Grant “Home Run” Johnson
“The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.” Bruce Lee [reportedly]
November 17, 2021
Some of the Baseball subjects that usually tumble around inside my brain, in no particular order, would be: 1) Baseball in the Nineteenth Century; 2) The History of the Home Run; 3) The Negro Leagues, or more precisely, Baseball before Integration; 4) Who are the Greatest Baseball Players of All-Time; and 5) The Baseball Hall of Fame. My mind is a strange place.
Considering the cascade of my thoughts, it is pretty easy to see why I am fascinated by the life of Grant (Home Run) Johnson. He was born September 23rd of 1872, deep in the 19th Century. Because he was African-American, Johnson was not allowed to play where he without a doubt belonged, in the Major Leagues. Despite this, in 1894, Grant Johnson began an extremely long professional baseball career. That year, he joined the original Cuban Giants. In 1895, Grant Johnson played for yet another legendary Black team, the Page Fence Giants. Johnson continued his career with stints on virtually every other great Negro team operating before the First World War: the Columbia Giants of Chicago, the Chicago Unions, the Cuban X Giants, the Philadelphia Giants, the Brooklyn Royal Giants, the Chicago Leland Giants, and then the New York Lincoln Giants. After finishing his playing career on the cream of the Negro teams with the Lincoln Giants in 1914, Grant Johnson continued on playing professional baseball with lesser teams until 1930. He finally retired at the geriatric baseball age of 58 years young. If sheer durability is any indication of greatness, Johnson would have to have been one of the greatest Baseball Players of All-Time.
In the year 1908, when Sol White (who was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2007) published his seminal “History of Colored Baseball” book, he picked the greatest African-American pitcher of that time, Andrew (Rube) Foster, to write an essay on pitching for his book. Of course, Rube Foster is also in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Then Sol White also picked the greatest African-American hitter of that time to write an essay on hitting. This hitter, of course, was the the one and only Grant (Home Run) Johnson. How good a hitter was Johnson? He played on teams with both John Henry Lloyd and Pete Hill, each of whom has also been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. There is plenty of evidence that Johnson was every bit as good a hitter as either Lloyd or Hill. In fact, especially considering their respective ages when they played together, it would appear that Grant Johnson was quite possibly a even greater hitter at his peak than either Lloyd or Hill. Grant Johnson was also more than just a great hitter without any defensive value. In his prime, Johnson played shortstop for his teams, converting to second base late in his 30s, before finally ending his career as a first baseman in his 40s and 50s. Johnson, who was a church going man with exemplary personal habits, passed away in 1963 at the advanced age of 90 years.
At his peak, Grant Johnson was compared very favorably to yet another Hall of Famer, Napoleon Lajoie. It was stated that any team owner could not go wrong picking either the African American Johnson or the Caucasian and quite French Lajoie. Whether Grant Johnson was as great or an even greater player than Napoleon Lajoie is a question that currently cannot be answered with complete certainty. But I firmly believe that Johnson was every bit as great as Lajoie. For one thing, Grant Johnson did not share Napoleon Lajoie’s one great weakness: the inability to accept his fair share of bases on balls. Home Run Johnson may have even been comparable as a hitter to his other direct contemporary, the great Honus Wagner. If this was true, it would be indisputable that Grant (Home Run) Johnson was one of the 100 greatest baseball players of all-time. This Baseball Blog is dedicated to the memory of the great Grant Johnson and will undertake to expand the readily available knowledge about this mostly forgotten and overlooked Ballplayer.
NEXT:
The future content of my baseball blog will contain posts exploring: Baseball Demographics, Current Events in Baseball, Who should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Baseball in the 19th Century, the Negro Leagues, the History of the Home Run, the 100 (or perhaps 200 or 300) Greatest Players of All-time, and any other topics that catch my attention at the moment. Hopefully, I will even be able to relate some of these topics to exactly how the game of Baseball is currently being played.