Pedro Pratt, baseball pitcher extraordinaire. "The Colored Wonder" of Portland, Michigan
Don "Pedro" Pratt (or is it Walter Pratt?), kneeling (3rd from right), ca. 1890. Six years ago, I wrote a book, through Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series, entitled The Portland Area 1868-1939 . It’s a photographic history of Portland, Michigan. (Amazingly, it is still in print and available where all fine books are sold). I’m not mentioning this to toot my own horn (well, maybe just a little), but merely to set the scene for what’s to follow here. In my research, I came across a huge cast of characters that shaped Portland’s history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, (and lots of information that never made it into the book). None of these characters were more interesting or enigmatic than a local baseball star named Don "Pedro" Pratt. Through the whole process of writing the book, his existence proved to be shadowy and fascinating: a guy who flitted in and out of the picture with a legend that reminds me of the blues singer Robert Joh...