Walter Fenner “Buck” Leonard

On August 7, 1972, Negro League ballplayer and Rocky Mount native Walter Fenner “Buck” Leonard was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Born in 1907, Leonard was forced to quit school at age 14, since there was no high school for black students in Rocky Mount at the time. To help support his mother and five siblings following his father’s death, young Leonard worked at a local hosiery mill, as a shoeshine and later for a railroad while playing semi-pro baseball for the Rocky Mount Elks and Rocky Mount Black Swans.

The loss of his job during the Great Depression prompted Leonard to focus on professional baseball full time. He eventually made his way to the Pennsylvania-based Homestead Grays.

Fans and analysts alike heralded Leonard, an extraordinary first baseman and hitter, as the “black Lou Gehrig.” Alongside power slugger Josh Gibson, Leonard helped to lead the Grays to nine consecutive Negro League championships.

In 1950, with 17 years and a career batting average of .320 under his belt, Leonard retired to his hometown of Rocky Mount.

He was the first National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee from North Carolina.
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Walter Fenner "Buck" Leonard (September 8, 1907 – November 27, 1997) was an American first baseman in Negro league baseball and in the Mexican League. After growing up in North Carolina, he played for the Homestead Grays between 1934 and 1950, batting fourth behind Josh Gibson for many years. The Grays teams of the 1930s and 1940s were considered some of the best teams in Negro league history.

Leonard never played in Major League Baseball (MLB); he declined a 1952 offer of an MLB contract because he felt he was too old. Late in life, Leonard worked as a physical education instructor and was the vice-president of a minor league baseball team. He and Gibson were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. In 1999, he was ranked number 47 on the 100 Greatest Baseball Players list by The Sporting News.

Negro league career
He began his Negro league career in 1933 with the Brooklyn Royal Giants, then moved to the legendary Homestead Grays in 1934, the team he played for until his retirement in 1950. The Grays of the late 1930s through the mid-1940s are considered one of the greatest teams of any race ever assembled. The team won nine league pennants in a row during that time.

Leonard batted fourth in their lineup behind Josh Gibson. He led the Negro leagues in batting average in 1948 with a mark of .395, and usually either led the league in home runs or finished second in homers to teammate Gibson. Since Gibson was known as the "Black Babe Ruth" and Leonard was a first baseman, Buck Leonard was inevitably called the "Black Lou Gehrig." Together, the pair was colloquially known as the "Thunder Twins" or "Dynamite Twins".
In fact, Negro league star Monte Irvin said that if Leonard had been allowed in the major leagues, baseball fans "might have called Lou Gehrig the white Buck Leonard. He was that good."
The Monarchs disbanded after 1950.
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