Page Fence Giants succeeded on and off the field

It was a grand plan, but Fowler could not raise the money to support a team based out of Findlay. So, he turned to a different location in the Midwest. He approached a white businessman from Adrian, Mich., a small city located about an hour’s drive of Detroit. The businessman, named J. Wallace Page, owned a company called the Page Woven Wire Fence Company.

Pitching his idea to Mr. Page, Fowler found an interested partner. Even though Page lived in Adrian, a largely white community in the 1890s, he seemed intrigued about the possibility of sponsoring a team filled with Black stars. He and Fowler agreed to call the team the “Page Fence Giants,” a shortening of the company’s official name.

Fowler also found additional money from a business called the Monarch Bicycle Company, located not so closely in Massachusetts. With Page Fence and Monarch Bicycle aboard, Fowler embarked on his mission of finding players for the team. Home Run Johnson agreed to play, even though the team now bore no connection to his hometown in Findlay. Fowler signed a bevy of other accomplished players, including catcher Peter Burns, first baseman George Taylor, center fielder Gustavus “Gus” Brooks, and pitchers Billy Holland and Joe “Cannon Ball” Miller. And Fowler himself played second base, even though he was 37 years of age.

In putting the team together, Fowler did not merely focus his attention on acquiring talented star players. He wanted players who did not drink, took care of themselves, and possessed what he regarded as good character. Of his 12 original players, five turned out to be college graduates, an unusually high percentage for any team, Black or white, of that era.

The Giants played their first game on April 9, 1895, marking the start of a 156-game season. Although loaded with talent, the team struggled at the start, winning only two of 11 games in April. It took the Giants a couple of months to jell, but by the end of June, they began to play a dominant brand of ball and embarked on the first of several long winning streaks.

Playing in 112 towns across seven states in middle America (and with none of the games played in Adrian), the Giants won 118 games, lost only 36, and managed a pair of ties. As well as the Giants played, Fowler did not last the season with the traveling team. In July, Fowler left the Giants due to a dispute with owner Page and his business partners. Still wanting to play, Fowler joined another Adrian-affiliated team, which was part of the nearly all-white Michigan State League. To replace Fowler at second base, the Giants signed Sol White, who would later become famous for writing his groundbreaking book, History of Colored Baseball.

While the Giants played to win, they also added substantial degrees of showmanship and humor to their brand of baseball. On one occasion, Home Run Johnson hit a home run, circled the bases, and then executed a full-body cartwheel near home plate. Billy Holland, noted as an accomplished tenor, would often break out into song during actual games.

To make matters even more interesting, the Giants sometimes activated non-playing members of their staff, particularly against weaker level competition. One day, the team’s cook, Will Gaskin, was given a start and banged out five hits.

The Giants also played high-level competition, none better than the Cincinnati Reds of the well-established National League. An article in the Cincinnati Enquirer anticipated the two-game series, reporting that the Giants “would conduct a street parade on bicycles and put up a good article of ball.” The Giants did just that. Though they lost the two games, they were competitive in the first game, before losing by a final score of 11-7. The two games drew good crowds, including a large contingent of black fans.

The street parade became a hallmark of the Giants’ franchise, a nice finishing touch to their arrival in a new town. The Giants traveled by train, while enjoying the accommodations of their own private railroad car, which was attached to a local train and was decorated with the team’s name on the outside. The Giants players ate their meals and slept in the railroad car, a major convenience at a time when many American restaurants and hotels imposed Jim Crow segregation against Black Americans.

Upon their arrival at the local train station, the Giants disembarked and then drove through town on bicycles supplied by Monarch Bicycle. That much-anticipated parade of bicycles typically attracted attention throughout the town, with some fans following the Giants players to the local ballfield. In some towns, the arrival of the Giants on bikes became a beloved spectacle— – and a perfect way to drum up interest in the barnstorming team.