B-2 AllOTSEGO.life THURSDAY-FRIDAY, APRIL 11-12, 2013

Open House and Tour of Our HomeTuesday, April 23

11 am to 5 pmCelebrating 85 Years

Exceptional Senior Living in a Gracious Setting48 Grove Street, Cooperstown

607-547-8844

HYDE HALL, Inc.Hyde Hall, in Glimmerglass State Park,

will offer free refreshments on Saturday, April 13 at 2 pm, for those interested in volunteer opportunities.

Call 607-547-5098for more information.

Featuring “Return to Me” A romantic comedy starring David Duchovny, Minnie Driver and Carroll O’Connor

Bassett Medical Center presents:

at BassettMovie Night

Friday, April 19, 5:30 p.m.

FREE EVENT

Join us in the Clark Auditorium, Bassett Medical Center.

Refreshments will be served.

Sponsored by Bassett Medical Center and the

Center for Donation & Transplant.

Information will be available after the movie about giving the Gift of Life.

Cooperstown celebratesBud Fowler weekendFirst Black Professional Baseball Player Raised in the Village of Cooperstown

SCHEDULE OF EVENTSSaturday, April 20

4 pm • Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce • 31 Chestnut StreetThe Dedication of Fowler Way…Mayor Katz and the Cooperstown Village Trustees

Featuring Members of the Society for American Baseball Research 19th Century Committee (SABR)4:30 pm • Historic Doubleday Field • Cooperstown

Keynote Speech by Major League Baseball Historian John ThornUnveiling of Bud Fowler Informational Kiosk by Cooperstown Graduate Program

in Museum Studies Students (CPG)Sunday, April 21

10 am • Grandstand Theatre • National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum • 25 Main StreetSABR meeting, with CPG students to discuss findings from a just-concluded

research program into the Fowler story.

Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce31 Chestnut Street • Cooperstown, NY 13326 • 607-547-9983 • www.cooperstownchamber.org

The Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce invites youto visit Cooperstown’s shops and restaurants

during Bud Fowler Weekend! Remember – “think local first” -

to support a successful local economy!

Meet the ArtistJeanne HildenbrandApril 27, 5 to 8 pm

Join us for dinner or cocktailsand enjoy the opportunityto chat with a local artist

AllOTSEGO.dining&entertainment

Cooperstown Farmers’ MarketEvEry Saturday 9 am to 2 pm

(closed april 27)101 Main Street in Pioneer alley, Cooperstown

607-547-6195 • www.otsego2000.orgSponsored by Otsego 2000 since 1991

FOWLER/From B1search, dedicated that stone on July 25, 1987, there was no memorial to the man who has the best claim of any Cooperstownian to baseball greatness.

Beneath the stone are the remains of John Jackson, aka Bud Fowler, who SABR declared was the first black to play in “organized minor baseball leagues” in the last quarter of the 19th century,

before “the colored curtain” exiled them from profes-sional teams.

Of 70 professional ball-players, Bud Fowler, born in Fort Plain and raised in Cooperstown, “was the first (in pro ball) by several years and the one who played the longest, 10 seasons,” SABR researchers found. “He was also one of the best black players of that genera-tion and thereby helped to

provide a limited opportu-nity for other players of his race.”

The current movie “1942” has put Jackie Robinson in the public conscious-ness again, but Bud Fowler played his first professional game – in Chelsea, Mass. – in 1878, 68 years before Branch Rickey recruited Robinson for the Montreal Royals and, then, the Brook-lyn Dodgers.

While, since the SABR rediscovery, in particular, knowledge of John Jackson has risen among baseball fans – a biography, “Bud Fowler: Baseball’s First Black Professional,” is due out in June – he is little known to the public at large.

Still, what a comeback since that morning in 1983, when newly arrived Nation-al Baseball Hall of Fame Li-brarian Tom Heitz was sort-ing files at 25 Main. “I was looking for someone else in the ‘F’ series,” he remem-bers, “and I happened upon a folder that said ‘Fowler, Bud.’ There was a note there, ‘Jackson=Fowler’.”

The file had been started by Lee Allen, a Hall of Fame historian who had died suddenly on May 19, 1969, at age 54, leaving “a stack of pending projects,” Heitz later recounted in a published account. The folder indicated Allen had established the Cooperstown link, and also concluded

Fowler was the first black professional ballplayer.

The name George Til-lapaugh surfaced in the file, and Heitz sought out the Cooperstown funeral director (his son, Martin, runs Tillapaugh Funeral Service today). Tillapaugh, it turns out, had buried one of Jackson’s relatives (in the Christ Church yard), and had learned about the Fowler story.

Another piece of the puz-zle was in James Fenimore Cooper’s “Tales of a North-ern County.” Jimmy Cooper, some surmised, went to school with Jackson, played ball with him and in “Tales” related that the “little black boy ... felt his color so much that he used to say that, if it would make him white, he would willingly be skinned alive.”

“As a librarian, I had more than enough to deal with,” said Heitz. “It’s tempting for librarians to get involved in the research problems of their clients.” Still, as HoF librarian, he had standing to encourage others to pursue research he could not.

In 1985, Heitz visited Bob Davids, a founding father of SABR, at his home in the suburbs of Washing-ton, D.C. During the course of a long conversation and dinner at Davids’ home, he suggested that SABR take on the Bud Fowler story.

A monograph Davids then prepared further strength-ened the Cooperstown tie: He found Jackson’s father listed as a barber in Cooperstown in the 1860 Census. The 1970 Census listed the son as 13 and reported he “attended school within the year.”

Davids’ article – it traces Bud Fowler’s professional career in some detail – was reprinted in the program for the 1987 “memorial ob-servance” at the Frankfort potter’s field. And he credits two dozen benefactors for helping with the research, and helping raise money for the stone.

Still, the genealogy had not been definitively estab-

lished and, as Internet offer-ings multiplied in the 1990s, Village Historian Hugh MacDougall took up the challenge. “He’s a fantastic researcher,” said Heitz.

A long article in the black press – MacDougall found it in the Feb. 20, 1909, edition of the Indianapolis Free-man – further detailed the Cooperstown connection. And he obtained a copy of Fowler’s death certificate from the Frankfort town clerk, listing the former ballplayer’s death, Feb. 26, 1913, age 54, as be-ing caused by “pernicious anaemia.”

So as the 100th anni-versary of his death ap-proached, the outlines of the Bud Fowler/John Jackson story had fairly well de-termined, and Mayor Jeff Katz decided it was time to correct a historic omission, time for Baseball Town, repository of so many other communities’ baseball he-roes, to recognize its own hero.

“I picture myself as a knowledgeable baseball fan,” said Katz, “but I had never heard of Bud Fowler until I moved to Cooperstown.”

Katz credits Tom Shieber, senior curator at the Hall of Fame, with suggest-ing the idea when they ran into each other at the 2012 Cooperstown Winter Carni-val. The mayor first con-sidered attaching a second street sign, “Fowler Way,” to “Hoffman Lane,” across from the Hall.

Trustee Cindy Falk did some initial research, and she discovered an un-named street in the village: The lane that leads from Chestnut Street, past the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce, to Doubleday Field, the baseball shrine. Unnamed! “Once that hap-pened, it became clear,” said Katz. “It was so perfect.”

Bud Fowler, out-growth of John Jackson’s Cooperstown boyhood, is the subject of commemora-tions the weekend of April 20-21. A street sign, “Fowl-er Way,” will be unveiled at 4 p.m. that Saturday. MLB official historian John Thorn will deliver an assessment after a plaque is then dedi-cated at Doubleday Field. At 10 a.m. that Sunday, his career will be discussed at a forum in the Hall’s Grand-stand Theater.

The question remains: Should John Jackson be ensconced in the Hall of Plaques in the community where he learned to play. Definitely, MacDougall declares.

The Hall, of course, doesn’t pick its own induct-ees. The vehicle to ac-complish that would be the Historical Overview Com-mittee of the Baseball Writ-ers’ Association of Ameri-can, said Hall spokesman Craig Muder. Every three years, it prepares a Pre-In-tegration Era ballot, but it reported back its last ballot in December, so no further review will be forthcoming until December 2015.

Still, MacDougall reports 10 Pre-Integration ballplay-ers were nominated. Bud Fowler, he said, was number 11. Who knows?

Dedicated Researchers Recognized Significance Of Cooperstown’s Fowler

AllOTSEGO.lifeOrnate tombstones sur-round the potter’s field where Bud Fowler was buried, unheralded.