Johnny Wright (baseball)

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Wright rejoined the Grays for 1947, making the All-Star team and winning eight games. He retired after the 1948 season, returning to New Orleans. There, he worked for National Gypsum Company, rarely discussing his baseball days. "I'm sure most of his co-workers at the gypsum plant never even knew he was a ballplayer," said Walter Wright (no relation), president of the Old-Timers Club who played and followed baseball for most of his 84 years. Wilmer Fields, a teammate with the Grays, said: "John never talked much about his experience with the Dodgers. He was a happy-go-lucky person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time." Wright died in 1990.

In late October 1945 Branch Rickey made the announcement of the Jackie Robinson signing. Rickey likewise announced the signing of Wright on January 29, 1946, making him the second officially recognized African-American to sign a contract with organized baseball during the integration era. In reality, Wright had likely signed months earlier. Two weeks after the Robinson announcement, the Negro leagues issued a protest to baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler claiming that Rickey was tampering with their players. Wright and Robinson were the named players. In fact, reports suggest that Wright actually signed a contract on November 20, 1945, with the Dodgers.

On March 4, 1946, in Sanford, Florida, Robinson donned his Montreal Royals uniform for the first day of spring training in the Dodgers' organization, joined by Wright. That day would not feature an official game. Wright would be on the active roster on March 17, 1946, when Robinson started at shortstop for the Royals in an exhibition game against their parent club the Dodgers, the first step in breaking baseball's color barrier.

By 1945, he was playing for the Brooklyn Naval Air Base team where he posted a 15–4 record and was said to have the best ERA in the armed forces. Also in early 1945, he pitched well in an exhibition game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. At the end of the season in 1945, Wright joined the Grays and pitched in three contests; winning them all. He also appeared in the Negro World Series.

The club won its first Negro World Series in 1943 behind the pitching of Ray Brown, Roy Partlow and Wright. He became the third player ever in Negro league baseball history to achieve the pitching "Triple Crown" in leading a league in wins, ERA, and strikeouts. He did so by going 18-3 with a 2.54 ERA with 94 strikeouts in 181 innings pitched (30 games with 22 starts). He went 2-1 in the Negro World Series while appearing in five games (four starts), achieving two complete games with two shutouts in the series victory for the Grays.

After the 1943 season, Wright joined the U.S. Navy during World War II. While in the Navy he pitched for the Great Lakes Naval Station team, a black club.

Playing in Louisville in 1937, Wright was picked up by the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League, a big league club. He also played for the Atlanta Black Crackers and Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1938, Toledo/Indianapolis Crawfords from 1939 to 1940 before joining the famed Homestead Grays in 1941.

Wright was a New Orleans-born, 5'11", 175-lbs, right-handed pitcher who started his professional career with the New Orleans Zulus in 1936 at age 17. The Zulus were as much sports entertainment as a legitimate baseball team, in the mold of the Harlem Globetrotters of the era.

John Richard Wright (November 28, 1916 – May 4, 1990) was a Negro league pitcher who played briefly in the International League of baseball's minor leagues in 1946, and was on the roster of the Montreal Royals at the same time as Jackie Robinson, making him a plausible candidate to have broken the baseball color barrier. Instead, Wright was demoted from Montreal and returned the next season to the Negro leagues.