August pickup thread

[sphere and ash]

Picked up this image of the 1905 Harvard team, featuring William Clarence Matthews, in Leland’s. I’ve been looking for an image of Matthews for about five years to fill I hole in a collection of images related to baseball’s color line.

Matthews went on to play for an integrated team in Vermont before leaving baseball. Boston’s Traveler newspaper wrote at the time:

“Because his skin is black he can never play on any but itinerant colored nines that at best eke out a hand to mouth existence.

With all its insurmountable handicaps, baseball is not the place for Matthews.

He should begin the battle for life somewhere else.”

And so he did.