Most baseball fans have heard of Jim Abbott, the one-handed pitcher who starred for the Angels in the 1990s. And many know the story of Pete Gray, an upper-limb amputee who cracked the St. Louis Browns’ lineup in the 1940s. Faithful Amplitude readers might recall pitcher Monty Stratton, a BKA who never made the majors but did get immortalized in an Oscar-winning movie.
But very few know the name of Forest “Wing” Maddox, the major leagues’ first amputee player. He played in the Negro Southern League, which wasn’t considered “major” during Maddox’s playing career in the 1920s. But when, in 2020, MLB retroactively recognized the Negro Leagues as major leagues, Maddox became one of 3,400 players to enter the sport’s official record book—and thereby, belatedly, gained the honor of being the first ballplayer with a limb difference to appear on a big-league roster.
According to his page at Baseball-Reference, Maddox (who lost his left arm to the shoulder at age 10) only spent one season (1923) in the big leagues and appeared in just a handful of games. But those records are woefully incomplete. The Georgia native actually started playing pro ball in 1914 as a high schooler, starred at Morehouse College in Atlanta, and was one the best players for the Knoxville Giants, who won the Southern League’s inaugural pennant in 1920.
Baseball researcher Gary Cieradkowski notes that Maddox was a phenomenal two-way player, excelling both as a pitcher and outfielder. Touting his abilities in a 1921 article, the Washington Post wrote: “‘Wing’ Maddox, a [N]egro pitcher and outfielder, has created a sensation throughout the South for the past two years. As a member of the Knoxville Giants, he demonstrated that few, if any, pitchers possess more in the way of natural ability. . . . It is not alone upon the mound that the one-armed [N]egro wonder stars. As an outfielder he amazes spectators by the dexterity with which he catches a ball with his one gloved hand, tosses it into the air, removes the glove and with lightning-like rapidity snatches the ball again and relays it to the infield.”
Cieradkowski thinks Maddox actually won the Southern League batting title in 1920, citing an unspecified newspaper report. That would be a startling achievement for a guy who swung the bat with one arm. Unfortunately, there are no hard stats to back up the claim, however—and that explains why Maddox’s career stats at Baseball-Reference are so thin. Published box scores were spotty and inconsistent in the early days of the Negro Leagues, and MLB’s official record book only includes verifiable statistics. It’s an understandable policy, but it renders Maddox and many of his teammates (including formidable pitcher Steel Arm Dickey) almost invisible.
Maddox’s only official stats, from 1923, credit him with just 16 at-bats and one and a third innings pitched for the Birmingham Black Barons. Although he was just 25 years old, that was his last season as a fulltime ballplayer. That fall he took a job as a professor at Morehouse College. He did continue playing baseball occasionally, appearing in box scores as late as 1927 for the Chattanooga Black Lookouts, whose roster also included a rookie pitcher named Satchel Paige.
Maddox died in 1929 of complications from tuberculosis. He was only 31 years old, just a year older than baseball’s present-day two-way phenom, Shotei Ohtani. It’s a shame so few records survive of this player, but he clearly made a mark in his time. “The sensation of watching a one-arm man pitch real baseball was well worth the visit,” wrote the Birmingham News in 1920. William Plott, author of a book on the Negro Southern League, sums Maddox up this way: “He was an attraction wherever he went.”