John Donaldson - The Greatest Baseball Player You've Never Heard Of

Oh, I have a baseball story for you

This week’s Moonlighter is actually a two for one. Our story starts with baseball historian Pete Gorton has spent countless hours digging deeper into the annals of history and finding stories that most don’t even know exist. Gorton has unearthed more information about players, games, and records than most anyone else will ever know. However, there was one story he came across that grabbed his attention. In fact, Gorton is part of a network that has likely rediscovered the greatest baseball player you have never heard of: John Donaldson. 

Pete Gorton has basically committed himself to getting John Donaldson into the Hall of Fame. Much of Donaldson’s career was long before Major League Baseball was integrated and before Negro Leagues even existed. Donaldson was a pitcher and outfielder who was one of the most sought after town team talents in the upper midwest. Gorton first came across the story of John Donaldson when he was contributing to a book on the history of Black baseball in Minnesota. That brief introduction to John Donaldson in 2004 has taken over Gorton’s baseball mind for the last 16 years.

He is a great story of perseverance

The more that Gorton dug, the more he found about Donaldson. He played all across Minnesota and Iowa and was the most dominant player on the field every night. According to statistics that Gorton is able to verify, Donaldson had over 400 wins, 5,000 strikeouts, and appeared in roughly 2,500 hundred games in over 600 cities in North America. There are another 165 games in which Donaldson pitched but newspapers did not record strikeout totals.  These statistics have been uncovered thanks in part to what Gorton calls the “Donaldson Network”. Donaldson was such a star that he was able to make more money playing town team ball than he was in the Negro Leagues because people would flock from all over to see him play. Donaldson was one of the founding members of the Kansas City Monarchs before returning to the better pay of town team baseball. Donaldson never played in the Major Leagues, but he did serve as the first Black scout in the MLB. 

Gorton’s passion has fueled his research for Donaldson’s Hall of Fame case and the results are clear in this interview. The stories, statistics, and connections across John Donaldson’s career are almost unbelievable. He played with Satchel Paige and perhaps even played in front of Moonlight Graham himself. This story is one that needs to be told, and Pete Gorton and the Donaldson Network are passionate about getting it out there.