“Were it not for the fact that he is a colored man, he would without a doubt be at the top notch of the records among the finest teams in the country.”
So begins a contemporary press account on Ulysses “Frank” Grant, perhaps the best of the African-American players who played in organized baseball in the 1880s, before the color line was drawn. Grant was a quick, agile, skilled second baseman, and also a pitcher at the very beginning of his career. He was known as “The Black Dunlap,” a reference to Fred Dunlap, one of the best fielding white second basemen of the decade.
