A hundred years ago, racial lightning rod Cap Anson showed a different side of his reputation

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Pilloried today for his avowed racism during his major league career, including uttering the "N" word before the start of an exhibition game at Toledo in 1883, Cap Anson did something 100 years ago that may come as a surprise -- he played in semi-pro games in Chicago against an all-black team led by the future founder of the first of the Negro Leagues, Rube Foster.

A longtime National League star, Anson played big league ball from 1871 to 1897, and, during that period, was an unapologetic racist. Born in Iowa in 1852, he was the only player to play long enough within the 19th century to attain 3,000 hits by the end of that century. Anson's greatest prominence was from 1879-97, as captain-manager of the National League's Chicago White Stockings, later renamed the Cubs. He also was widely known for shooting off his mouth on anything that bothered him.

Whether, as of 1908, the year he first played against blacks, he was still opposed to the presence of blacks in the big leagues is a mystery. Also debatable about Anson is whether his strong objections to facing blacks during his National League career directly or indirectly led to a major drawing of the sport's "color line" in 1887 by the International League, a top minor league.

In July 1887, during a meeting in Buffalo, N.Y., directors of the International League decided to ban contracts with additional black players. After that decision, progressively fewer blacks would play in the International League and other high minor leagues in the next several years. After the early 1890s, the low minors would be their highest level through 1898. From 1899 until 1946, when Jackie Robinson played for Montreal of the International League, apparently only one black player would appear in the minors: Jimmy Claxton, in a doubleheader in the Pacific Coast League, in 1916. Then, the first of the Negro Leagues, the Negro National League, was founded by Foster in 1920.

Back in 1883, in a failed attempt to bully Toledo into not playing its black player, Fleet Walker, in a game against Chicago, Anson had uttered the "N" word epithet. The following year, however, Fleet and his brother Weldy would become the first two blacks to play in the major leagues, for Toledo, which in 1884 was in the American Association, which was a major league from 1882 to 1891. Robinson later joined the major leagues in 1947. (Recent research shows that a player named William Edward White who was one-fourth black played a single game in the National League in 1879.)

In 1907, both Anson and Foster had for the first time participated in Chicago's top semi-pro league, with Anson owning and managing a team, Anson's Colts, while not playing in any of its games. Meanwhile, Foster was now player-manager of the all-black Leland Giants.

There was a second all-black team in their league in 1907, the Oak Leas.

During a weekend that season, Anson's Colts beat the Oak Leas on a Saturday and Sunday. In 1908, Anson decided to play in 22 of his team's games, and in two of them, against Foster's club, Anson was the first baseman. In the first of the games, Foster's club won, 5-0. In the second, Anson and Foster were opposing first basemen, and ended in a 5-5 tie in 13 innings.

In 1909, the final year of Anson's semi-pro team, his and Foster's were two of the six teams in Chicago's newly constituted City League.

Early in the 1900s, Anson had mellowed in his racism, at least in baseball. In 1901, a former Chicago National League teammate who also had been a racist, Fred Pfeffer, had organized a semi-pro team in Chicago, and Anson umpired its games on five consecutive Sundays. In the fifth game, the opposing team was the all-black Columbia Giants, with Pfeffer's team losing the game, 15-0. Later that year, Anson umpired a game involving an all-black team from Saylor, Iowa, and a series of games in Nevada, Iowa, involving county champion Nevada and Saylor, the "colored champions."

An ad in the Nevada Journal also stated, "CAPT. ANSON, of Chicago, the 'grand old man' of the base ball world, will umpire all games and his decision will be final." Anson umpired four other games in 1901 involving teams that were all-black or had some black players, including at Williamsburg, Iowa, and Yorkville, Ill., with the Yorkville game involving the Columbia Giants. In 1902, he umpired a game played by the Chicago Unions, the new name of the Columbia Giants. Foster pitched for the Unions, and his team lost, 11-8.

Anson did resort to racist rhetoric in 1905, in his successful campaign for city clerk of Chicago, then the city's No. 3 post. The rhetoric had been recently espoused by then-President Theodore Roosevelt. Known as "race suicide," Roosevelt was concerned about whites falling as a proportion of the population relative to blacks, because whites were less likely to have large families. With a few weeks to go in the campaign, Anson said the following at a rally, referring to the nominee for mayor on the Democratic ticket, Edward Dunne:

"He has 10 children. I have four. Mr. (city attorney candidate William) Moak has five children and (treasurer candidate Frederick) Blocki has one. That makes a good total for four men running on one ticket. A showing like that ought to satisfy President Roosevelt."

It is possible to speculate on why Anson had lightened up on his racism during the decade of the early 1900s, in a baseball context. Beyond any personal calculation he may have made, official racism in Illinois had lightened considerably right at the end of his career, in 1897.

Illinois' original 1885 law on the subject had barred racial discrimination in inns, restaurants, barber shops, public transportation, theaters and places of public amusement, and segregation in schools had been previously barred. The 1897 law applied to hotels, soda fountains, saloons, bathrooms, theaters, skating rinks, concerts, cafes, bicycle rinks, elevators, ice cream parlors, railroads, stages, street cars and boats.

Still, we are left to wonder whether Anson, when he played against all-black teams 100 years ago this year, had a true change of heart or was at least comfortable with blacks playing at a level below the minor leagues. A picture of Anson and Foster also survives circa 1917, and reflects the limited progress that blacks were able to make in baseball before Jackie Robinson.

Howard W. Rosenberg is a freelance writer and the definitive biographer of Cap Anson. The above was adapted from his 2006 book "Cap Anson 4: Bigger Than Babe Ruth: Captain Anson of Chicago." Rosenberg lives in Virginia.

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