Baseball in the Mahoning Valley: From Pioneers to the Scrappers

By Paul M. Kovach

Around the horn in the Mahoning Valley The history of baseball in Ohio's Mahoning Valley has been, to say the least, eventful. Murder, the Civil War, the hot dog, a presidential assassination and one of the deadliest known volcanic eruptions all shaped America's pastime in the Valley. African American baseball pioneer and Hall of Fame inductee Bud Fowler began his professional baseball career in the area, and the first ceremonial celebrity first pitch came from the arm of a prominent local. The area also contributed to Cleveland professional ballclubs like the enigmatic 1883 Blues and the 2016 Believeland Indians, which included numerous players from the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a minor-league team with its own rich heritage. Digging up little-known facts about Fowler and sundry other colorful stories, local author and creator of Eastwood Field's Days Gone By exhibit PM Kovach celebrates the proud history of baseball in northeast Ohio.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Apr 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781439677629

Paul M. Kovach

PM Kovach is a lifelong baseball fan. This is his first book on the subject.

Book preview

1

DUSTIN’ THE COBWEBS

Doubtless, there are better places to spend summer days, summer nights than in ballparks. Nevertheless, decades after a person has stopped collecting bubble gum cards, he can still discover himself collecting ballparks. And not just the stadiums, but their surrounding neighborhoods, their smells, their special seasons, and moods.

—Thomas Boswell, How Life Imitates the World Series

In the beginning, there was baseball.

Baseball: A bit of heaven on earth, where summers never end and the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd sound eternal.

Minor League Baseball in the Mahoning Valley began in 1883 with two separate and distinct teams: the independent Niles Ohio Grays ball club and Youngstown in the Class D Western Interstate Association (formerly the Ohio Valley Baseball Association). And although Youngstown’s roster that year boasted five players who later reached the National League—hometown sensation Jimmy McAleer, pitcher-outfielder Pit Gilman, infielder Ed Jumbo Cartwright and catchers Sim Bullas and Charlie Ingram—it was the Grays who received all the ink from contemporary sportswriters because of the unparalleled success generated by their African American pioneer pitcher, Bud Fowler.

History books list the first documented evidence of Bud Fowler’s baseball career as a three-game trial with Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1878. Later that year, pitching for Lynn Live Oaks of the International Association, Fowler beat the world champion Boston Red Caps by a score of 2–1. However, Fowler himself, in a letter written shortly before his death, confirmed that his professional play began years earlier, during the season of 1872. At that time, Fowler would have been playing at the age of fourteen with the Neshannocks semipro ball club in New Castle, Pennsylvania. Like Niles, New Castle was a mecca for racial tolerance in the post–Civil War nineteenth century. The first African American ballplayer to reach the majors, Moses Fleetwood Walker, later played with that city in 1882.

To add yet another tantalizing piece of first-person evidence to his 1872 professional debut, when Fowler first arrived in Niles for tryouts, he strangely told Grays general manager Elmer Wilson that he was William Thompson from Cooperstown, New York, better known in baseball circles as Bud Fowler. As Fowler’s real name was John Jackson, the pseudonym of William Thompson remains a puzzle. The only possible explanation is that Fowler believed that someone in the city would remember him playing by that name eleven years earlier with the visiting Neshannocks ball club. Indeed, Fowler would be instantly recognizable even after a decade. As later reported by future major leaguer Delos Drake, the son of William Drake, Fowler’s onetime Niles, Ohio teammate who later sponsored a mixed-race team in Findlay Ohio, Fowler as an African American had one very distinct physical characteristic, the result of a condition called heterochromia: one blue eye and one brown eye. As a boy, Delos spent much time watching Fowler and later verbally confirmed this physical anomaly. Sadly, in 1872, neither Niles nor New Castle published a newspaper. So, despite the pieces of undeniable and provocative evidence provided by the ballplayer himself, written proof of Fowler’s actual debut within the Valley remains impossible to confirm. And despite their success in 1883, the Niles Grays ball club did not survive the late-summer bankruptcy of the entire town.

Meanwhile, the Youngstown Puddlers, under new management, joined the ranks of the Iron and Oil League in 1884, acquiring rookie extraordinaire second baseman Ed McKean. The Grafton, Ohio power hitter would later prove to be one of the finest players of nineteenth-century Major League Baseball. McKean would reunite with Youngstown’s Jimmy McAleer to form the heart of the National League Cleveland Spiders club in the 1890s, a team also populated by three pitchers with ties to the Valley: Nig Cuppy and Hall of Famers Cy Young and Bobby Wallace. Not surprisingly, because of the performances of these players, the Spiders reached the National League Temple Cup championship series in two successive seasons, winning the cup in 1895. (In the postseason celebration after Cleveland’s victory, the Temple Cup was filled to the brim with liquor and tossed around like a football.) The following, written in March 1998 by Niles Times newspaper columnist Grace Allison on the eve of the resurrection of Minor League Baseball in the Mahoning Valley, retells a glorious tale of how the sport was born in Niles.

Dustin’ the Cobwebs

By Grace Allison

The hottest subject…in the sports world here today in Trumbull County is the construction of a baseball stadium. Niles baseball was alive and well as early as the 1870s, and it is apparent we will soon be hearing the umpire calling batter up. In 1830, baseball was a form of recreation across America and in 1842 the first organized baseball was founded. By the 1850s, landowners were maintaining baseball parks which they rented to ballclubs. During the Civil War, soldiers regularly played baseball to pass the time and to relax. The first professional baseball team played in 1869. During the 1872–73 season, the Oakland Baseball Club of Niles played at a field located between Pearl Street and Robbins Avenue near Lafayette Street. The club’s lineup included Henry Baldwin catcher; C.H. Mason pitcher; Matt Schaefer first base; E.A. Biery second base; Ed Mackey third base; Charles Baldwin shortstop; and J.W. Robbins, George Arker, Jim Carr, and Craig Phillips in the outfield. In those days, the pitcher had to hold his arms straight and pitch. It was difficult to control the ball and the batter never knew if the ball was going to roll around on the ground or go into orbit. These players did not wear gloves, or any protection and the catcher always stood far behind home plate and caught the ball on the first bounce. To get his bat turned, the player had to take it to Warren. The player would walk to Warren, have his bat turned and hustle back to Niles to play in that afternoon’s game. Teams came from nearby communities to play the Oakland Baseball Club. Niles’ first semiprofessional baseball team called the Niles Grays, developed in 1883 through the efforts of Ed [sic] Wilson and his buddies, all of whom were members of the local amateur team. The NYPANOs as the team was known got its name by combining the initials of the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio railroad, the predecessor of the Erie railroad. In the course of organizing the Grays, a Black man named Bud Fowler arrived in Niles.…Wilson quickly secured him as a pitcher for the team. Fowler was an exceptional player and could cover any position. Arrangements were made to play on a field bounded by South Main Street, Salt Springs Road, Third and Ward Streets. The Niles Grays made a good showing locally and eventually hit the road playing teams across Pennsylvania and New York. After the team had been on the road for some time, they were unable to book games with competitive teams. Their manager sent a telegram to Niles: We’re stranded here. No dates arranged. What shall we do? Send $50! Wilson sent the money, and the team came home.

By 1897, Niles had a baseball team that was number one in the area. That year on a Sunday afternoon, the Cleveland Wheeler club played the Niles Grays at Avon Park, in Girard, Ohio. A large number of the area baseball fans stayed in the park all night on Saturday to be assured of a good seat. The Niles team members were George England, a one-armed pitcher, Billy Cobb Kalb second baseman, Joe Conley first baseman, Charlie Crowe pitcher, Mutz Williams catcher and Eddie Wagstaff and Hoppy Burnett in the outfield. The Cleveland Wheelers were the star attraction in Northeastern Ohio at the time and most of the players came from other leagues across the country. Their outfielder Sockalexis was the first full blooded Indian to play in the big leagues. If he stayed from the white man’s fire water, he was an outstanding player. Charlie Crowe and his boys were in rare form that day and defeated the Cleveland Wheelers 7 to 2.

2

BUD FOWLER, NILES, OHIO, AND THE 1883 BLUES/GRAYS GAME

Once my grandfather took me on the train to Des Moines to see Bud Fowler play. The old man fixed me with that eye of his and said there was not a man on this round earth who could out run or out throw Bud Fowler. I was pretty excited.

—Marilyn Robinson, Gilead

Fowler used to play second base with the lower part of his legs encased in wooden guards. He knew that about every player on a steal had it in for him and would, if possible, throw the spikes in him. About half the pitchers tried to hit the [African Americans] when they are at bat.

—The Sporting News, March 23, 1889

Bud Fowler has played match games for trapper’s furs. He has been rung in to help out a team for the championship of a mining camp and bags of gold dust. He has played for Cowboys and the Indians. He has cross roaded from one town to another all over the far West playing for what he could get and taking a hand to help out a team.

—Cincinnati Enquirer, 1895

The robber barons of old left something tangible in their wake.

—Jerry Sterner, Other People’s Money: A Play in Two Acts

The afternoon was scripted for baseball. The date was August 10, 1883. An overflow crowd of one thousand fans began arriving early via horse-drawn carriages, dusty buckboards and on foot to watch the first-place National League Cleveland Blues baseball team cross bats with the fans’ beloved Niles, Ohio Grays ball club in an exhibition contest. The Blues versus the Grays, an irony not lost on the many Mahoning Valley veterans of the Civil War. The excitement was palpable. Special excursion trains brought the sporting gentry from the neighboring cities of Warren, Youngstown and Newton Falls to the recently constructed wooden grandstand at the outskirts of the Niles downtown city limits. Niles jeweler J.C. Kern announced the presentation of a handsome medallion at the end of the season to the Grays player with the best overall record. (In November 1883, NYPANOs star Charles Butler won the coveted commemorative medallion.) Fourteen-year-old Harry C. Davis walked the two-mile distance barefoot from Mineral Ridge, Ohio. Years later, Davis constructed his family dwelling on the right field area of what would forever prove to be his home grounds.

Pitching for the Grays was a twenty-five-year-old African American from Cooperstown, New York, named Bud Fowler, the first Black professional ballplayer. The unbridled racism that followed the Civil War led to the unspoken color line in baseball, which barred Fowler from the major leagues and relegated him to playing in the low minors or with independent clubs like the Grays. Fowler knew well the Mahoning Valley. His professional career had commenced in 1872, thirty-six miles to the east in New Castle, Pennsylvania. At age twenty, Fowler’s legend reached mythic status in the afterglow of his 1878 pitching victory against Harry Wright’s world champion Boston Red Caps while playing for the Lynn, Massachusetts Live Oaks club. He defeated ace Tommy Bond, who had won forty games that year. Fowler’s arsenal included an overhand drop pitch later known as a spitball. As Fowler remembered in 1904, It was a ball of most uncertain destination and slipped off two wet fingers toward the plate. Fowler knew the ball would drop but could never tell if it would be four inches or a foot. The spitter was later deemed so dangerous that it was banned from Major League Baseball.

Fowler’s deliverance to Niles was the stuff of legend. In late spring, Grays general manager Elmer A. Wilson and traveling manager Ed A. Blory were warming up on the practice field within sight of the Niles Erie Street train depot when the prospective hurler approached in street clothes and asked for a tryout, introducing himself as William Thompson, known in baseball circles as Bud Fowler. Mixing fastballs with off-speed pitches, Fowler’s demonstration was dazzling. He was a major-league-caliber talent—except for the color of his skin. Wilson and Blory signed the newcomer on the spot.

William Thompson, aka Bud Fowler, was born John W. Jackson on March 16, 1858. A barber by trade, Fowler could effectively play any position, the supreme ballist. Fowler honed his craft on the Cooperstown Seminary Campus, where, reportedly, future Union general Abner Doubleday had etched the first diagram of a baseball diamond into the hallowed dust around 1839. Fowler instantly transformed the Grays from cupcakes to corn crackers. The Niles nine overpowered all opposition on the western whistle stops of the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad, including two of the strongest semipro units on the continent, shutting out the Cleveland-based Southern All-Stars 8–0 and the K.C.’s of Cleveland by a score of 3–0. In the aftermath of their success, armed with a heady sense of invincibility fueled by youthful exuberance, folly and chutzpah, the Grays challenged the Cleveland Blues and were granted an open date on the schedule for a $150 guarantee,