Bud Fowler: Baseball's First Black Professional

by Jeffrey Michael Laing

This is the biography of Bud Fowler (ne John Jackson), the first African American to play in organized baseball, and the longest tenured at the time that the color line was drawn. In addition to his professional playing career, which lasted more than 25 years, Fowler was a scout, organizer, owner, and promoter of touring black baseball clubs--including the legendary Page Fence Giants--in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Emphasizing the social and cultural contexts for Fowler's accomplishments on and off the baseball diamond, and his prominence within the history and development of the national pastime, the text builds a convincing case for Fowler as one of the great pioneering figures of the early game.

236 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[David Garza · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Bud Fowler: Baseball's First Black Professional" presents a well-researched coverage of the often loosely structured and fleeting baseball teams, leagues, and organizations of the 19th century, particularly the lesser-established Black, independent, barnstorming, minor league, and semi-pro outfits trying to compete in the throes of a relatively new industry: professional sports. Laing gives a good context of how these smaller and less resourced teams and leagues were trying to figure out how to make a go of the business end of things when so much was new and unregulated on the money side of things. Rules of the game were well established, but honoring such things as contractual agreements were not. Neither were the expectations and understandings of the new role of spectator team sports in American life well established. The old leisurely amateurism approach to the game was being challenged by the inevitable professionalism of the game and a tribal competitiveness that ensued. The racial expectations in a post-Civil War society were also being figured out.

It's within this context that Laing addresses Bud Fowler and his role in the game. More that just a baseball player, Fowler also attempts to shape the game as an organization and business as often as he can. It is in his nature to do more that just play; he sees the need for racial inclusiveness in the game and to take matters into his own hands when necessary, either by speaking out on injustices in the press or by creating his own leagues or teams, such as the historically famous and needed Page Fence Giants. Player, manager, organizer, promotor, advocate, and sometime umpire roles took him all over the US. As good a player as Bud Fowler was, his role as a pioneer in the game supports his selection to the Hall of Fame the most.

Most of the information Laing was able to compile on Bud Fowler came from newspaper and magazine articles of the late 19th century and dawn of the 20th, which were often contradictory and rife with inaccuracies (which Laing makes sure to note) . Understandably, the life of an itinerant independent league baseball player was not something that the 19th century media outlets were worried about covering all that extensively (nor were they terribly worried about accuracy). Through no fault of the author, there's simply limited information to build an actual biography around. So to that point, "Bud Fowler: Baseball's First Black Professional" isn't really a biography on Bud Fowler; it's more of a history of 19th century baseball with research on Fowler interwoven throughout. At times, some of Laing's comments are hard to tell which way he's trying to lead you, and some of the chronology's a little loose, but overall, this is still an interesting read and definitely a valuable book on early non-major league baseball.