WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A biography about Berkshire County's Frank Grant, a Black player voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006, will be the focus of a talk starting at 4:00 this Wednesday at the Williams Bookstore on 81 Spring Street.

 

The new 270-page book is by a Minnesota author named Richard Bogovich.  

 

This talk is his first about Grant's biography.  

 

Also speaking at the bookstore will be Carolyn Foote-Minich, a descendant of Frank Grant's brother Clarence, and Kevin Larkin, a baseball historian and author who lives in Berkshire County.  Other descendants of Clarence and Frank Grant are also expected to attend.

 

According to a press release, Frank Grant is considered the best Black player of the 1800s. Frank Grant challenged baseball's color barrier in the 1880s to play for top professional teams that were otherwise all white—and two minor league teams in Pennsylvania fought a courtroom battle for his services. 

 

The biography documents Grant's career highlights, including games against many Major League teams during exhibitions and a solid batting average against Hall-of-Fame pitchers.  All told, Grant played against or with, or had some other sort of connection, to no fewer than 26 Hall-of-Famers, including pitcher Jack Chesbro, a native of North Adams. 

 

Included are stories overlooked for more than a century, including a falsified anecdote that obscured one of Grant's best games from history, with the Buffalo Bisons of the International League, one rung below the major leagues. The book also explores Grant's early years of the Cuban Giants, the first Black pro ballclub, with whom Grant played during much of the 1890s. 

 

Bogovich similarly documents the early years of Grant's only known son, who was unknown to baseball researchers until roughly a decade ago and whose first name was known to just a handful at most.  As a result of this genealogical research, Bogovich introduced Grant's living descendants and those of his only sibling known to have children, brother Clarence - and one result will be Carolyn Foote - Minich's participation in the talk. 

 

The biography wraps up by presenting two anecdotes seven and five years before his death, countering previous theories that Grant was largely forgotten and possibly quite lonely during his final decade or two.