Baseball leaders worried about the decline in the number of African Americans in the majors
Cubs Hall of Famer Billy Williams is among the sport's luminaries who believe something needs to be done. There are no African American players in this year's World Series.
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“What the hell are we doing?”
The emotion poured through the phone, from a most unusual source.
Billy Williams — called “Sweet Swingin’ “ because of his Hall of Fame baseball skills as a slugger, and “Sweet” because of his always friendly smile and affable personality — was boiling on Tuesday.
“My neighbor came up to me the other day and said, ‘Can you believe there are no African Americans in the World Series?’” the former Cubs great said from his home in Illinois. “My daughters called me and asked, ‘What happened to the game?’ I told them ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ ”
The World Series may be just a few days from ending. Its drama and historic touches have fascinated and delighted.
But make no mistake. The sport has work to do because one of its historic touches — a Series without a single American-born Black player for the first time since 1950 — wounded many to the core.
There were players of color in both dugouts. The rich assortment of nationalities featured Latino and Afro-Caribbean players from all across Central and South America and the islands. Yet because none of those players were born in the States or any American territories, including Puerto Rico, the narrative turned more than contemplative. It revealed long-building anger. Thus the headlines, and the hurt.
“‘No African Americans in the World Series?’ How do you think that made me feel?” asked Williams. “What a slap in the face.”
Williams, 84, is not alone in being shocked, angry, disappointed, and puzzled at an occurrence not seen in a Series since 1950. Dusty Baker, manager of the American League champion Astros, hung his head when asked what he felt when the news of what the rosters were lacking broke.
“Jackie and Hank are rolling in their graves, that’s all I know,” Baker said. Days before, he told USA Today’s Bob Nightengale: “I’m ashamed of the game. Quote me. I am ashamed of the game.”
Players Association chief Tony Clark, a former major leaguer, has seen the numbers of Black Americans in the game decline slowly. According to USA Today’s compilations, the representation of 6.7% Black Americans on rosters at the start of this season was the lowest level since 1959, the year the game was fully integrated.
» READ MORE: Dusty Baker represents ‘so much for so many’
“When my wife told me about the rosters, I said, ‘You’re kidding me! Zero? How did we get here?’ ” asked Mets manager Buck Showalter.
“How we got here did not happen overnight,” Clark told the media when the Series opened in Houston last weekend. “There have been conversations about this topic for a long period of time. As a result of us not getting to this place overnight, getting back out of it is not going to happen overnight either.”
At the managerial level, Baker and Dave Roberts are the only two African Americans. The number reached its peak at eight, in 2002, with Jerry Royster, Frank Robinson, Lloyd McClendon, Don Baylor, Davey Lopes, Baker, Jerry Manuel, and Hal McRae.
Williams and Baker say they owe long playing careers and half centuries of ties to the game to those who came before them, those who looked like them. Williams and his brother, Franklin, local baseball legends in Alabama by their teens, were loaned by a hometown team of local All-Stars to a traveling troupe of Black ballplayers, a team gathered by Jackie Robinson for purposes of growing the game within African American communities.
» READ MORE: John Irvin Kennedy dreamed of being the Phillies' Jackie Robinson. He never got the chance.
On this particular day, Robinson was short of players for an exhibition in Birmingham, so in came the phenom Williams brothers to join Joe Black, Roy Campanella, Robinson, and other big-league players.
“I walked into the clubhouse with all those guys, guys that looked like me, guys who played the game, All-Stars, and I knew: ‘I want to do that,’ ” Williams said.
Getting that close to his idols fueled a desire within.
“I faced Joe Black when I was 16,” Williams said of the Dodgers pitcher who was the first player of color to win a World Series game, in 1952. “I barnstormed with Satchel Paige on a team that went to Florida, Atlanta, and throughout Alabama. Satchel was, what, 65? And he’d show up in the seventh or eighth innings, warm up, then come into the games. The crowds would go wild.”
Williams was given a peek into his future, and he eventually became the first Black player to become a major leaguer of note without first having played in the Negro leagues.
Baker? He often credits childhood heroes like Aaron, Mays, Willie McCovey, and Maury Wills as the reason he wanted to play baseball.
Now Williams and Baker look at the game that once could count dozens of Black big-league mainstays, World Series heroes, and Hall of Famers in the making in what was arguably the golden era of Black American baseball. They remember when the Senior Circuit, more progressive than the American League when it came to committing to integration, was stacked, team by team by team. Aaron and Mays followed Robinson from the Negro leagues to the bigs.
Roberto Clemente transitioned from ball in Puerto Rico to icon status with the Pirates.
The depth was so amazingly deep that Frank Robinson, the only man to win MVP awards in each league, had to ride the bench in some All-Star Games because Aaron, Mays, and Clemente were starters who wanted to finish the Midseason Classic.
» READ MORE: Death threats, a boycott warning and an awkward photo op: Remembering Jackie Robinson’s Philly debut 75 years ago
Fast-forward to today’s game. The Phillies greeted their adoring public before the first Fall Classic home game in Philly since 2009. The contrast is a vivid one if seen through the lens that former Phillies center fielder Doug Glanville and others ruefully gaze. For the last time the Phillies were introduced before a World Series game at Citizens Bank Park, the 2009 team featured Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins, beloved All-Stars who won NL MVP trophies as Phillies. The 2009 Yankees countered with their biggest punch, another future Hall of Famer with Black lineage: Derek Jeter.
Now Williams, Baker, and Glanville, having followed the trails forged by their predecessors and made their mark, wonder whom today’s Black children can look to and see their future selves? Sure, there is a Mookie Betts here, a Michael Harris II there. But most major league teams are closer to zero than one could have ever envisioned. So who’s to persuade the parents of those children to continue to plunk down money and foster beliefs that the game, from the children’s leagues to the colleges and on up to the minors and majors, even cares?
No one is responsible for crafting the needed plea for bearing with the game more than baseball commissioner Rob Manfred. So, when asked what would he say to the parents who are thinking of walking away with their children once and for all, Manfred said: “I think what I would say is this: Baseball can demonstrate its commitment to this issue in a variety of ways, and I think the most personal to that parent is, is that we’re in underserved communities spending unprecedented sums of money to try to attract African Americans to the game. So, be patient with us.”
Then he pointed to the game’s fervent hope that the children will lead them, adding: “Four of the top five guys, and six out of 18 [in this year’s amateur draft] were African American. We’re making headway, but they have got to make it to the big leagues.”
Baseball continues to try to widen the pipeline, to find the equivalent to what attracts the Latino and Asian players in increasing numbers, with success stories right behind. How can the game identify the disconnect when there are so many theories?
Is it that the African American, once the face of the game’s diversity, has been replaced by faces from other nations? “Let’s face it,” one major league manager said, “it’s cheaper labor. It’s not their kids’ fault. It’s not our kids’ fault. It just is.”
Then there are other theories, enough to practically outnumber American Black players in the majors.
Among them:
It started with Al Campanis’ infamous reference in 1987 to Blacks’ lacking the necessities to excel as anything other than players. Probably safe to say that did not help.
Baseball can’t compete with the super-cool, sneaker-sales-driven NBA, or the self-identified new national pastime that is the NFL.
It is the elitism that says players who once couldn’t afford expensive gloves and bats certainly can’t afford private coaches or places on traveling teams.
Or maybe it’s the limited number of college scholarships in Division I baseball (11 mostly partial packages)? “The talent is there,” said former major leaguer Harold Reynolds, now of the MLB Network. “Look at the draft. And we’ve got people busting their tails to identify these kids. The challenge is keeping the kids playing. The programs are working, but then you get to that critical age – 13 – and kids are made to pick a sport. If you choose football, Division I schools each have, what, 85 scholarships, all full rides? Baseball? It’s been 11.7 scholarships for 30 years, with only three or four full rides. So in the majors, we are at 7%. Colleges are at 1%.”
Steroids turned the game into the Home Run Derby, signaling the death of “National League” ball — the stolen base, hit-and-run, first-to-third, bunting, defense, etc. Joe Morgan once said those were tools that Negro leaguers brought in force to the majors and five-tool players like Mays defined. They are no longer used or emphasized, so the speedy guys like Glanville, Willie McGee, and Mickey Rivers are ghosts from a distant past.
Some believe it is the growing importance of analytics that discourage teams from developing raw talent. “You hear ‘coach ‘em up’ in other sports, so why not baseball?” asked Showalter. “Go out to a college football practice. Watch the defensive backs. When I do, I say, ‘My God, there they are,’ ” he said, referring to all-around athletes who are pliable, teachable, and should be prime targets of baseball, except they’re not.” Said Reynolds, “Not enough scouts are going to Compton.”
Then there is the analytics vs. the head and heart argument. “Kids are playing,” Reynolds said. “We’re getting there. But the equipment, the data, we’re being too analytically driven. The kids that need Wharton grads to calculate spin rate and exit velocity to even speak the same language as the players who are successfully being recruited can’t pay that bill. People will break through if they have baseball people guiding them.”
What is making the wait excruciating, said Glanville, is this: “Once baseball aligned itself with Jackie Robinson, you are making a certain commitment, because he not only cared about more opportunities for African American players. He wanted us all to celebrate the game. He wanted to widen the arms of baseball.
“Now you’re literally on the biggest stage that the world knows — it’s called the World Series — so this image is going worldwide, and that’s the concern. It doesn’t have to be nefarious. It just has to be what it is. But, look, Jackie Robinson’s number is retired everywhere. If you don’t just want that to be symbolic, then steps have to be taken.”
Claire Smith is on the faculty at Temple and is the co-director of the Claire Smith Center for Sports Media. She is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame and a former Inquirer sports columnist.
The Phillies need to sweep the weekend in Houston to win their third World Series title. Join Inquirer Phillies writers Scott Lauber and Matt Breen as they discuss what the Phillies need to do in Game 6 on Saturday night to help make it happen.