Dream Merchant of the Perfect Game: The Life and Legacy of Frank "Doc" Sykes

Dream Merchant of the Perfect Game: The Life and Legacy of Frank “Doc” Sykes is the story of a dedicated medical professional, an extraordinary athlete, and a courageous human rights advocate.

Taking the stand in the Scottsboro Boys trials, Sykes’s testimony helped transform the national justice system on the basis that Blacks were excluded from the jury pool because of their race. One generation removed from slavery, he excelled at Atlanta Baptist College (now Morehouse College) and went on to become a practicing dentist with a degree from the prestigious Howard University. Even while pursuing dentistry, Sykes became a major-league-caliber pitcher for a number of Negro League teams, including the Baltimore Black Sox.

Despite being in the prime of his athletic career, from 1918 to 1919, he heeded the call of the United States government to serve in the US Army during World War I. His finest years in professional African American baseball, however, came before the official recognition of the Negro Leagues by Major League Baseball (MLB). In the early 1920s, Sykes won thirty games in a season, pitched a no-hitter, and consistently defeated teams composed of white players, several of which included major-league stars.

A native of Decatur, Alabama, he eventually made Baltimore his second home. Frank Sykes’s life story is interconnected with the history of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century and one man’s unrelenting struggle for racial equality.

Bernard McKenna is an English professor at the University of Delaware and the author of The Baltimore Black Sox: A Negro Leagues History, 1913-1936. He founded the Baltimore chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and is a native of Baltimore City.