As part of Major League Baseball’s upcoming event at Rickwood Field, AL.com and The Birmingham News will be producing weekly stories that showcase the history of Rickwood Field, and history of baseball in the state of Alabama.

“Rickwood: The legacy of America’s oldest ballpark” takes a deep dive at stories from the Negro Leagues to MLB icons playing at the historic venue, and how things are progressing as “MLB at Rickwood Field” takes place on June 20, 2024 between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals.

Before Satchel Paige wowed crowds in Birmingham and beyond during the onset of his Negro League Baseball career, there was Forest Maddox.

In the early 1920s, during the pioneering years of the Negro Leagues, the newspapers were hooked and praised the one-armed pitcher and outfielder who dazzled crowds in the segregated South. Maddox’s brief and somewhat unknown stint in the league, including a stint with the Birmingham Black Barons, occurred more than 70 years before Jim Abbott’s no-hitter in 1993 at Yankee Stadium that is considered among the most memorable performance by a physically disabled baseball player.

“He is a Houdini when it comes to catching a ball and making his glove disappear,” reported the Birmingham News in 1920 about Maddox, as referenced in author William Plott’s 2015 book, “The Negro Southern League: A Baseball History, 1920-1951.”

“He amazes spectators by the dexterity with which he catches the ball with his one gloved hand and with lightening like rapidity, snatches the ball again and relays it to the infield,” the Washington Post reported in 1921.

“He is the first one-armed player we currently know of,” said Layton Revel, a baseball historian and founder and executive director for the Center for Negro League Baseball Research.

‘Fascinating character’

The glowing references about Maddox were common during, before, and after the inaugural 1920 Negro League season. The league, and its history including a celebration of the 1948 Black Barons squad with a young Willie Mays in the outfield, will be celebrated during a June 20 Major League Baseball game featuring the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Maddox, before Mays was even born, was referred to by the nickname of “One-Wing” or “Wing,” and the Black press at the time was dazzled by the scrappy pitcher, outfielder, and manager whose Negro League career – and, tragically, his life – was far too short. Maddox died at age 30 or 31 in 1929, following complications of tuberculosis, only a few short years after his playing days were over.

“Even modern historians didn’t know he existed,” said Gary Cieradkowski, a baseball historian in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, who wrote about Maddox in 2018. “He wasn’t Satchel Paige or anything, but his story seemed to have died with him.”

Plott, a retired journalist and Alabama resident who has been a member of the Society for American Baseball Research since 1971, has given Maddox plenty of credit in his research in recent years, summing up the one-armed player this way, “Fascinating character. Interesting guy. And he was an attraction wherever he went.”

Remembering ‘One-Wing’

Maddox played from the late 1910s through the mid-to-late 20s and was considered a league attraction whose arrival predated Paige, a Mobile native who played with the Black Barons from 1927-1930. The two, in fact, were likely teammates briefly – in 1927, with the Chattanooga Black Lookouts in what was Paige’s first year within the Negro League.

Maddox, born in either 1897 or 1898 in Georgia, lost his left arm from the shoulder down in a boyhood accident around the age of 10. But Maddox learned how to play baseball and crafted a style that made him a must-see attraction in the 1920s, long before Pete Gray – who had lost his right arm as a child – memorably played over 70 games with the St. Louis Browns in 1945.

Historians, such as Plott, have resurrected Maddox’s legacy within the past decade through research of newspaper articles written during the earliest years of the Negro Leagues. He is the only Black disabled ballplayer from his era, and certainly the first to play in the Negro Leagues. Before him, Hugh “One Arm” Daily, a one-armed right-handed pitcher, played professionally in the 1880s before the formation of Major League Baseball in 1901.

Maddox’s story hasn’t been well-known until recent years with an increase of research and analysis on the Negro Leagues.

According to Plott and other accounts, Maddox learned how to catch a ball with his gloved hand, toss it into the air, remove the glove and then grab the ball again and throw it into the infield all through a quick and fluid motion.

“I ran into more than one instance in which (an article described) him nailing guys out trying to score from second,” Plott told AL.com. “He was a fairly decent pitcher, too. Not great. I don’t think ever would have played in the Negro National League. It’s just like Pete Gray, there is no way he would have played in the Major Leagues without World War II going on (and the player shortage at the time).”

Inaugural season

Maddox began his playing career at Morehouse College, before joining the Atlanta Black Crackers in 1918, and played baseball before the formation of the Negro Leagues in 1920. That year, though, he joined the Knoxville Giants in the Negro Southern League – a professional baseball league that allowed Southern cities the ability to field teams but considered a “minor league” compared to Rube Fosters’ National Negro League. The Birmingham Black Barons were among the Southern League’s charter cities.

Where the Southern League lacked the talent to match the National League, it had a memorable flair. According to Plott’s book, the Negro Southern League broke “both gender and disability barriers” by having the first women to play in the Negro Leagues, and female coaches as well. Maddox was the connection to the league’s acceptance of a disabled player.

“Over the years, I ran across some one-armed players in my research,” Plott said. “They were semi-pro sandlot situations and not professional like he was.”

Maddox played for several teams, moving from city-to-city whenever he was called upon — Knoxville, Atlanta, and Birmingham during those early years.

In 1920, the inaugural Negro League season, Maddox played briefly for Birmingham at Rickwood Field before he was snatched up by the Knoxville Giants and joined a formidable pitching staff with one of the league’s earliest pitching stars, Walter “Steel Arm” Dickey, who reportedly went on a 25-game winning streak that season. Future Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Norman “Turkey” Stearnes was also on the team for a few games.

Knoxville and the Montgomery Gray Sox, the inaugural season’s top two Southern League teams, engaged in a rivalry that likely predated future Tennessee-Alabama college football feuds that are memorably played each year. According to Plott’s research, the Montgomery team once walked off the field in protest over umpiring decisions prompting Tennessee newspapers to criticize what they believed had become “the favorite outdoor sport of the Alabama leaguers” and an activity they were able to get away with.

Maddox was firmly entrenched with the Giants squad, but it remains disputed on whether they or the Gray Sox were the inaugural Negro Southern League champions. The Beck Cultural Exchange Center in Knoxville refers to the Giants as that year’s Southern League champions. Plott, though, said there are historical references to Montgomery claiming themselves as the inaugural champions. The confusion can be credited to the lack of accurate statistical record-keeping and consistent reporting of game statistics and standings during the Negro Leagues early years.

Whatever the case, the Giants ended up playing in a three-game postseason with the Chicago American Giants of the Negro National League. It was dubbed a “world’s championship series.” The Chicago squad, long considered the first Negro National League champions, won all three games. The American Giants then visited Montgomery and defeated the Gray Sox in three games, before traveling to Rickwood Field and beating the Black Barons in two games.

Cieradkowski wrote in 2018 that Maddox was one of the few highlights for the Giants during their losing effort in Game 3 against the American Giants. He went 2 for 4 including a “tremendous triple to deep right field and scoring on an error.”

Cieradkowski also claimed Maddox was that season’s batting champion in the Southern League. But Plott and others do not credit anyone to a statistical championship. He wrote in his book that there were not “batting and pitching records” published, and that some 70 box scores located for the season were dispersed with “as few to more than 30 for another.”

“I don’t think anyone can go back and put these things together and reconstruct (the statistics),” Cieradkowski told AL.com. “But thing that is really interesting is that because he had one arm, he had a low-swinging bunt style. His average was high at the time because … the Negro Southern League was a minor league.”

Later seasons

By 1923, Maddox showed up with the Black Barons and it marked the only time that the one-armed ballplayer played in the Negro National League, now considered the equivalent of the Major Leagues. The Black Barons moved from the Negro Southern League to the Negro National League that year.

His 1923 statistics weren’t all that great. He batted .188 with a .235 on base percentage.

According to Plott’s “Black Baseball’s Last Team Standing: The Birmingham Black Barons, 1919-1962,” Maddox was an attraction while in Magic City, even if his statistics were shaky. For instance, during a game against Pensacola, Maddox gave up 7 runs and 20 hits in an 8-7 win. According to a Birmingham News report quoted in Plott’s book, “it was a game repleted with thrills.”

As the article is quoted to have said, “The sensation alone of watching a one arm man pitch 11 innings of real baseball was well worth the visit to Rickwood.”

Cieradkowski said that he believes Maddox’s batting average was the result of better fielders in the Negro National League compared to the Southern League.

“In 1923, the players were fielding better and were able to deal with a playing bunting all the time,” he said.

Plott said Maddox’s tenure in Birmingham was limited. “He didn’t stay in one play too long,” he said. “He’d be there for a little while and go off somewhere else.”

Maddox shows up in Plott’s research with the Atlanta Black Crackers before joining the Montgomery Gray Sox as a player-manager in 1926.

He was also still astounding the press. According to a Birmingham News article, quoted in Plott’s book, Maddox was described as “the most sensational and scientific baseball player in negro baseball circles.”

The Montgomery squad would disband in 1926, amid issues that included once having to forfeit a game because an automobile “bearing over a half of the Montgomery team broke down near Tupelo, Miss.,” according to Plott’s research.

Maddox returned back to Atlanta where, in one game against Chattanooga, he “brought the fans up” by hitting a triple, Plott’s book references.

Maddox’s last year in the league appeared to be in 1927, with the same Chattanooga squad as Paige. It’s unclear if the two played in a game with each other.

Cieradkowski said Maddox, who was college educator, became a young professor at Morehouse. There is little information about him beyond that. He died in 1929.

It was a sad and somewhat mysterious ending to what was, a few years before, a memorable run during the Negro Leagues earliest seasons.

“Of course, the people wanted to come out to see him,” Cieradkowski said. “That added attraction of seeing someone pitching and fielding with one arm is something. It’s something that is great in that it’s also something inspiring.”