America’s Black Baseball Players are Lifting as They Climb
As generations of Black Americans abandon baseball, those who remain in the game feel a responsibility to make change. This urge is shaped by their experiences and a love for the legacy that precedes.
Seattle, Washington has never been considered the bastion of blackness. According to census data, it is the sixth-whitest major city in the United States, with the percentage of Black residents within the city dropping significantly from its peak in 1990 of 10%. Today, Seattle’s Black population rests at 6.8%, contributing to the city’s 39th diversity index ranking out of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the country. Everything about the city peaked in the 90s: The Mariners and Ken Griffey Jr. were the coolest team in baseball, Nirvana and Pearl Jam made grunge music a nationwide staple, and the Black population wasn’t actively getting pushed out of the city. But now, each one of these has fallen by the wayside.
Major League Baseball has a similar issue. Its worst-kept secret is that participation among the Black American population has been decreasing for decades. The golden age of Black baseball at the major league level is over: It’s officially the dark ages. After the arrival of Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby in 1947, it took 15 years for the percentage of African Americans to reach double digits. According to data from the Society for American Baseball Research, the percentage peaked in 1981 at 18.7%, as Black All-Stars and future Hall of Famers like Andre Dawson, Dave Parker and Eddie Murray were strewn throughout the league. Those numbers hovered until 1995 when legends such as Barry Bonds, Mo Vaughn and Tony Gwynn ruled the realm. After the halfway point of the 90s, the percentage of Black MLB players plummeted. Each year, the drain was noticeable. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport found that at the start of the 2022 season, the percentage of Black players in MLB was at 7.2%, which was the lowest percentage since they began collecting data for the Racial and Gender Report Card in 1991.
Nelson Cooper doesn’t just understand the consequences of the Black population’s flight from baseball and his city: He’s lived it. Born in 1994 and raised in the North Seattle neighborhoods, he grew up amid a shrinking Black presence. And like many other kids, Cooper picked a sport to latch onto around the age of 6, naturally letting it become his first love and an integral part of his identity. Raised in a single-parent household with his mother, Cooper’s initial introduction to the sport was surrounded by the familial comfort of Black people. But once he began to get into organized baseball, he found himself isolated racially on the field, which is an experience that’s not uncommon for young Black kids, especially in metropolitan areas.
In 2020, Cooper, along with co-founder Brian Jacobson, started the Pittsburgh Hardball Academy. The venture was fueled by each step of his journey. The almost pristine, lily whiteness of the Ballard neighborhood ball fields in Seattle to the confines of Durham Athletic Park in North Carolina (whose inhabitants are becoming increasingly white), informed the motivations behind this grassroots powerhouse. Pittsburgh Hardball is a non-profit organization in the Greater Pittsburgh area that attempts to remove the barriers to competitive baseball and softball, focusing on cost and exposure, as well as increasing diversity and inclusion in the historically white sport. The city, with its Black population sitting at 23% and a poverty rate of 19.7%, is a place that needs a concentrated, hyper-local effort such as this one.
Pittsburgh Hardball Academy was birthed out of spite. After moving to Pittsburgh and taking a corporate job with PNC, Cooper was looking for ways to stay involved with the sport, as well as give back at the same time. Folding in his passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which he was directly part of with PNC, he started working with the Pittsburgh Pirates’ “Reviving Baseball in the Inner cities” (RBI) program. Since 1989, RBI has been Major League Baseball’s flagship diversity initiative, specifically aimed at promoting the sport among youths in underserved and diverse communities. Historically, it’s the first aspect that the league points to show that they’re making concerted efforts to improve the lack of Black Americans and other minority players at the major league level. The RBI program has produced All-Stars and future Hall of Famers like C.C. Sabathia and Jimmy Rollins. However, through his own experience with the Pittsburgh initiative arm, Cooper found that MLB’s top-down efforts were not addressing the entire problem that he and many other Black baseball fans have noticed.
“Their mission wasn’t the same as myself and my co-founder’s,” Cooper said. “We saw there was something we like to call an ‘opportunity gap.’ You had some kids in the city that were talented and didn’t have the same opportunity as their suburban peers to get on the radar: the RBI program simply wasn’t addressing that. It was apparent that their goal was not necessarily to help all these kids get to college. Their goal was to take a picture and share it on their Twitter page.”
As Cooper moved through the varsity team at Ballard High School and recreational teams in Seattle, he bounced between squads that varied in levels of diversity. Growing up and maturing, he began to hear whispers about why he rarely found himself on the best travel teams in the area or the All-Star teams as he continually improved. Those slights, even when recognizing his talent, unconsciously affect the choices that he made in the future, like attending North Carolina Central University to play baseball.
“When my mom finally got a different job, we were able to afford to stretch every last penny to play on the travel teams,” Cooper said. “I didn’t notice it until I went on a diverse team, then went back to a more ‘traditional’ team. I don’t know that it meant I was discouraged with the game. But the interesting thing is I chose to go to an HBCU to play baseball in college. Probably, the big factor was that I wanted to be around other kids that look like me and change it up. I think that my upbringing led me to become super passionate about trying to help kids not have to go through all that. To be able to have a platform, to be able to be on the same page. To even the playing field with their peers.”
Cooper with members of the Pittsburgh Hardball Academy. Credit: Pittsburgh Hardball Academy/Twitter, 2022
Those immediate years following his arrival on campus helped to shift and shape Cooper’s existence. Going from a high school that only housed 50 Black kids (by his approximation) to an institution with a student body of 8,000 that’s 80% Black is quite the jump. Then, on the baseball team, Cooper began to see more Black faces on the diamond, a culture shock from his upbringing in Seattle. During his first year on the team, the roster was about 60% Black, with the rest of the roster being white and Hispanic. For the first time in his baseball career, Cooper had a group of guys that looked like him, that played the sport he played. They were able to be an example for him.
“All kinds of freshmen come in and look up to older kids, so it was kind of neat to have like a Troy Marrow,” Cooper said. “It was nice to look up to them and have people that looked like you and were successful. You saw them go graduate and do different things. It was a great change because you were able to visualize yourself in their shoes in the future. It’s something that I realized: I want to be in this environment. If I do coach in the future, I want to create this kind of dynamic. A true diversity.”
Through Hardball’s inaugural class of players, the organization focused its efforts to help 15 majority Black high school juniors and seniors get to the next level to play college baseball. The costs to participate on this team ranged from $20-$300, a steep departure from the high costs that showcase teams that go to large events like Perfect Game. Circumventing the main obstacle that keeps Black kids from receiving the necessary exposure to get recruited, Hardball helped to get every player from that first group seen and signed by college coaches. But along with the successful efforts, it’s easy to get discouraged about the state of the game, when it seems as if it’s constructed to keep Black people out.
“We’ve had some kids in the past where we’ve had to sell the story, and then the kid commits to a big school, and now college coaches are interested in the other ones that we have,” Cooper said. “It’s like, why do we have to be great? You’ve got to be Rickey Henderson to make it. You can’t just be decent.”
Since 2020, Cooper and the organization have worked to expand and close that opportunity gap, which he believes is the root of getting Black kids back into the sport of baseball. Now, they have 14U, 16U and 18U teams set up, as well as consistent training camps for about 50 to 60 kids. They just opened up their indoor facility so that their teams and athletes can train year-round. Cooper and his team are dedicated to raising the floor of the quality of Black youth baseball in the area.
“Here in Pittsburgh, we’ve gained some traction,” Cooper said. “We’re so synonymous that when college coaches around this area want to recruit a Black kid or are interested in getting more diversity on their team, they call us. Do you want your best athletes playing the sport, or do you want a slow and sterile product? It’s important to keep the talent in the game.”
The league has identified the constant and gradual drain as a problem. That’s why we see all 30 MLB teams supporting RBI programs, with varying degrees of intensity and effectiveness. There are reasons that MLB and grassroots organizations provide lip service about wanting to make sure they make sure Black people will continue to play the sport of baseball in the country.
“There’s such a talent in all our communities,” Alicia Gonzalez, the executive director of Cubs Charities, said over Zoom. “The fact that the things precluding our young, African American children from becoming major leaguers is cost or access to safe places to play, that’s something we can remedy right? Issues that affect the decline in African American participation, then we have to do something about it. The ball field right now, that’s out there, is not reflective of society. It’s mainly white men on the field and a few Latinos.”
It’s impossible to tell the story of Major League Baseball without African Americans. The barrier-breakers always come to mind, but the hallowed halls of the statistical leaderboards are rife with Black legends. For not being able to participate in the league until 1947, Black players sit at the top of many primary categories, proving to be some of the most valuable people in the history of the sport. In the comprehensive statistic for value, Wins Above Replacement (how many wins a player adds through their play), three of the top seven players are Black: Barry Bonds, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. The all-time leader in defensive WAR is Black: Ozzie Smith, whose defensive prowess and flair allowed him to be adorned with the nickname “The Wizard of Oz.” There are only seven players in the history of the game that have achieved both 500 home runs and 3,000 hits. Three of them are Black: Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray. Five of the top 11 leaders in runs, five of the top ten in home runs and the third all-time leader in saves (Lee Smith): All of them are Black.
“I think it’s just a game that we’re really good at,” Troy Marrow said.
Marrow is a fundamentals coach in the Baltimore Orioles organization, who graduated from North Carolina Central University, just like Cooper. Like Cooper, he grew up in a predominantly white area, Cockeysville, Maryland, and played on baseball teams that rarely featured more than one Black kid.
“I think it comes down to a legacy thing. We should be proud that the Black baseball players we have seen are some of the best that has ever lived. I think that it’s just a way to honor other African Americans.”
What gets lost if Black players continue to disappear from MLB? There’s a legacy that extends past the statistical importance that’s etched into the record books. While Black baseball players are not a monolith, there are clear staples of play style that extend to the years of the Negro Leagues' height. Speed and power were paramount to their game. Almost every player could play multiple positions, bunt and field with the best of them. If they couldn’t steal bags, they would put the ball over the fence. According to Phil Dixon, a Negro Leagues historian who interviewed more than 500 players and family members about the history of Black baseball, the Negro Leagues played a more exciting brand of baseball due to natural abilities, while combining a superb knowledge of the game. That legacy extended for decades even after MLB ended segregation and Black people began to proliferate through the league. That’s why of the 62 seasons on the vaunted 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases list, the ultimate showcase of speed and power for 162 games, 43% of the seasons were completed by African Americans. Two of the last four were completed by Black players, Baltimore Orioles Cedric Mullins and then Boston Red Sox Mookie Betts. The annals of baseball history would be far less exciting if Black players were missing from them. Objectively, they would be far less cool.
The greater American society’s cultural progress has been remarkably interconnected to baseball’s in this country, if albeit a tad delayed. Integration began into the American and National leagues in 1947, then slowly proliferated until 1959, when the Boston Red Sox was the last team in have a Black player on their roster. It almost felt like a test run. If the country could survive the integration of America’s pastime on a national scale without tearing itself apart, then maybe it could handle it in wider, everyday life. Relatedly, American culture and baseball have capitalized on Black cultural touchstones, even though the sport has been slow to admit it. Black baseball players, by and large, are inherently cool. There’s an air of confidence and swagger that courses through almost every Black major leaguer. It’s not a surprise that the only MLB players with signature sneakers are Black: Ken Griffey Jr. and Bo Jackson. Eric Davis and Rickey Henderson had signature home run struts that oozed charisma, begging to be repeated by youth baseball players. Bat flips, base stealing, and bombs are all par for the course with Black players, punctuated with an effortless grace that instantly electrifies crowds.
As the percentage of Black players remains low at the major league level, and the threat of losing legacy and interest in the sport looms, the search to determine the sport’s issues with African American participation feels similar to the differential diagnosis scenes on the medical procedural drama House. Everybody has a hypothesis on the matter as to why. There’s the cultural aspect, that’s been drawing Black kids from baseball to sports like football and basketball. In a 2016 interview with Complex, Public Enemy frontman and lifelong baseball fan Chuck D pointed to the nature of those alternative sports options, saying that African-Americans “drifted off to more individual team games such as basketball, and maybe what they call a quicker, more turbulent game such as football.” From what he saw, the social realm of the Black community has moved away from baseball, and that MLB refused to cater to the cultural touchstones of blackness.
Cultural sensibilities are important. The stars of baseball will never be as popular as the likes of LeBron James or Stephen Curry, you’ll rarely hear rap lines focusing on people like Aaron Judge and Mookie Betts (however, there is a 2020 track by Los Angeles rap duo BlueBucksClan). But the answer behind the Black baseball drain likely involves comorbidity of cultural issues, the cost of youth sports and the lack of necessary exposure for more Black high school baseball players are limiting the talent pool. If it was a three-pronged, “chicken or the egg” scenario, the most likely answer of what comes first in this problem is cost. Money continues to be the root of all evil in youth sports, and baseball is a unique culprit because capital rules every aspect of the game. At the NCAA level, baseball teams can give out the least amount of scholarships, when compared to football and basketball. Division 1 programs are limited to 11.7 scholarships, which can only be divided between 27 rostered players, leaving 35 spots for walk-ons. Comparatively, there are 85 scholarships available for a Division 1 FBS football program, and 13 scholarships available for a Division 1 basketball program. This all translates to it being much easier to get a free education and college experience through football and basketball.
“The scholarship structure is going to keep a lot of people out anyway,” David Scott said. Scott, who is Black, runs A4One, a non-profit organization located in Birmingham, Alabama that’s dedicated to providing baseball training and scouting exposure to Black youth athletes. He played baseball at the Division 3 level at Birmingham Southern College, a predominately white institution, graduating in 2017. “When you look at the people usually playing college baseball, regardless of race, most of them could afford to attend the sport if they didn’t play baseball. That’s not the case for basketball and football. If I go to the Alabama football roster, I can’t say with certainty that if you take away the scholarship, all these guys can stay at the school.”
Even on a casual, pickup game level of play, it’s the major sport that needs the most equipment to participate. And each piece of equipment is expensive. The baseball gloves that most kids that have college baseball aspirations cost $300. High school composite and alloy bats can be $400. Catchers' gear can go as high as $400 as well. While the actual equipment is expensive, baseball also has the most costly youth sports system. Fueled by travel teams and “showcase baseball,” where teams will travel to big tournaments set up by scouting organizations like Perfect Game and Prep Baseball Report to play in front of college scouts, the price of the game has risen exponentially. And it’s pricing people out of the game.
“To play you basically need money,” Taijuan Walker said.
Walker is currently a starting pitcher for the New York Mets, who’s having a career year with 10 wins and just 3 losses as they push to win the National League East for the first time since 2015. He was drafted out of Yucaipa High School in California as a first-rounder while living in a hotel room with his mother and two brothers and sisters.
“I didn’t have my own equipment,” Walker said. “My mom bought my first actual glove my senior year, and I still have it to this day. Or I’d get a glove from a coach or borrow a teammate’s bat. It’s just an expensive sport, and it’s only gotten more expensive now with all the training and travel ball.”
In a 2019 article in The Gazette, it was reported that parents can pay as much as $3500 a year in order to be on a showcase team that travels to Perfect Game tournaments. Individual showcase events can cost as much as $649 for a single player to attend and perform in front of college and professional scouts. That doesn’t include costs of travel and lodging for these events or the impact of parents having to take off work to travel with their kids to these tournaments and showcases. But if you don’t get seen by a college coach, then you don’t get to play at the next level. Washington Nationals starting pitcher Josiah Gray understands the related issues between exposure and cost. He grew up in New Rochelle, New York, splitting time his little league days between the north side and south side leagues, which played on different days. The north side teams were predominately Jewish, while the south side teams were generally more diverse, including more Hispanic and Black kids on the team. He was able to play in youth programs with certain coaches covering costs for him and his brother so they could play year-round.
Gray ended up getting to play at Le Moyne College, a Division 2 school near Syracuse, New York, after receiving very little interest and exposure heading into his junior year of high school. “Essentially, I had a teammate at a neighboring high school, and one of his assistant coaches ran one of the local travel ball teams,” Gray said. “I was like, ‘hey, do you think that you can help me out and get recruited? I haven’t had anything pop for me.’ He knew coach [Scott] Cassidy at Le Moyne. He was interested, came down to watch me play, and I ended up going on a visit a few weeks later. I loved the vibe he gave off as a coach, and I accepted the offer there, just a couple of weeks after he’d seen me play.”
“Getting these opportunities to be seen is essential. If you just play for your local team, how many college coaches are going to watch that live? It’s about how you get in front of those colleges that you think you’re worthy to go to. And right now, that’s through playing at these tournaments, that are thousands of dollars, every few weekends, not many families can afford that.”
The fix is simple on paper: Increase the sheer amount of exposure for Black high school baseball players. MLB’s top-down support on this matter has worked tremendously, actually making sure that the best available Black players are being seen. According to The Institute of Diversity and Ethics in Sport’s Racial and Gender Report Card of 2022, MLB’s Diversity Development programming has had a considerable impact on increasing the number of Black players drafted near the top of the draft. According to a Forbes article in 2021, MLB dedicated $150 million to fund these events, specifically to increase Black participation. The Dream Series is a showcase event with USA Baseball focused on highlighting African-American pitching and catching prospects, two positions Black players fill the least, utilizing former major league coaches and players like former pitchers Marvin Freeman and LaTroy Hawkins, and former Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia. The Breakthrough Series involves fundamental instruction for all position players and pitchers, putting the players in front of college coaches and scouts. Both events are completely cost-free as USA Baseball covers the expenses for players, making it easier for more elite athletes to access the game if they’ve got the talent to get noticed.
“There’s still a lot to be done with lack of resources in terms of providing them with exposure,” Kaelan Ashford-Jones said. “But all that costs money. A lot of these scouts don’t always choose to go see talent just out of the kindness of their hearts. It’s unfortunate that a lot of African-American kids aren’t really exposed to better opportunities.”
Ashford-Jones is the Youth Content Coordinator at MLB, after graduating from Morehouse College in 2020 and playing on the school’s baseball team. Growing up playing baseball in Oakland, he played on Black teams with Black coaches, he’s especially motivated to open the door for Black players to walk through with the organization. From his position, he works to highlight and promote these Diversity Development events, ensuring the Black kids can see what the future of baseball can look like.
“If you are chosen to participate in these events, I feel like you definitely take some form of pride,” Ashford-Jones said. “You’re exposed to skill development from the top players in the league, with a majority of coaches at this event also being African American,” Ashford-Jones said. “We were talking earlier about how important representation is. I’m not going to say that you’re automatically in a better position if you’ve matriculated through these programs though, that’s just the game of baseball.”
Between 2012 and 2021, 56 of the 319 selections were Black or African American players, with many of them being alumni from MLB’s Dream Series and Breakthrough series, as well as various RBI programs across the country. Current major league players who are also alumni of these initiatives include Seattle Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford, Baltimore Orioles reliever Dillon Tate and Cincinnati Reds reliever Hunter Greene. In the 2021 MLB amateur draft, four first-round draft picks came from the Dream Series, including catcher Harry Ford, a catcher who is the Seattle Mariners' top prospect. In the 2022 MLB amateur draft, four of the top five draft picks were Black players. All of them were alumni of the Dream Series.
But the top-down efforts only scratch the surface of the Black player population. True progress isn’t just allowing exceptional players to break into the MLB level. It’s raising the percentage of Black players by a significant amount. Black All-Stars are amazing to see, but a greater percentage of average Black players will go a long way toward increasing the feelings of acceptance. For every Mookie Betts, there should be five Tony Kemps on MLB rosters to fill the gaps. The grassroots movements like Pittsburgh Hardball Academy are working to develop Black youth players from the ground up, while other movements like Minority Baseball Prospects are working on a wider scale to recreate the impact of Perfect Game.
Founded in 2020 by Alex Wyche, a product of Armstrong State University, a Division 2 school in Savannah, Georgia, the organization works extensively to close the opportunity gap and get Black and African American players into college, which then increases the chance of more players entering the draft. Now, with president Reggie Hollins, a member of the Tuskeegee University Baseball Hall of Fame, and his brother Ty Wyche, Minority Baseball Prospects is focused on widespread exposure. Each day on Twitter, they’re sharing videos of African American high school players hitting home runs, throwing fastballs and stealing bases, all in the name of getting their talent in front of coaches. They’ve established partnerships with Major League Baseball, putting on All-American games for top prospects and HBCU All-Star games for the best college players in the country. On their website, they have a feature that allows coaches and scouts to search any minority high school player within their database. The executive team is growing the game by hand amongst Black high schoolers, nurturing it with care.
“We’re finding out where these HBCU coaches are,” Hollins said. “Now they’re starting to see kids that have never been seen. We’re bringing them into a national realm, now these kids are signing college scholarships. It’s not the talent level. It’s not that players aren’t out there.”
Wyche and Hollins were outstanding college baseball players, and grew up in Macon and College Park, Georgia, respectively, believing that Black players populating the field were normal and to be expected. Seeing stars like Ron Gant, Ken Griffey Jr., and Barry Bonds on the daily made it easy to want to help Black kids make it to the next level. It’s all that they know. Minority Baseball Prospects want to ensure that there will be future stars like Mookie Betts who can come from any part of the country. When they hosted the HBCU All-Star Game at Truist Park this past June, the Atlanta Braves stadium, each player received a major league treatment to ensure that they can visualize a moment where they might be their own heroes. They also recognize the difficulties that come with being a Black kid in a white sport, and that informs the urge to make the sport a little more familiar for them.
The participants from the Minority Baseball Prospects Credit: Minority Baseball Prospects, 2021
“The sport showed me the real world, that you have to work harder than everybody else,” Wyche said. “If you don’t perform, you don’t get the opportunity. And if you perform at the same level as other people, then that opportunity goes to somebody else, somebody probably with a different complexion. You know, we’re a Black company. So everything that we do, has to look excellent."
Major League Baseball’s course changed once the league integrated and introduced African-American players into the fold. Everyone who understands the history of baseball recognizes it. That’s why it’s encouraging to see a full-scale effort, both top-down from MLB and grassroots organizations, dedicated to raising the percentage of Black players at peak of the sport. MLB doesn’t just want to see the numbers change: They need it. Without them, the game loses a little bit of its flavor. It loses part of its energy and its flair. There’s a whole generation of Black players that have been left out, capping the potential game’s potential excitement without even knowing it. Incremental change will have a monumental impact, on both sides. MLB retains a piece of the history it cannot afford to lose, and Black players will begin to feel welcome again in a sport whose story they helped write.