Schenectady had something very special in the 1913 Mohawk Giants. The team formed that year and was Schenectady’s first professional baseball team since the Frog Alleys (or Dorpians) departed for Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1904.
Mohawk Giants brought Hall of Fame-level talent to Schenectady
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Walter Johnson, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, had one of his greatest seasons in 1913, going 36-7.
But that fall, the Mohawk Colored Giants, a Black baseball team in Schenectady, added an unofficial loss to Johnson’s tally when he and an all-white team of major leaguers came to the city as part of a barnstorming tour.
Facing Johnson was Giants’ pitcher Frank Wickware, who possessed “one of the fastest fastballs of the era,” according to Steven Rice, a member of the Society for American Baseball Research.
Wickware was so confident that he would frequently belittle his opponents’ efforts by calling in his outfielders, reported a 1961 Schenectady Gazette article, “and there is no record that this bit of show-boating ever backfired.”