Lisik: Ohio played key role in baseball integration
From Brian Lisik at The Suburbanite on March 17, 2016, with mention of SABR Director Leslie Heaphy:
It was somewhat ironic, and oddly appropriate, that pitchers and catchers were returning again to spring training at the moment some of those attending Professor Leslie Heaphy’s Feb. 22 presentation “African American Ohioans in Baseball” found out Jackie Robinson really wasn’t the first African-American to play in the major leagues.
That designation actually goes to Mount Pleasant, Ohio-born Moses Fleetwood Walker, who played one season in 1885 as a catcher for the professional Toledo Blue Stockings, following a successful collegiate career at Oberlin College and the University of Michigan.
After obtaining a law degree, Walker left baseball and started a number of businesses in Steubenville and Cadiz.
Read the full article here: http://www.thesuburbanite.com/article/20160317/NEWS/160309356
Originally published: March 18, 2016. Last Updated: March 18, 2016.