Was There a Man Named Moses Before Jackie Robinson’s Feat?

Forty-five years ago today, Branch Rickey’s announcement that Jackie Robinson would join the Brooklyn Dodgers broke baseball’s racial barrier.

Or did it?

According to Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo’s “Believe it or Else,” Moses Fleet Walker, who was black, played in 1884 for the Toledo Mudhens of the American Assn., which, at the time, was considered a major league.

“Blacks were not that rare in organized baseball back then,” Nash and Zullo write. “At least 20 other black players were in the minor leagues prior to 1887. But then an unwritten code by Jim Crow advocates barred blacks from major league baseball--an unconscionable racist wall that wasn’t torn down until the Brooklyn Dodgers put Jackie Robinson in the lineup in 1947.”

A barehanded catcher, Walker played one season for the Mudhens and hit .263.

On his tombstone in Steubenville, Ohio, placed by the John Heisman Club, are these words: “The gentleman was the first black major league player in the United States.”

Add barrier: In an article for last Sunday’s editorial page of the New York Times, R. Gonzalez Echevarria reports that Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, unwittingly broke the racial barrier in 1935, when he signed a Cuban player, Roberto (Bobby) Estalella.

“Estalella was not white, even by Cuban standards,” Gonzalez writes. “But he ‘passed’ and went on to play parts of nine seasons with Washington, the St. Louis Browns and the Philadelphia Athletics.”

Trivia time: What was the original name of the Masters golf tournament founded in 1934 by Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts?

Fast fact: Three of the last six Masters have ended in playoffs, and the other three were decided in regulation by one shot. No winner in the ‘80s could breathe easily on the 18th fairway during a final round except for Spain’s Seve Ballesteros, who won by four shots in 1980 and ’83.

Tennis, everyone?For one of the 48 titles that will be awarded this week in the Southern California Seniors Sectional Invitational Tennis Championships, Ron Brandon of Anaheim beat Ralph Larson of Santa Barbara, 6-0, 6-4, Wednesday at the Racquet Centre in Universal City.

So?

Both men are 87. They were playing in the men’s 85-division.

In the final of the women’s 80-division, Jacqueline Piatigorsky of Los Angeles won when Ann DeLeone of Anaheim retired before the third set. The score at the time was 3-6, 6-0.

This year’s theme for the Southern California Tennis Assn.: “Tennis, the Sport of a Lifetime.”

Live arm: Jack McDowell, Chicago White Sox right-hander, who pitched the opening game Tuesday night against the Angels, is a member of an alternative rock band, V.I.E.W., which toured the United States in the off-season as the opening act for The Smithereens.

Trivia answer: The National Invitation Tournament.

Quotebook: Lothar Osiander, U.S. Olympic soccer coach, on Steve Snow, who scored three goals, including the game-winner in the next-to-last minute, in a 3-2 Olympic qualifying victory last Sunday over Honduras: “He’s a cocky twerp, but he’ll get a goal.”