Adrian experienced professional baseball beginning in 1894 with the Adrian Light Guard in the Michigan Baseball League. Although that league lasted only one year, Adrian fielded players including star pitcher George Wilson and a young second baseman, Honus Wagner, who later had a hall of fame career with the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Light Guard won the 1895 pennant in the Michigan Baseball League but folded the following year when the league disbanded because of financial difficulties. In September 1894, the Page Woven Wire Fence Company agreed to sponsor one of the first African-American professional baseball clubs in America. Experienced African-American players Bud Fowler and Home Run Johnson organized the team, and Fowler chose players of high moral character who did not drink; five of the Giants' twelve players were college graduates. From 1895 to 1898, the Page Fence Giants toured through the Midwest wherever Page Fence products were marketed and sold. In 1895 they played in 112 towns against all levels of competition, including two games against the Cincinnati Reds, and finished with a record of 118-36-2. By 1896 the Page Fence Giants had won thirty games in a row and began to wonder if they were the best African-American team in the country. Late that year they played the Cuban X-Giants of New York / New Jersey, who claimed to be the top black baseball team in America, and Page Fence won the 15-game series 10 games to 5, earning the right to claim that title in the United States. In 1897 the Page Fence Giants finished with a 136-12 record and at one point won eighty-two games in a row. The 1898 season was the club's last, and in 1899 many of its players joined the new Columbia Giants of Chicago. George Wilson, Bud Fowler, Home Run Johnson, and the other players of the Page Fence Giants helped advance African Americans' involvement in professional baseball in America.