Local African-American Baseball Field to Be Restored
Cover On The
Delegate Mark Fisher Assumes Project
By William Poe Imagine hearing the jeers and cheers of baseball fans as they root for their favorite local heroes, the Owings Eagles. Eagle’s player, George Gray, Sr. warms up in the batter’s box at his home turf of Gray’s Field. The unmistakable echo of Son Smith’s cracking bat sends the baseball soaring high over the heads of the opposing team’s outfielders on a sweltering summer night on Fowler Road, just off Mt. Harmony Road. Of course, those sounds are only memories. Although not quite so long ago, if you happened to travel slightly off the beaten path in Northern Calvert County, this is what you’d find at Gray’s Field in Owings. Surrounding cornfields and cow pastures of yesteryear have given way to paved roads and housing sub-divisions. But progress has yet to trample underfoot this
field of dreams that brought hope and joy to so many African-Americans for decades during the past century. If one prominent local man has his way, Gray’s Field will remain intact and preserved as a tribute to those men who toiled in the fields by day, playing baseball at night on this very different type of field to the delight of the families that continually came out to support them. This unlikely player stepping up to plate today at Gray’s Field does not wield a baseball bat nor wear an Eagles jersey. Instead, he wears neatly-pressed black trousers, a suit jacket and tie, and wields a pen as his weapon of choice. Newly elected Maryland Delegate, Mark Fisher (R-27B), a Baltimore native with blue-collar roots, has taken up the cause to help preserve Gray’s Field. Moving to Calvert County in 1989, Fisher almost literally stumbled upon the field one afternoon when he heard commotion in his new backyard. “One day my wife and I heard all of this yelling and screaming and we were looking at each other wondering where was that coming from. It sounded like it was coming from the property behind us. So
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The Owings Eagles are posing for an early-1950’s team photograph at Gray's Field in Owings. From left to right are: (First row) unidentified, Bernard Rawlings, Judy Evans, Frances Wallace, Billy Spriggs, Taberius Reid, and John Jones. (Second row) George Gray Sr., Marion Holland, Son Smith, Ellsworth Conte, William Jones, Bob Jones, Lawrence Gray, Hammy Wallace, Albert Gray Jr., and owner Albert Gray Sr.,holding the baseball. (Oscar Gray family photo, from William Poe’s book, African-Americans of Calvert County.)
we walked through our backyard, and saw about 150 African- Americans, only AfricanAmericans, playing baseball, in literally our backyard! We thought, ‘Well, that’s kind of odd, you know, here we are, in the end of the twentieth century and this just seems like a real throwback. So we walked through and I introduced myself and that’s when I found out my backyard abutted Gray’s Field.” According to Fisher, “Albert Gray, the original owner of Gray’s Field, created
Albert Gray Sr. purchased four acres of land in 1935 where he built his home (above) and Gray’s Field, where the Owings Eagles played baseball in the Negro League. Gray’s Field was the first ball field in Calvert County to have lights installed for night-time play.
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12 Thursday, February 24, 2011
Delegate Mark Fisher (R-27B) who now owns Gray’s Field, wants to restore Albert Gray’s house and create a museum to memorialize the site and the African-Americans who enjoyed baseball there for many decades.
the field because there was a huge desire in the African-American community to play baseball. They were not allowed to play baseball because of the Jim Crow laws (any state laws discriminating against blacks) in Calvert County, which basically enforced defacto segregation, so the family decided ‘we want to play baseball, so let’s create our own field,’ and so they did, and my understanding was that this was in the 1930’s.” As Fisher’s family grew and his children became involved in local sports, he saw a need for a location for his children and their teammates to practice. “We decided to approach the Gray family because simultaneous with the growing soccer interests, the actual field it-
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