African American Bud Fowler's slow but steady climb up the organized baseball ladder culminated in 1887 with his position on the roster of the International League's Binghamton (N.Y.) franchise. While batting .350 and running the bases with abandon, Fowler abruptly resigned from the Crickets, supposedly to sign a more lucrative contract with the New York Cubans. However, the truth was uglier. Fowler's Binghamton teammates refused to play with the African American all-star because of his skin color (and perhaps to find a scapegoat for the team's below-average play). When the facts of the matter were uncovered a month later by the local newspapers, each Crickets player was fined $50.1 This incident-combined with Cap Anson's refusal to take the field if Newark's George Stovey took the mound in an exhibition game-made financially strapped and timid International League owners agree not to sign African American players in the future. The unofficial and whispered "Gentlemen's Agreement" was now de facto policy in the upper echelons of organized baseball.2 Opportunities for black ballplayers in integrated leagues were fast disappearing by 1888.Bud Fowler took his baseball skills back to the (seemingly) more receptive Midwest in 1888, undoubtedly affected by the segregationist direction the sport was taking in the East. His first attempt to return to the Midwest ended abruptly in an offensive manner. Fowler signed with the Lafayette (Ind.) club in the offseason only to be released when club management discovered he was an African American:John W. Fowler of Utica, N.Y., arrived in Lafayette Saturday night, having been engaged to fill the position of pitcher for the baseball club of that place. It was thought that Fowler was a white man, and quite a surprise was in store of the Lafayette players when they discovered that he was a genuine darkey. The manager of the club concluded that he would only take strawberry blondes, and the contract with Fowler was annulled.The newspaper followed up the next day on Fowler's return to the Midwest by naming names and uncovering his new league destination: "He didn't suit Will Simpson and one or two other blondes. Fowler will probably play with the Crawfordsville club."3Fowler did surface with the nearby Crawfordsville (Ind.) Hoosiers of the Central Interstate League. He had a productive year at the plate (.294) and 22 steals in a halfseason of play. However, his defense was uncharacteristically uneven as evidenced in an early two-game sweep of visiting Peoria. Batting sixth and playing second base, Bud went 3-for-9 but made three errors in the second game: "But for Fowler's wretched play at second base, this would have been a model contest." Yet despite such fulsome praise of the team as having been composed of "gentlemen who depend on playing ball to win, not on bluff and trickery,"4 Crawfordsville was sold to Terre Haute investors who had moved to Indiana from Dubuque in early June.This patched-together organization disbanded when the Central Interstate League reorganized in early July with Crawfordsville finishing with a record of 21-21. The main reasons for the team's withdrawal from the league were financial debt and the conduct of its fans, the bugbears of baseball management in the 19th century: The club owed its players more than $500 in unpaid salaries, with contemporary sources noting that "the character of the hoodlum audiences of last year has not improved."51888 was a difficult year in organized baseball in the Midwest for the talented African American second baseman who remained in Crawfordsville and played for an all-black team through early July. It is little wonder that Fowler looked (and headed) farther west in July in search of a new club and further opportunities to play the game he loved.When Fowler arrived in the capital of the New Mexico Territory in July 1888, Santa Fe was a relatively small (160,000 acres), sparsely populated (8,000 inhabitants) outpost on the western frontier that carried a reputation of danger, corruption, and foreignness for the rest of the country. …