"Anson is also given the credit, or the blame, for setting the stage for the longest-lasting version of the "color line" barring African-Americans from major league baseball.In an August 10, 1883, exhibition game against the then-independent Toledo Blue Stockings, who would before the next season join the American Association, Anson refused to field his team as long as Toledo's catcher Moses Walker, who was black, was in the lineup; Anson claimed that Walker was ineligible to play, because the rules then in effect permitted only gentlemen to play, and Walker as a black person was incapable of satisfying the definition of a "gentlem[a]n." The umpires disagreed and threatened both to grant the Blue Stockings a victory by forfeit and to deprive Anson and his team of their share of the day's ticket sales unless Anson and his team took the field.