‘He deserves to have his story told’

Peter Gorton was born six months after John Donaldson passed away in 1970, yet it hasn't stopped him from his pursuit of making the outstanding pitcher a household name.
"John Donaldson deserves our respect and he deserves to have his story told," Gorton told audience members Saturday in the Minneota Opera Hall. "And Minneota is a part of that story."
Gorton, who lives in New Brighton, has spent 22 years of his life restoring the legacy of an African American left-handed pitcher with a sizzling fastball and a tantalizing slider that has accounted for 426 wins and 5,242 strikeouts in his career as a barnstorming player across the United States and Canada.
"He is simply the best pitcher that's ever played," Gorton insists. "The facts and the statistics back that up."
Donaldson was a relatively unknown player who bounced around from team to team playing in 765 different cities in North America. While other Negro League players are finally starting to gain notoriety by gaining admittance into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Donaldson's name fell between the cracks. Gorton is trying to extract that name from the cracks.
Donaldson's younger brother, James, played for Minneota's semi-professional baseball team in 1925.
"A young girl went missing in Missouri and James Donaldson was supposedly the last person to see her alive," said Gorton, who presented his story to audience members on Saturday afternoon and again in the evening. "Because Blacks were being blamed for things they didn't do and were being lynched often in that area, John Donaldson saved his younger brother's life by taking him out of Missouri and placing him in Minneota, Minnesota to play ball."
John Donaldson would draw huge crowds where he went because of his skills at throwing a baseball. Cities would take out large ads in the newspaper to let readers know he was coming to their town. While an average game drew 50-100 fans, those numbers climbed into the thousands when Donaldson played. Because of that, he made more money than his teammates and the players on the opposing team combined. "John Donaldson was playing with the Kansas City Monarchs at the time," Gorton said. "In fact, he named the team. But it wasn't after a crown or a butterfly. It was a cow. Monarch beef was a prime cut of meat off a cow. And Donaldson suggested that name for the team."
Donaldson then gave up his career in the Negro Leagues to save his brother's life and instead returned to barnstorming. That is the main reason his name isn't as popular as Satchel Paige, who was the first African American inducted into the Hall of Fame.
"John Donaldson was as good or better than Satchel Paige," Gorton said. "That's a fact. Those who played with and against them all said that."
James Donaldson pitched and played shortstop for Minneota for the 1925 season before getting ill in September of that year and returning to his hometown of Glasgow, Missouri. James then passed away at age 25 from meningitis.
"John Donaldson then decided to go back to Minneota and pitch in James' place to honor his brother's contract," Gorton said.
Gorton was instrumental in getting a ballfield built and named after John Donaldson, complete with a larger-than-life statue showing him pitching outside the stadium in Glasgow.
Now the 53-year-old Gorton is focusing on getting Donaldson inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, where he fell just a few votes short of induction in 2021. Donaldson will be up for election again in December of 2024.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of Gorton's presentation was the new Play Station video game "MLB: The Show" in which Donaldson and seven other Negro Leagues players are featured. Gorton showed Donaldson's animated throwing motion that video experts mimicked off a 29-second video tape that was discovered of Donaldson pitching in Fergus Falls in 1925.
"Donaldson was the first to throw what we now call a slider or a sweeper," Gorton said. "Batters simply couldn't hit it."