Frank Norton appeared in one major league game, batted once, and struck out for the Washington Olympics on May 5, 1871.  However, his baseball life was much bigger than that one major league appearance. He holds at least one claim to trivia fame – and his post baseball career was fairly lucrative for himself and his family.

Frank Prescott Norton arrived in Port Jefferson, New York on 09 June 1845, the second child of five born to Sidney and Violet (Swezey) Norton. Sidney was an express agent while Violet raised the family. By 1860, the family moved to Brooklyn where Sidney took a clerk position. It was there where the teenaged Frank Norton got involved in the local amateur baseball clubs, including the Brooklyn Stars.

Calling Norton an amateur baseball player really sells Norton short. In truth, he’s a pioneer ballplayer, catching for the Brooklyn Atlantics in the mid-1860s when the Atlantics laid claim to being the best baseball team in America. Then, when the Arthur Pue Gorman and the Nationals of Washington decided to recruit players to build a championship level squad in 1867, among those recruited was a young Frank Norton. The Nationals played clubs all over the eastern half of the country and only lost one game – famously, they lost to the Rockford (IL) Forest City club. In that game, Norton was sick and could not catch, so he moved to shortstop and outfielder Henry Berthrong went behind the plate.

Other clubs followed the lead of the Nationals, built up “professional” nines and toured the country facing the best teams in America. Norton left Washington to play for the New York Mutuals in 1869 but would return to Washington for 1870 and 1871. The ultimate club of this era was the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, which toured America and did so without losing a game.

Let’s take a peek at some images of Norton and his teammates…

Charles Williamson captured this image of the 1865 Brooklyn Atlantics, which I found here.

The Meriden (CT) Journal reprinted a woodcut of this image – in an odd order in that Tom Pratt and Norton are reversed – but is valuable if only because it gives the names of the players in this image. (In the photo Norton is at left. In the woodcut below, he’s at the far right.)

Harper’s Weekly also captured Norton and his Atlantic teammates, below…

You said Frank Norton is the answer to a baseball trivia question…

Norton’s claim to fame (if not baseball trivia history), according to David Nemec’s Major League Baseball Profiles, is that Norton was the first pinch hitter, entering the Olympics’ opening day game because Doug Allison’s thumb was injured. The Olympics asked Boston for the approval to make the switch. 

The Boston Evening Transcript doesn’t include Norton in the box score or the description of the game. It does, however, say that Allison was “compelled to retire” in the eighth inning and that Fred Waterman moved from third base to catcher. Baseball-Reference shows that Norton played third base and right field – so he must have entered the game at third for Waterman and then switched to right field for the last inning.

The Washington Chronicle says that Allison broke his thumb and lost the thumbnail in the eighth inning and that Waterman moved to the plate. And, it mentions that Norton entered the game at third base. At some point Henry Burroughs moved from right field to third base.

The Chicago Tribune combined two takes on the game into one article – and it doesn’t read as if he was a pinch hitter in the description.  The summary description makes it sound like Norton was a defensive replacement owing to Allison’s spraining or splitting his thumb in the seventh inning and left. Either way, Norton batted in the eighth inning, and he took Allison’s spot in the order.

Not only did he strike out, Norton also made an error in the field on his only chance at third base, too. (That explains his switch to the outfield.)  Boston came back to win the game in the ninth, 20 – 18. Anyway – even if he wasn’t technically a pinch hitter, Frank Norton was the first substitution in major league baseball history.

(If you want REAL trivia – every member of the famous undefeated 1869 Cincinnati champions appeared in this game: four played for Boston and five played for Washington.)

In 1872, Norton wed Louisa (Smith) Pettit, a widow from Long Island, and while marriage proved financially beneficial to both (she came from some wealth and Frank would increase that wealth), the marriage produced no children. (Louisa had a child by her first husband, Oliver Pettit, but it died as an infant.) Norton started his post baseball life as a surveyor, then as a landowner. He and his father ran a business partnership through 1874. Norton once ran a sports bar, but then he got heavily involved in real estate as a broker and appraiser.

Louisa died in 1918, and in early 1920, Frank married Barbara Weaver. The couple would have but a few months together as Norton passed to the next league on August 1, 1920. (According to Norton’s will, Barbara made out like a bandit – and maybe I’ve watched too many British murder mysteries since the pandemic, but that was either fortuitous or suspicious… I digress.) Norton was buried near Louisa in Setauket Presbyterian Cemetery in Setauket, New York.

Sources:

FindAGrave,com
Baseball-Reference.com
1850, 1860, 1900, 1910 US Census
North Carolina Death Certificate (Louise Norton)
Connecticut Death Records

Benjamin Franklin Swasey, “Genealogy of the Swazey Family,” Private Printing, Cleveland Ohio, 1910: 247.
Nemec, David (Editor). Major League Baseball Profiles 1871-1900 (Vol. 2), University of Nebraska Press, 2011, Page 326.

“The National Game,” Brooklyn Union, September 12, 1865: 1.
“Base Ball,” Chicago Evening Post, July 26, 1867: 4.
“The ‘Nationals’ at Chicago,” Washington (DC) Evening Star, July 30, 1867: 1.
“Base Ball,” Brooklyn Union, March 4, 1869: 1.
“Base Ball,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 23, 1870: 2.
“The Sporting World,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1871: 4.
“Base Ball,” Washington Chronicle, May 6, 1871: 4.
“Base Ball,” Boston Daily Evening Transcript, May 6, 1871: 4.
“Copartnership,” New York Daily Herald, March 25, 1874: 5.
“Ready to Play Ball,” Meriden (CT) Journal, April 11, 1896: 9.
“Frank P. Norton,” Norwich Bulletin, August 3, 1920: 1.
“Greenwich,” Stamford Advocate, August 13, 1920: 12.
“$50,000 Estate Left by Old-Time Ball Player,” Norwich Bulletin, August 13, 1920: 1.

(Author’s note on June 9, 2026. I wrote a much shorter version of this on June 9, 2019. Today I re-read it and decide to overhaul it and add much greater detail. I’m glad I did.)