Burnis “Wild Bill” Wright was born in Milan, TN in 1914. He played baseball for the Gibson County Buffaloes school team. In 1932, at the young age of 18, Wright made his career debut in the Negro Leagues, playing for the Nashville Elite Giants.
Wright stayed with the Nashville Elite Giants as they moved home-cities three times, eventually rooting themselves in Baltimore. Nicknamed “Wild Bill” due to pitching control problems, the 6’ 4”, 220 pound Wright excelled as a switch-hitting outfielder.
Wright earned two Negro League batting titles, hitting .410 for Washington in 1937 and .404 for Baltimore in 1939. In 1939, the Baltimore Afro-American wrote, “Besides being the fastest man in the league, Bill Wright, the sensational outfielder of the Baltimore Elite Giants is also the best hitter.”
In 1940, a time when Major League Baseball still prohibited players of color, Wright was one of the many standout players from the Negro League who chose to transition and play in the Mexican Baseball League.
In his first season in the Mexican Baseball League, Wright hit .360 with 94 runs, 30 doubles and 29 stolen bases. In 1941, he batted .390 and led the Mexican League, beating out Josh Gibson and others standout players. His 26 stolen bases also led the league. In 1943, with Mexico City’s Red Devils, Wright won the Mexican League Triple Crown, batting .366 with thirteen homers and seventy RBIs.
In the Mexican Baseball League, Bill outperformed stars like Roy Campanella, Josh Gibson and Monte Irvin, all who went on to be enshrined in Cooperstown. Campanella called Wright “the biggest, strongest, fastest man that I’ve ever seen.”
Also known as “the Black DiMaggio,” Wright was a seven-time Negro League Baseball All-Star in the 1930s and ‘40s and was later inducted into the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame.
Having become a national celebrity in Mexico and finding discrimination less pronounced than in America, Wright operated a hamburger café, “The Dugout” in Aguascalientes, where he lived until his death in August 1993.