100. Chief Tokohama: The (almost) integration of the American League

I don't like goodbyes, surprise parties and making a big deal out of anniversaries. That's why although this is the 100th card I've added to The Infinite Baseball Card Set, the character I've chosen and the story being told has no significant meaning. Card 100 is simply another great story from the dark corners of baseball history's creaky attic that needed to be retold...

Hot Springs, Arkansas, Spring, 1901: Baltimore Orioles manager John McGraw was taking a break from whipping his boys into fighting trim, getting them ready for the American League's inaugural season. As he walked back to the Eastland Hotel where his team was spending their Spring Training he passed a baseball diamond adjacent to the Eastland and McGraw paused to watch a team of ballplayers practice. The group was made up of the hotel's waiters and bellhops and as his discerning eyes automatically scanned the field evaluating each player, McGraw's attention focused on the second baseman. This fellow fielded flawlessly, his throws were rapid and accurate and at bat he was by far the best on the field. This man was a professional.

The only problem was he was black.

The second baseman that got McGraw worked up into a lather that day was Charley Grant, infielder for the Columbia Giants out of Chicago. Grant had taken a job in the off-season working as a bellhop at the Eastland Hotel and to play on the baseball team made up of some of the best black ballplayers in the land who were doubling as hotel employees. Many hotels down south, particularly in Hot Springs and Palm Beach, fielded virtual black all-star teams to entertain their rich clientele who came to their establishments for spa treatments and relaxation.

Charley Grant was a star among the black sporting fans in the north but unknown to the white world. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Grant got his professional start with the Page Fence Giants, a traveling team out of Adrian, Michigan, in 1896. The Giants, started as a way to advertise the Page Fence Company, was one of black baseball's first great teams and were instrumental in demonstrating the talent of black ballplayers to the rural white communities whose teams they barnstormed against. A few years later Grant joined the Chicago-based Columbia Giants, teaming up with Negro baseball legends Sol White, Bill Holland and Home Run Johnson. The Columbia Giants claimed to be the best team in black baseball and by the time McGraw had spied him working out with the Eastland Hotel's ball club, Grant had received much praise as one of blackball's premier infielders.

Although John McGraw had been manager of the Orioles for a few years, the coming 1901 campaign was different - this season Baltimore would be part of the brand new American League. Started by disgruntled ex-National League players and owners, the American League teams scrambled to sign as many top players as they could and McGraw and his Orioles were no different. It's no surprise then that McGraw would try anything to get a ballplayer as talented as Charley Grant into a Baltimore uniform that season.

Now there's a few conflicting stories about how McGraw came to sign Grant to an Orioles contract. The one I'm going with was related in a 1942 article in the Chicago Defender. Turns out that Dave Wyatt, Grant's teammate on the Columbia Giants, had been employed previously at the Eastland Hotel and apparently knew John McGraw from his earlier spring training visits. Wyatt was a good middle infielder but was too dark skinned to think about passing in the white leagues. Charley, however, was not. He had light brown skin and even better, his hair was naturally strait. Wyatt came up with the idea to pass him off as an Indian and McGraw eagerly agreed. Grant, however, was hesitant about the scheme. He didn't feel comfortable masquerading as an Indian, but McGraw and Wyatt eventually convinced him to give it a try. The Orioles skipper told Wyatt to come up with a long Indian-sounding name and Charley Grant became "Grant-a-muscogee" of the Tuckahoma Tribe. By now newspaper reporters following the Orioles picked up on McGraw's new recruit and circled in on a good story. McGraw concocted the back story that Grant-a-muscogee turned up at a Baltimore practice one afternoon and insisted on a try-out which the Orioles manager reluctantly agreed to. Grant-a-muscogee claimed to be the son of a white father and a Native-American mother and had previously held down the second base job for the famed Nebraska Indians traveling baseball team. The scribes somehow got the name "Grant-a-muscogee" all fouled up and the faux-Indian infielder became "Tokohama" instead. Another story behind the Tokohama name has McGraw allegedly appropriating the name of a local river (although Negro league researcher Gary Ashwill failed to find said body of water). Whatever the origins, the sportswriters added the mandatory prefix "Chief" and introduced the newly minted Native-American to the white sporting world.

On the Orioles team, McGraw was fooling no one. Baltimore infielder George Rohe had grown up with Grant in Cincinnati and half a dozen other players knew him personally from their travels. What is surprising in hind-sight is that there was no reported animosity towards Grant because of his skin color. Much has been made of McGraw being "color blind" when it came to black ballplayers but I believe it was less a liberal attitude towards race than a blind desire to field the best possible team in order to win. That said, I find it quite remarkable that the Orioles, being a "Southern" team, voiced no opposition to playing alongside Grant. I'd say it speaks highly of his talent as a ballplayer that enabled him to be accepted so readily on the all-white Orioles.

With his cover story in place, newspapers on March 15th announced Tokohama's signing of a Baltimore contract. Grant's new identity as a Native-American seemed complete when the article describing his signing added a footnote hoping that McGraw could prevent him from "following in the footsteps of Sockalexis, a Penobcot, who played brilliant ball for Tebeau's Cleveland team some years ago until fire water and bad companions ruined him, and eventually made him a vagrant and tramp, although he was a college graduate."

Tokohama, or "Tokie" as he was called by his teammates, trained with the Orioles and McGraw told reporters that he'd be joining the team when they broke camp - his only quandary was whether he'd be Baltimore's starting second baseman or outfielder. But then Charley Grant's notoriety caught up with him.

Sometime around the end of March someone unmasked Tokohama as the Columbia Giants star. Most books credit Charlie Comiskey of outing Grant when McGraw brought his team into Chicago to play the White Stockings. Intrepid researcher Gary Ashwill has uncovered that Baltimore didn't travel to Chicago until late May, more than 2 months after newspapers printed the story of McGraw's ruse. The story is a bit more muddier it seems.

As I stated above, the Tokohama story began unravelling in late March. At first McGraw and Grant brushed off the accusations and McGraw apparently tried a brilliant end-run by denying his second baseman was the famous Negro ballplayer named Grant who played for Buffalo. By bringing up the Grant that played for Buffalo, McGraw sent the scribes on a wild goose chase to track down the star of the Buffalo team, indeed a Negro named Grant, but he was Frank Grant, not Charley Grant. Frank Grant was a very well-known ballplayer but was quite different in appearance, being much older and stouter, when compared to his Tokohama who was in his early twenties and lean. The crafty McGraw seems to have thrown up enough smoke to cast some doubt on the stories circulating about Grant. In the midst of the controversy newspapers reported that the Orioles still considered Tokie part of the team and McGraw was quoted in several articles as specifically stating his intention of bringing him back to Baltimore. However by the second week in April the story all seemed to fall apart. Papers reported Charley Grant, aka Tokohama, signing on as the Columbia Giants captain and second baseman for the 1901 season.

And with that, Grant packed his bags and headed back to Chicago.

But McGraw wasn't giving up just yet. As late as the middle of May papers wrote of the Orioles manager demanding the right to have "his Indian" play on the team. Which brings us to the Charlie Comiskey part of the story.

As Gary Ashwill discovered, Baltimore didn't appear in Chicago until early May, 1901, a month after Grant had reverted to his real name and re-signed with the Columbia Giants. As the legend goes, Tokohama was finally and irrevocably unmasked while playing in Chicago by a combination of Comiskey's racism and black fans who knew he was indeed black, not a Native-American. The 1942 Chicago Defender article relates a different story of how Grant's teammate on the Giants, Pete Burns and a die hard black fan by the name of Tom Evans were actually the ones who put an end to Tokohama's Baltimore career.

Now this next little bit is speculation on my part: since Grant was already in Chicago with the Columbia Giants, and recent articles had McGraw still insisting that he was going to be part of the Orioles, I'd go so far as to suggest that when McGraw took his team into Chicago, Grant suited up and took his place on the Baltimore bench when they faced Comiskey's White Stockings.

For some reason, Burns went to the Chicago Tribune and told its sports staff that "McGraw was now hiring Negroes on his team." Why Burns would do such a thing is hard to speculate, but perhaps he was angered that Grant would abandon the Columbia Giants, thus robbing them of one of their star players and team captain. Or maybe the team owner put Burns up to it in order to protect his investment. What ever Burns' motive, The Tribune dispatched a correspondent to Cincinnati to check up on it, but Dave Wyatt, Grant's teammate and the man who put this whole thing in motion, was one step ahead. He briefed Grant's mother on the whole Tokohama back story and when the Tribune man showed up on her doorstep she spun the same Cherokee story as her son and the reporter returned to Chicago empty-handed.

Concurrently, that super fan, Tom Evans, showed up at the Chicago-Baltimore game, jumped onto the field and marched over to the Orioles bench to say "Hello Charley. Where'd they get all this Indian stuff about you?" Newspaper reporters present that day who witnessed the exchanged grabbed Evans and he spilled the whole story of how that fellow on the Baltimore bench was no Indian but the great Negro second baseman, Charley Grant. The Chicago Tribune, previously thwarted in its attempt to get the story, now confidently blew the lid off the whole scam. Ban Johnson, the larger than life President of the American League called McGraw, Grant and Wyatt before him and ordered Baltimore to release Grant from his contract. The reason for his release was not attributed to his skin color but because Johnson believed "the league could not go on record as deceiving the fans by fostering a player under false identity." Grant went back to the Columbia Giants and McGraw left Johnson's office with a lifelong hatred for the American League and its President.

Charley Grant played 15 more years on some of the best early blackball teams including the Cuban X Giants and the Philadelphia Giants. After retiring from the game he returned to Cincinnati and worked as a janitor in an apartment building until his untimely death in 1932 when he was hit by an out of control car that hopped the curb and struck him. He died shortly after he was brought to the hospital.