On August 21st, 1881, The Eclipse club refused to play against the Chicago Whites in Louisville because of a black player named Fleet Walker on the Chicago team. Walker would go on to play for the Toledo Blue Stockings in the American Association in 1884 and is generally regarded as the first black player in major league baseball.

I sometimes suspect that the angry MAGA contingent will not be truly happy until they can role back the clock to the 1880s.

Baseball history is American History. And a big part of both those histories requires coming to terms with Systemic Racism.

When you look at Fleet Walker’s page on Baseball Reference, there is just a limited amount of stats. This is inevitable since he played so long ago. But it is also compounded by the fact that knuckle-dragging racist like those in Louisville kept Walker and other Black players from being able to showcase their skills.

The MAGA crowd is afraid of history. (But then again, MAGA is afraid of everything: women, gays, transpeople, people of color, electric cars….) In places like Florida and Texas modern-day knuckle draggers are trying to erase history by rewriting text books to deny the history of Slavery and Racism. Even the great lie that the Civil War was really about States Right is being propped up again.

What happened to Fleet Walker 143 years ago is not Ancient History, it is current history that we can all still learn from.