Friday, August 10, 1883 promised excitement for baseball fans in Toledo. The Toledo team of the Northwest League played host to the three-time world champion Chicago White Stockings, and thousands jammed League Park at Monroe and 13th Streets to see the greatest team in baseball and their star player-manager, Cap Anson. What the crowd could not know was that this game would become one of the most critical in the history of baseball.

The White Stockings, following the custom of the day, played exhibition games against the better teams of the minor leagues on off days from National League play. The Toledos, who would not be called Mud Hens for another decade, qualified as worthy opponents. After losing 15 of their first 19 games the Toledos began to jell under manager Charles Morton and would win the pennant of the Northwest League.

The only storm cloud on the horizon involved a member of the Toledo team. Toledo's catcher, Moses Walker, was a fair hitter and a good fielder, a former Oberlin College student playing baseball to earn money for law school at the University of Michigan. He also happened to be one of the few black players in organized baseball at the time.

Anson, playing manager of the Chicago team, had made it known to the Toledo management that he objected to playing on the same field with blacks, and the locals planned to oblige Anson. Walker, suffering from a sore hand, had not been pencilled into the lineup anyway. The Chicago team arrived at Union Station on Friday morning and was informed that Walker would be kept on the bench. However, according to The Toledo Blade, "not content with this, the visitors during their perambulations of the forenoon declared with the swagger for which they are noted" that they would not step onto the field "with no damned n-----." Anson, further inflaming a situation that the Toledo management had thought resolved, loudly reiterated this demand upon arriving at League Park. Charles Morton was not pleased with the demeanor of the visitors. "The order was given, then and there, to play Walker and the beefy bluffer (Anson) was informed that he could play his team or go, just as he blank pleased," reported The Blade.

When Anson saw Walker in right field, he exploded. "Get that n----- off the field!" he shrieked to manager Morton. He threatened to go home to Chicago without playing the game, but soon relented after a period of confusion and the threat of forfeiture of the gate receipts. The Blade quoted Anson as saying, "We'll play this here game, but we won't play never no more with the n----- in."

The exhibition played in Toledo turned out to be one of the most important games in baseball history. From this game came the impetus for the systematic expulsion of blacks from the game, a ban that would last for 63 years.

In the early 1880s there was no official color line in professional baseball, although no blacks had yet played in the National League. Eighteen years after the Civil War ended, America still struggled with the placement of newly freed blacks in society. The cries grew louder that blacks did not belong on the same playing fields as whites. Blacks also began to find theaters, restaurants, transportation, union shops and skilled vocations closed to them. Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan became more prominent in American political life.

Adrian Anson leaped into this controversy with both feet. Anson, the "beefy bluffer" in The Blade's words, dominated baseball for three decades. As "Baby" Anson he became a star as a teenager in 1871 and moved to Chicago when the National League was formed in 1876. As "Cap" Anson he became playing manager of the White Stockings in 1879 and held the post until, as "Pop" Anson, he retired as both player and manager in 1897. He was the first batter to reach 3,000 hits and win four batting championships, and the first manager to win five pennants. Loud, belligerent, and foul-mouthed, Anson also refined umpire intimidatio to a science. He is usually considered the greatest player of the 19th century, and was among the first group inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939.

Unfortunately, Cap Anson was also a world-class bigot. His autobiography, written in 1900, made no mention of Moses Walker, but related in gleeful detail how the team treated its "mascot", a black man named Clarence Duval whom Anson described as a "coon" and "a no-account n-----." Historian Bill James says that "they treated Duval exactly as one would treat a dog." Anson made no secret about his feelings about sharing a field with blacks, repeating the statement "Gentlemen don't play baseball with n-----s" to anyone who would listen. People listened to Cap Anson, the towering figure of baseball in the 1880s.

Moses Walker, on the other hand, earned respect for his play and his hard work on and off the field. Born in 1857, Walker attended both Oberlin College and the University of Michigan, though he did not earn a diploma from either institution. The Blade story of August 11, 1883 praised Walker as being "a gentleman and a scholar, in the literal sense", "entirely lacking in bummer instincts" and "the superior intellectually of any player on the Chicago club."

The Blade also pointed out that the Toledos had already played exhibitions against teams from New York, St. Louis, and Columbus without incident or complaint. Moses Walker wore a mask, but had only two thin, fingerless gloves to protect his hands. Broken fingers and sore hands were an occupational hazard for catchers in the 1880s, and Walker stood up to the pounding with the courage required of any catcher of that era. He played right field against the White Stockings because his hands were too sore to catch.

The game itself was, according to The Blade, "only a fair exhibition of ball playing", with the world champions winning 7 to 6 in ten innings. The Toledos battered Goldsmith, the champions' second-string pitcher, for sixteen hits and held Chicago to only ten. The score was tied three times before Toledo took the lead in the top of the tenth, only to see Chicago score twice in the bottom of the tenth to win the game. Anson hit a double and a single for Chicago, while Walker was the only Toledo batter without a hit. Walker reached base on an error and scored a run, and played errorless ball in right field. Chicago 's home run champion, Ned Williamson, was held hitless. Billy Sunday, who three decades later would be America's leading evangelist, played right field and managed one hit for Chicago.

The Blade scorched Anson and his men the following day. "It is not putting it too strongly," said the paper, "to say they were the most untidy looking lot of ball players that have ever graced the City with their presence. Their baggy white uniforms, dirty white stockings, and variegated assortment of caps gave them a slouchy, uncouth appearace which, with their braggadocio manner, was in strange contrast to what most of the audience had expected to see." The Blade also stated that "it is likely to prove a very cold day when they again carry a substantial bundle of gate receipts out of Toledo."

The game attracted national attention and crystallized the segregation forces already at work in professional baseball. Slowly, more teams and leagues began to release black players and refuse to hire new ones. The Toledos joined the American Association in 1884, making Moses Walker the first black major leaguer; his brother Welday played five games for Toledo and became the second. Cap Anson and his White Stockings returned to Toledo for another exhibition on July 25, 1884, but this time controversy was avoided. Both Walker brothers, by prior agreement, stayed on the bench.

Moses Walker was booed and hissed at a game in Louisville, Kentucky in early May and in Richmond, Virginia later in the season. He also had trouble with Tony Mullane, the celebrated "switch-pitcher" and one of the great pitchers of the error. The Blade said, "Walker is a good catcher, but he cannot hold Mullane." Mullane said of Walker, "He was the best catcher I ever worked with, but I disliked a Negro and whenever I had to pitch to him I used anything I wanted without looking at his signals." Such shenanigans added errors and passed balls to Walker's statistics and increased the possibility of injury. Walker batted .263 for the 1884 season, but his sore hands caused his release on September 23, 1884. No black man would play in the major leagues again until Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

Walker played for minor league teams in Cleveland, Newark, and other cities for several more years, and he crossed paths with Cap Anson again. In 1887 Anson threatened to cancel an exhibition against the Newark team rather than face the black star of the team, pitcher George Stovey. Stovey and his catcher, Walker, both remained on the bench for the duration of the game. Anson's campaign began to have an effect; after the season Newark released Stovey despite his 33 wins. By 1889 Walker was the only black remaining in the high minor leagues, and soon after the color line was firmly in place throughout professional baseball. Moses Walker turned to political pursuits, editing a newspaper with his brother Welday and advocating black resettlement in Africa. He died in Cleveland in 1924 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Cap Anson also experienced his share of troubles. "Cap Anson was a blowhard," says Bill James, "and the older he got, the harder he blew." His obstinate nature caused his dismissal as Chicago manager in 1897 and kept him from returning to baseball. Bad investments soon forced him into bankruptcy. In 1920 Judge K. M. Landis was appointed the first Commissioner of Baseball; the 68 year old Anson campaigned for the job, but was ignored. The National League paid his funeral expenses when he died in 1922. Anson's White Stockings became known as the Colts and then the Cubs, the name they bear today. Cap Anson is still the team's all-time leader in hits, runs batted in, and batting average, but his reputation rests on the campaign he began in Toledo on that August day in 1883.