried to join one of the major white baseball associations anyway. The Eagle, coming closer to getting its facts straight, concluded that the issue should be avoided based on the precedent of the 1867 national convention when Arthur Gorman had taken his stand for reconciliation. The common ground between the two reports, however—that segregation should be observed without its mechanics being discussed—accurately captured the racial climate of baseball in 1870.
The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players
The National Association of Base Ball Players, baseball’s premier organizing body since 1857, breathed its last breath of relevant air on November 30, 1870. The national convention that had been eyed by the New York State Association and the impulsive Brooklyn Star delegate went off as planned. The convention attendees never addressed the controversy that had arisen over “colored clubs” only a couple of weeks prior. There was no need to make a statement on racial exclusion when no obvious cracks in the dam of exclusion could be sighted. Mr. MacDiarmid, the testy Brooklyn Star delegate who had caused the controversy at the New York State gathering, lost his seat at the national meeting. He was replaced by another, ostensibly more responsible, member of the Brooklyn club.23
Instead, the all-pervading issue at the national convention was the unstoppable rise of professional baseball. Professionalism included more than just the NAPBBP clubs. As had been the case at the New York convention, the outnumbered professionals dominated the majority of amateurs. The end had come: “This convention, and the remarkable proceedings which characterized it shows that the last feather had been placed upon the camel’s back, and under the pressure of the control of a clique of professional managers the National Association gave up the ghost,” a New York Clipper reporter mourned.24 A fracturing along professional and amateur lines would quickly come to complement the firm racial line of separation. Even as the 1870 national convention was under way, amateur clubs moved to reorganize as the National Association of Amateur Base Ball Players, “with a constitution and a code of playing rules which will repudiate every phase of the system of playing base ball for money.”25
The fact that a rare public debate erupted over race and baseball at almost exactly the same time that a separation formally occurred between professionals and amateurs should be noted. Although the causal link is far from absolute, the last-ditch effort to keep white ballplayers somewhat united probably figured into the public reaction against the Brooklyn Stars’ motion. In the relative anonymity of the NYSBBA meeting, white baseball voted to officially exclude black clubs. When the motion became public, however, new considerations arose. The national brotherhood of white baseball players was falling apart, the logic seemed to go, and certainly issues of race should not be added to the equation. In the end it did not matter. Professionals and amateurs separated. Black ballplayers remained excluded.
Nicholas Young—Guiding Professionals
Washington’s Nicholas Young played a vital, if somewhat unintended, role in the rise of baseball’s first professional association. Taking note of the split that had occurred at the fourteenth annual National Association of Base Ball Players convention, Young called for a meeting of professionals. Up to this point white baseball leaders had been unable to facilitate a fair and logical championship system. The amateur association’s funds had been raided by incompetent treasurers.26 Infighting and bickering, along with constant rule changes, had often dominated National Association conventions.
Nicholas Young thought professional baseball could do better. Thus seeking to facilitate a new organizing structure, Young organized a meeting of baseball leaders on March 17, 1871, St. Patrick’s Day, in order to devise a scheduling plan that would result in an undisputed champion. The gathering became something more, leading to the formation of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. The meeting launched, once and for all, open and organized professional baseball in the United States.27 Clubs from baseball’s major cities, including New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia, sent representatives to Young’s meeting. Washington got two seats (for the Nationals and Olympics) at the table, probably because of Young’s role in the proceedings.28 The delegates quickly agreed upon a playing schedule (involving each team playing a best-three-out-of-five series with the other nine clubs, but scheduling these contests on their own), a ten-dollar entry fee, and a constitution. The rules of the game, on the field, would be the same as those of the previous association. The precedents and traditions of racial segregation were passed on as well.
After the meeting Young went to work securing an improved roster for the Washington Olympic Base Ball Club. He traveled to find and sign players, going to Buffalo, for example, to recruit catcher Myron Holly. When not on the road, Young conducted his baseball business from his desk in the Second Auditors Office at the Treasury Department.29 In the coming years Young would serve on the NAPBBP’s Championship and Judiciary Committees and as secretary. When the National Association failed, Young took leadership posts in the National League, eventually becoming NL president. Young organized clubs not only in Washington DC, but also in Chicago and Baltimore. Along the way Young earned a stellar reputation in baseball circles, enjoying “the confidence and respect of the management of all the professional nines.”30 One baseball scribe went so far as to call Nick Young one of baseball’s most vital administrators ever: “No man ever connected with the game has had a longer or more respected career than Mr. Young.”31
Young’s role in forming and supporting the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players is informative. Young had experience in government organization, working at the Treasury Department for more than twenty-five years. Young provided leadership to the baseball community, not on the basis of his own playing proficiency, but rather due to his “mathematical mind” and talent for organization. Young took the reputation and position of the game of baseball seriously. He acted judiciously. “Young commands the profound respect of his officials in council,” wrote one newspaper in 1892, “by his wise parliamentary rulings and his keen insights into the requirements of the game.”32 The point here is not to deify Young—a well-meaning and organized but not really transcendent leader. Nor is formation of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players to be understood as a singularly defining moment. Indeed, the association never operated as a truly cohesive league and fell apart after only four seasons. Rather, at issue still is how baseball’s mechanics of segregation continued to unfold. Young said almost nothing about race over the course of his career in baseball. Yet Young, through his commitment to organizing professional baseball, played a role in the game’s increasingly codified segregation.
The Prerequisites of Professionalism: Money, Land, and Whiteness
The divisive effect of baseball’s professionalization became evident almost immediately in Washington DC, as it had in Philadelphia. The plans of the Olympics and Nationals diverged significantly for the first time. Although both clubs attended the National Association’s founding meeting, the National Club opted not to join the new association. In the midst of restructuring its membership and finances, the Nationals simply could not commit to the ambitious schedule (a five-game series against each other club) proposed by Young and the other leaders. The cost was too high for the Nats, who only weeks before the founding of the NAPBBP had been sued for delinquent payment by a lumber company.33
The financial resources necessary to field a professional baseball club—to pay players, improve grounds, and travel extensively—kept most clubs from participating at the highest level. In order to raise funds, Young’s Olympics organized as a stock corporation.34 The National Republican, among other Washington newspapers, quickly picked up on the connection between financial strength and baseball success. In the Olympics’ case, the Republican assured its readers that the club would be “second to none in the country,” because its stockholders were “leading businessmen” and the club’s stock was “a very profitable investment.”35
Professional clubs also needed powerful financial backers. George W. Riggs, one of Washington’s most prominent bankers, invested heavily in the Olympic Club. He held the title for the Olympic Grounds, which were on the outskirts of the city proper, on the block between Sixteenth, Seventeenth, R, and S Streets. By way of contrast, there were very few black men in the 1870s who could have devoted their land and money to professional baseball on the scale that Riggs did.36 Before the 1871 National Association season began, Riggs directed that a ten-foot fence be built around the Olympic Grounds. Baseball’s “enclosure” determined that no longer would fans or players be able to wander onto the grounds or even enjoy a glimpse of a game without paying for a ticket. Riggs also built a clubhouse for the players and seating for three thousand spectators. He outfitted each of his players with a new, expensive uniform: “a white flannel Zouve suit, trimmed with blue; hat instead of cap, closefitting knit shirt, over jacket, corded pants, blue stockings, and white canvas shoes, with leather trimmings.”37 Finally, the club spent nearly four thousand dollars leveling and resodding its field and installing drainage. Riggs also had a forty-four-foot club flag draped from one of the foul poles, displayed the club emblem on the grandstands, and hung two club pennants from the club’s new and improved seating rafters.38
The costs of professional baseball nearly bankrupted the Olympic Club right out of the gate. In January 1871 an audit had found the club’s finances to be in order. By the end of the inaugural NAPBBP season, however, the club was “$3500 behind” in its finances and engaged in an unseemly public dispute with the National Club regarding the use of baseball facilities.39 Tensions arose between the Olympics and Nationals in 1871 regarding the use of baseball space and over the question of which organization would be the Washington club. When a June rainstorm washed out the National Grounds, the spat between the two clubs spilled over into the press. The Nationals’ leadership had assumed that hospitality, long a hallmark of the baseball community, would compel the Olympics to share their grounds. But after negotiating back and forth, the two clubs could not reach an agreement.40 The Olympic Club (probably Nicholas Young, since he still served as secretary) released a letter of explanation to the press, clarifying that times had changed. The Olympics had gone “from a second-rate club to the front rank of baseball” and thus had to disassociate themselves from some of their prior friends.41 The struggle over land had intensified, as baseball grounds became symbols of prowess and chips in the escalating contest for baseball supremacy in the city.42
Black and Amateur
As Nicholas Young spurred on professional baseball, the Mutual and Alert Clubs continued to play in Washington as amateurs. In Washington a new black (and therefore amateur) club emerged late in the 1870 season. The black Metropolitans organized with an “excellent board of officers” and “eye for business.”43 The “Mets,” ignoring baseball’s 1870 fracturing, announced it planned to compete with the District’s best clubs, regardless of race. The club purchased a twenty-five-foot pennant and urged all clubs in the District “desiring to wrest this pennant from the Metropolitans” to send along their challenges.44 No white clubs took the bait. The Evening Star and Sunday Herald perverted the ambitions of the Metropolitan Club. According to the Star, the Mets’ pennant was “to be held by the champion (colored) of the District” and the newly purchased pennant as “symbolic of the District colored championship.”45 The Mets themselves had made no such distinctions.
The Washington Mutuals in 1870 traveled to Maryland and New York to compete against other top black clubs. The Mutuals’ tour was “the most extensive trip that any colored club has ever undertaken.”46 The Mutual Club stopped first in Baltimore, defeating the Enterprise Club by a score of 51–23.47 After Baltimore Charles Douglass and his teammates headed for New York. The trip captured the attention of the New York Clipper, a paper that continued to give black baseball sporadic coverage. The paper matter-of-factly reported on the stellar ballplaying of the Mutual Club. “The Mutuals, of Washington—a colored club—recently on a tour through the western part of the state of New York, beat the Arctic Club, of Lockport, on August 19th, by a score of 26 to 0, the Rapids Club, of Niagara Falls, on the 20th by a score of 64 to 10, the Mutuals of Buffalo, on the 21st, by a score of 72 to 10. On the 22nd they played a picked nine, at Rochester.”48 The Mutuals faced a stiffer challenge in Rochester, but still prevailed 23–19 to cap off a successful tour. The trip featured no forays into interracial play, just high-level competition between black baseball clubs.49
The Mutuals returned to Washington DC to meet their upstart rivals, the Metropolitans, in September 1870, just as the Blue Stockings were experiencing rejection from the year-end Chicago baseball tournament.50 The game pitted two evenly matched clubs. The score remained close until the ninth inning. Then, in the last inning, the umpire made a controversial call. The Metropolitans’ first baseman objected vehemently to the decision, then quit, refusing to play if the decision stood. The game halted. Finally, “after considerable talk” with no resolution, the game was discontinued and called in favor of the Mutuals, score 36–34. Walking off the field in protest was unheard of in nineteenth-century baseball circles, and the resulting press coverage of the event used the same shocked and paternalistic tone as those stories commingling black baseball and violence. “We regret,” one reporter concluded somewhat smugly, “the M’s should have met trouble in their first important match.”51 Not surprisingly, the Metropolitans disappeared following their abbreviated 1870 season. Black clubs, mostly lacking financial backers, came and went often during this fluid period.
The Mutual Club Plays On
As the 1871 season began, the black Washington Mutuals had reason to worry about more than just exclusion from the newly formed NAPBBP. Washington DC was abandoning civil rights. After having elected black men to hold nearly one-third of the seats in the city’s legislature between 1868 and 1870, black and white Washingtonians alike lost the rights of “home rule” in 1871. In a shocking reversal of democratic fortunes, the U.S. Congress determined that the District of Columbia should be put back under congressional control. While the citizens of Washington maintained the right to elect the twenty-two members of the lower chamber of the District council, the president appointed a governor of the District and the eleven members of the upper council.52 The best days of Reconstruction-era civil rights progress had passed for Washington DC.
In the midst of setbacks in the city’s civil rights, Charles Douglass and the Mutuals followed up their undefeated 1870 tour by planning an even more ambitious slate of games for 1871. Using the Third Auditors Office of the Treasury Department as a return address (Nick Young worked in the Second Auditors Office, and dozens of other players were employed throughout the Treasury Department), Douglass sent out a broad baseball challenge.53 Black clubs from New York City, Albany, Troy, Boston, Fitchburg, Newport, Philadelphia, and Baltimore responded.54
But even with his respected government position, baseball prowess, and famous father, Charles Douglass could not escape the increasingly racist realities of Washington DC during the 1870s. Official rights, where they did exist, were often negated by social pressures. Douglass’s position in the government, for example, angered many whites. The New National Era, a newspaper begun in Washington DC by Frederick Douglass in 1872, reported with notable detachment on the discrimination faced by Charles. “A Southern delegate, in passing through the Treasury Department, and noticing a colored clerk (son of Fred. Douglass) engaged in slinging his quill, gave forth unmistakable signs of disgust, and walked off with the remark, ‘Thank God! When Uncle Horace [Greeley] comes in office there will be a stop put to that work.’”55 Such scenes and sentiments were commonplace.
Interracial games did not stop entirely in the 1870s, but those that did take place meant considerably less than the first such contests in 1869. In both 1871 and 1872, the Mutuals competed against Washington’s white Creighton Base Ball Club.56 The Mutuals beat the Creightons in 1872. Still, the Sunday Herald, the only paper to report on the game, mentioned the event only perfunctorily: “On Friday a match game of base ball was played on the White Lot between the Mutual and Creighton Clubs. The former won by a score of 19 to 14.”57 In 1873 the newly formed Monumental black baseball club defeated the white Capital Club.58 Again, only the Sunday Herald reported on the event, and then only the score. This approach of making light of those integrated interactions that did occur had become, it seemed, part of the fabric of segregation itself.
The New National Era (which had become a Douglass family affair) reported the Mutuals’ first contest of 1873, a match against the Monumentals on July 24, 1873.59 The Mutuals lost, but the clubs covered some of their costs by charging twenty-five cents for admission. When the Mutuals and Alerts renewed their rivalry (one of the oldest in black baseball), Frederick Douglass sided with the Alert Club, since he was still an honorary member of the organization. Thus, even though Charles Douglass had jumped from the Alerts to the Mutuals, Frederick Douglass remained loyal. The Mutuals defeated the Alerts in a tight match, 19–13.60
When the upstart Washingtons, a white club that emerged as one of the District’s finest in 1873, played two games each against the Mutual and Alert Clubs in 1873, it became clear that black-versus-white games no longer had much societal impact. The amateur-professional divide relegated integrated contests to sideshow status. And further adding insult to perceived irrelevancy, the Sunday Herald used the exact same banal language to describe the 1873 interracial game as had been used four years prior to describe the 1869 Olympic-Alert match. The game was, the Sunday Herald reported, once again “novel and interesting.”61
The Sunday Herald’s style of reporting on black baseball illuminated some of the new barriers that had come with professionalism. According to the Sunday Herald, one game pitted the “Washingtons (professionals)” against “the Alert (colored).”62 Thus, professionalism had become another demarcation of whiteness. The paper assumed that its readership would understand that “colored” meant nonprofessional and that “professionals” meant white. For its part, the Washington Club evidenced a remarkable ease in playing black clubs. Having defeated the Alert and Mutual Clubs, the club wrapped up its season with a game against a “picked nine of colored ball players.”63 The black all-stars nearly defeated the Washingtons. The game ended 13–10 in favor of the white professionals. This time the New National Era picked up on the action. Douglass’s paper, like the white press, made a distinction between professional baseball players and black baseball players. “Though not defeating the professionals,” the New National Era wrote, “the colored young men, who do not make ball playing a business, succeeded in calling out the utmost exertion on the part of the professionals to save themselves from a defeat at the hands of unprofessionals and colored men.”64 Had the upset occurred, it would have apparently been a double disgrace for the white professional club.
The White Lot
Although the lack of inclusion of black clubs in the professional National Association probably surprised very few black ballplayers in the District, the increasing segregation of baseball land in the city came as an unexpected blow. Land, of course, was central to Reconstruction-era debates. In Washington progress on this front had been slow, but not insignificant. In 1870 Washington DC’s city council passed a comprehensive antidiscrimination bill that forbade restaurants and theaters from prohibiting black patronage. In June 1872 Lewis Douglass, then serving on the council, introduced a bill to strengthen the city’s nondiscrimination statutes even further. This bill passed, only to be struck down by the District Supreme Court in the same year.65
The battle for control of the White Lot brought baseball firmly into the civil rights struggle over land. The White Lot had been the birthplace of competitive baseball in the District. Its location on the front lawn, essentially, of the White House made it a political place as well. In 1869 General Michler had ordered that baseball cease on the White Lot. Michler gave no explanation for his edict, but the order was largely ignored anyhow. Games still occurred on the grounds periodically in the 1870s, and the grounds remained mostly open to the public.66 Black Washingtonians used the grounds for recreation and occasionally for political gatherings. In September 1871, for example, black residents gathered at the White Lot to commemorate Lincoln’s “one-hundred-day” freedom proclamation. The celebration included a parade as well as a salute by the Stanton Guard, a black militia organization named after former attorney general and secretary of war Edwin M. Stanton. Standing within a few hundred feet of the White House, the Stanton Guard fired off several salutes throughout the daylong celebration.67
4. White House grounds. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
As part of a wave of infrastructural improvements in the 1870s, the City of Washington DC refurbished many of its public spaces, including the White Lot. Baseball players and park patrons were thrilled. The New National Era celebrated the upgrades to the White Lot in particular. “To General O. E. Babcock,” the New National Era gushed, “the citizens and visitors of Washington are indebted for the splendid resorts to avoid the heat and dust, furnished by our parks. . . . Lafayette Square and the White Lot have been great improved, and are now beautiful and fashionable resorts.”68
The improvements to the White Lot made it even more valuable and contested public space. Not surprisingly, the increased value of the property drew more attention to the activities that played out in the shadow of the White House. By 1873 the Creighton Base Ball Club played most of its games, and the most of any club, on the grounds. It was the Creightons who had hosted the Mutual Base Ball Club on the White Lot in 1872, allowing the black ball club to secure a victory on the field. In 1873 the Creightons had also met the middling Arlington and Irvington Base Ball Clubs, among others, on the grounds.69
After nearly a decade of postwar baseball on the site, change came quickly. The White Lot’s status as a parcel of land open to nearly any ball-throwing man ended on September 6, 1874. The Sunday Herald, with its typical reserve, announced a drastic change in policy regarding the previously open space. “The White Lot has been closed to all ball players except the Creightons,” the paper reported. “The gangs of lazy negroes and other vagrants infesting the grounds made this action necessary.”70
This exclusionary policy essentially partitioned off the land to the Creighton Base Ball Club.71 It was a strange choice. From a baseball perspective, the Nationals or Olympics would have been more logical recipients of this segregation-inspired gift. The Creightons had only a modest record of success. Douglass’s Mutual Club was among the many clubs that had defeated the Creightons in the years leading up to its acquisition of Washington’s best baseball land. In fact, the Creightons’ only significant achievement had been staying afloat. They had one of the longer tenures in the city, playing somewhat continuously between 1867 and 1873. Furthermore, no record of a lease agreement with the District exists to suggest that the Creighton Club had negotiated for the rights to the grounds. Thus, in the District’s desire to expel the “gangs of lazy negroes” who were apparently compromising the highly prized White Lot, city officials awarded a mediocre, second-tier, but politically connected white baseball club full control of baseball’s most powerful address.72
The closing of the White Lot made a mockery of Frederick Douglass’s praise of civil rights progress in Washington DC. In 1873 Douglass had professed great appreciation for the District’s protection of black rights, presenting the nation’s capital as a beacon of hope in the still wavering process of Reconstruction: “Probably to a greater extent than elsewhere in the country is the equality of the citizens in the matter of public rights accorded in the District of Columbia. This is, no doubt, due to the fact that the Congress of the United States meets here and exerts a great influence immediately over its citizens than is true of other sections of the country.”73 Unfortunately for black baseball players in the city, neither Congress nor any other government authority saw fit to intervene in the closing of the president’s baseball grounds for black residents of the city.
Finally, Representation
Still, and this is a constant theme in studying black baseball during the Reconstruction era, the Mutual Base Ball Club of Washington kept on playing ball. The club held its annual preseason meeting in March 1876 to elect a slate of officers and a board of directors.74 As this meeting occurred, white professional baseball was again experiencing a significant shift. The NAPBBP folded and the National League arose. Nicholas Young served as secretary and treasurer of the new organization from its inception and then as president from 1885 until 1903.75 Despite its time seeming to have passed, the National Association of Amateur Base Baseball Players continued to meet as well, albeit with very little fanfare. Therein the Mutuals saw an opening to make a step toward baseball integration. Thus, in 1876 the Mutuals sent two delegates to the amateur convention to apply for membership. And surprisingly, the convention nominating committee approved the Washington Mutuals’ application for membership.76
The presence of black delegates in the previously all-white amateur convention stirred no reaction, positive or negative, from the press. No cries of outrage arose from whites. No black advocates touted the breakthrough as significant. Rather, the limited attendance of the convention largely muted the effect. Professional baseball had rendered the older, fraternally based game mostly irrelevant. Integration occurred, but it did not matter.77
Still, the Washington Mutuals took advantage of the opportunities that arose. In what should have been a significant milestone, one of the club’s members, T. L. Brooks, won election as vice president of the National Association of Amateur Base Ball Players in 1877. If only someone had been paying attention. To all but the most ardent baseball fans, the names involved meant nothing. The Confidence, Flyaway, and New Rochelle Clubs were among those in attendance. The bar of admittance had been so low that one club at the 1876 convention had yet to even choose a name for itself. In this low-stakes, rather anonymous environment, baseball’s organizing structure was integrated. The New York Clipper, still broadly considered the voice of baseball, dismissed the convention altogether. The Clipper described the convention by noting that, “the attendance of the delegates being limited,” the business transacted was “of but little importance.”78
After electing a new leadership class (without a Douglass among them) and sending two delegates to a previously all-white baseball association, the Mutuals again looked forward to taking the field. The club considered the possibility of taking another extensive baseball tour. After dismissing the significance of the amateur convention, the Clipper touted the Mutuals, reporting that the club was “in excellent condition.” The paper predicted that 1877 would be the finest Mutual season ever.79 The Clipper’s optimism proved unfounded.
Black baseball, in Washington DC and elsewhere, failed to produce a second generation nearly as prominent in the game as the first. The Mutuals gradually died out as a baseball organization, making only a few appearances after 1877. The decline of the District’s black baseball community resulted, at least in part, from organizations such as the Mutuals and Alerts being pushed further and further to the periphery of the game. With ever-decreasing opportunities to play against the best white clubs and in the city’s best baseball facilities, black baseball lost its relevance within Washington’s black community. The city’s press stopped reporting on black baseball with any consistency. Not until the Homestead Gray Club began playing many of its home games at Griffith Stadium in the 1930s would black baseball bloom once again, albeit with the bounds of segregation fully entrenched, in Washington DC.
The National League
The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs began play in 1876, just as congressional Reconstruction sputtered to an end. In the National League, “all of baseball’s formative characteristics that had appeared in antebellum New York reached their final stage of development,” argues National League historian Tom Melville.80 Professionalism triumphed. Competition emerged ahead of fraternal bonds. The game was manly yet respectable. Northern cities dominated the circuit. Certainly, baseball historians have appreciated each of these trends finding their resolutions in the National League. So too, however, did the National League bring to its “final stage of development” racial segregation. No black ballplayer, recognized as such, played in the National League before Jackie Robinson.81 Although Moses Fleetwood Walker played in the rival American Association, and Bud Fowler and a relative handful of other African Americans played in baseball’s Minor Leagues, a dam of segregation had been erected. Leaks would, over the coming years, be systematically plugged. The resolution was so complete that the National League’s leaders (including Nicholas Young) eventually stopped addressing the racial question at all. By the end of the nineteenth century, with the National League firmly entrenched and setting an overarching example, racial segregation in baseball was the norm.