The player who nearly integrated baseball 42 years before Jackie Robinson

Each April 15, Jackie Robinson Day is celebrated in every ballpark in America. It marks the day in 1947 when Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American to play professional baseball, thus ending baseball’s color barrier. Robinson has become an icon, his number 42 retired in every ballpark, to honor his trailblazing feat in both sports and racial justice. But four decades before Robinson’s historic appearance on a Major League Baseball diamond, another African American ballplayer nearly broke baseball’s color barrier — via Vermont. His name was William Clarence Matthews, and he was a nationally renowned baseball player for Harvard College. Several of Matthews’s Harvard teammates went on to play in the MLB, but Matthews had to settle for playing professional ball in Burlington, Vermont, in the independent Northern League, which was integrated. Word of Matthews’ feats on Vermont’s diamonds spread. Then in 1905, a Boston newspaper reported the bombshell news that Matthews was about to be drafted by the Boston Nationals, a professional baseball team with a woeful record. But the deal was never signed, and Matthews, one of the greatest ballplayers of his era who was shut out of the professional game, went on to become a distinguished attorney and assistant U.S. attorney general. Matthews said presciently in 1905, “A Negro is just as good as a white man, and has just as much right to play ball.” It would take another 42 years for that right to be realized. The remarkable story of William Clarence Matthews was recently recounted in a lengthy article on mlb.com, “The Player Who Nearly Integrated Baseball in 1905.” The article is based on the research of Vermont baseball historian Karl Lindholm, who is at work on a book about Matthews. Lindholm, emeritus dean of advising and assistant professor of American Studies at Middlebury College, tells Matthews's story on The Vermont Conversation.