Baseball in the early twentieth-century
was certainly different than it is now. Vermont had its own baseball
league, called an outlaw league, because it wasn't associated with
any of the major leagues of the day. There were three Vermont teams
on the Northern League, Rutland, Burlington, and Montpelier-Barre,
called the “Hyphens”, and a team from Plattsburgh, New York.
These teams made up of “jumpers”, w ho jumped from contract to
contract, college baseball players who signed up under an assumed
name to protect their amateur status, and former major leaguers who
were either at the end of their careers, or banned from the leagues
for jumping.
In 1905, the Burlington team had a
black shortstop, William Clarence Matthews, a native of Selma,
Alabama who had just graduated from Harvard. A star player on the
Harvard team, Matthews was hoping to make enough of a name for
himself in an outlaw league to be able to break through the color
barrier of a major team.
Ironically, Sammy Aperius, Matthews'
nemesis from his college days, played on the Montpelier-Barre team.
Aperius, also from Selma, Alabama, played for Georgetown and refused
to play against Harvard because he wouldn't go onto a ball field with
a black player. He did the same thing when Matthews played baseball
for Burlington, refusing to play against a black person. The
Burlington Press wrote glowing reports of Matthews' conduct and
baseball ability. “Matthews received the glad hand from the
bleachers and grandstand when he first went to bat, showing that race
prejudices did not blind the eyes of the spectators so they could not
distinguish a good ballplayer and a gentleman.” George Whitney,
owner of the Burlington team, was quoted as saying that, “Vermont
is not a Jim Crow state. A man who would not play ball with Matthews,
or even eat or sleep with him, is a cad.”
On the other hand, the Montpelier
Argus defended Aperius, saying that Aperius was just defending
Southern ways, and wouldn't be welcome back in his home state if he
had agreed to play against Matthews. The Rutland Herald interviewed
their favorite player, Rube Vickers, and asked him his opinion on the
racial controversy. Vickers said that “Aperius was the loser as
far as favor with the crowds was concerned” and “Matthews was a
brilliant player who never caused any trouble for anyone”.
Matthews was an all-around excellent
player who played well at shortstop, hit well and did well stealing
bases. Unfortunately, all the controversy seemed to take its toll,
as his hitting deteriorated as the season progressed. At the end of
the season, Burlington had to switch him to the outfield because the
opposing team kept deliberately spiking him, and the team was afraid
he was going to get seriously hurt.
After the season ended, the newspapers
in Boston were full of news that Matthews was possibly about to be
signed to the Boston National League team. The Boston papers had
always followed him because he was a favorite Harvard player.The
press was very enthusiastic about the possiblity of gaining Matthews
as a Boston player. Boston was doing horribly and really needed
another player with the skills to win. The outcry against having a
black major league player was stronger, though, especially from
southern players who threatened to pull out of major league baseball
and start a southern league that would refuse to play with or against
black players. One of the standard theories was that the objection
wasn't really to having black baseball players, but those players
would have to ride on the same trains as the white players, eat with
the white players, suit up with the white players, and many people
objected to that kind of integration. In the end, Matthews did not
get signed on to the Boston team. The color barrier was too strong.
Not until Jackie Robinson played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 was
there a black baseball player on a major league team.
The Vermont Northern League disbanded
in 1906 and was reformed in 1923-24, when it served as a
prohibition-era front for rum-running between Vermont and Canada.
The League was resurrected again in 1935 and lasted until 1952. In
2001, the Green Mountain Community Baseball League was given a
franchise through the New England Collegiate Baseball League.
Montpelier's team is the Mountaineers.
After being turned down
for a place on the Boston team, William Clarence Matthews went back
to Harvard and got his law degree. He stayed in Boston and became the
Assistant State's Attorney for the Boston area. In 1924, he worked
on the campaign of Calvin Coolidge, and became the black leader of
the Republican Party in Boston. When Coolidge won, Matthews moved to
Washington, D.C and became an Assistant Attorney General. He was
married, and died of a perforated ulcer in 1928.
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