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- [00:00]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
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Vanessa Ivey Rose
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Jacoby Radcliffe
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Vanessa Ivey Rose
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Vanessa Ivey Rose
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Jacoby Radcliffe
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Gary Gillette
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- [00:38]
Jacoby Radcliffe
There are two teams warming up to face each other in a stadium in Detroit. Both of them are made up of black high school students joking and jostling with each other on the side of the field. Start playing baseball around, I'd say three. I played T ball with my dad.
- [00:55]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
And I just went on from there.
- [00:57]
Jacoby Radcliffe
This is Jacoby Radcliffe. He's 18 years old. He's actually built a little like my grandpa. He's at least 6ft tall and has that same slim frame, but the most noticeable thing about him is his confidence. My walkout song, okay, it's this song.
- [01:17]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
It's called outside by mo3.
- [01:19]
Jacoby Radcliffe
It's a great song, by the way. Jacoby is about to play in a tribute game for the Negro Leagues, so he and the other players are decked out in the old Timey uniforms. Jacoby is wearing the Chicago American Giants signature gray jersey with bold red lettering and socks pulled high, and this game is one of his last with his youth team.
- [01:53]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
I graduated high school June 7.
- [01:56]
Jacoby Radcliffe
In the fall, I will be attending Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
- [02:01]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
I'm on a baseball scholarship and academic too.
- [02:04]
Jacoby Radcliffe
It's very difficult because you had to go to a showcase to perform in front of a lot of scouts and the scouts have to like you in.
- [02:11]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
Order to offer you.
- [02:12]
Jacoby Radcliffe
So it was a bit of a challenge because there was a lot of good dudes there. It's hard to stay inspired, to keep training to be the best. But when you see someone who looks like you doing what you want to do, it makes your dream feel possible. For Jacoby, that's what happens when he sees his favorite player, Padres outfielder Juan Soto. Like Juan Soto, he'd do like this shuffle and I was like. When I first seen him, I was like, yeah, I'm doing that because it's really intimidating to pitchers. They don't want to throw at you. That's a free base or throw a fastball in. And I just you know, hit a home run or a double, you know, so it's really a win, win situation for me. What baseball gives Jacoby is what I imagine it gave Grandpa Turkey 100 years ago. And knowing that he paved the way for players like Jacoby makes me feel proud. I could be anybody who I want to be on the field.
- [03:14]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
It makes me feel like I'm alive.
- [03:21]
Jacoby Radcliffe
There is, in theory, nothing stopping Jacoby from getting into the majors, from being the next Juan Soto if he wants to. There's an easy story that people like to tell about the Negro Leagues, and it goes like this. Players like my grandfather endured all that mistreatment and discrimination so that one day players like Jacoby wouldn't have to. They would get the chances their grandfathers were denied. But the truth is, even now, can we honestly say that the space for black players like Jacoby is as big as the space for white players? People think the Negro Leagues is a story about the past, but it isn't. The Negro Leagues are part of the story of black baseball today. How we handle the legacy of past injustice is how we write what comes next. Because those injustices, they haven't been answered for. And now the soul of the game hangs in the balance. From ABC Audio, this is Reclaimed the Forgotten League. I'm Vanessa ivey Rose. Episode 6 A White Man's Sport After 12 o'clock. Is that okay? After 12? After 12 or 11 o'clock, is that okay?
- [05:10]
Earl Smith
I'll be back.
- [05:12]
Jacoby Radcliffe
All right, we'll save your size. What size do you need? While Jacoby is warming up inside, I'm out front handing out T shirts. I'm a board member for an organization called Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium, which is where the game is being played. So I'm here to watch it and spend a little time with family and friends.
- [05:35]
Gary Gillette
Hey, Nick, can you deliver some chairs with a first base canopy? Deliver two of those wooden chairs if you can.
- [05:43]
Jacoby Radcliffe
This is my friend Gary. He's the founder of. Well, hold up. I'll let him tell you.
- [05:49]
Gary Gillette
Gary Gillette, founder of the Friends of historic Hamtramck Stadium 2012. Bon Vivant Manobac Town Raconteur Flaneur not gainfully employed. I've been working on this project for 12 years now, and it's such a joy to see it come to fruition. Do I look excited? I am very excited. I'm very, very happy.
- [06:10]
Jacoby Radcliffe
This project that Gary has been working on is Hamtramck Stadium.
- [06:15]
Gary Gillette
Today we're doing a rededication of historic Hamtramck Stadium first opened in 1930, rebuilt in 1941, closed in 1997, and it's been rehabilitated according to historic preservation standards. And we're reopening it today with the Tribute game to the Negro leagues and to one of four living Negro League players still in the U.S. we renamed the field in honor of Turkey Stearns, hall of Famer and Detroit Stars Great. So the full name would be Norman Turkey Stearns Field at historic Hamtramck Stadium. That's a mouthful.
- [06:45]
Jacoby Radcliffe
Hamtramck is a great example of how protecting the future of the game is about understanding the past. There will be a ceremony before the game honoring 96 year old former Negro League player Ron Teasley. After that, Jacoby's Chicago team will play. Their opponents, a Detroit team dressed in Grandpa Turkey's old uniform, the Detroit Stars. This stadium is where Grandpa Turkey played some of his best years on the Stars and where so many other Negro League greats showed what they could do. Satchel Page, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, they all played here. The thread from the past to the present was broken. But with this stadium, it has been restored. Making that connection was important for Gary Gillette.
- [07:41]
Gary Gillette
I've been a member of the Society for American Baseball Research, a nonprofit, since 1983.
- [07:46]
Jacoby Radcliffe
Gary says he always had an interest in ballparks. He even wrote a book about them.
- [07:52]
Gary Gillette
So, and I did a really huge coffee table book that if you dropped it from 5ft, would kill cats and dogs of less than 20 pounds easily. It crushed them instantly. I mean, it's just a huge book.
- [08:05]
Jacoby Radcliffe
While looking into Detroit ballparks, Gary found research about Hamtramck Stadium, but not very much. Gary has worked hard to fill in the blanks of the story.
- [08:18]
Gary Gillette
When originally built, it seated about 9,000, maybe another thousand or two in bleachers. In the early 1970s, to save money on maintenance, the city cut the grandstand back on both wings to make it smaller. At that point would have seated about 2,500 in bleacher seats. The fire marshal put up the Hamtramck fire Marshall put up a capacity sign a couple days ago saying maximum capacity 1050, which says something about our spreading butts or cheeks or hips. I guess you can edit the butts out, right?
- [09:02]
Jacoby Radcliffe
The stadium is about 4 miles from downtown Detroit, 10 minutes away from Comerica Park. It's right in the middle of the Hamtramck neighborhood. And there's a railway line that runs impossibly close to the southeastern edge of the bleachers.
- [09:19]
Gary Gillette
And I know other ballparks, and particularly Negro League parks that were located near train tracks had trouble when the trains would come by. And allegedly, sometimes the engineers would stoke the engines or throw out a lot of soot to interrupt the game.
- [09:33]
Jacoby Radcliffe
Clouds of soot or not, thousands of fans packed the grandstand to watch players like my grandfather excel. These stadiums were the centers of communities. But after integration, across the country, hundreds of stadiums that had once held the roaring crowd fell silent and then fell down. And since Negro League stories had disappeared from public knowledge, no one even knew they should be saved. Hamtramck is rare. It's one of only five remaining Negro league ballparks left in the country. There's Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. Hinchcliff in Patterson, New Jersey. JP Small in Jacksonville, Florida. And League park in Cleveland, Ohio. That's it. And sure, you might say teams move around all the time in baseball. Stadiums close and are rebuilt. Look at Comerica Park. It replaced the old Tiger Stadium in 2000. But Hamtramck's stories in history never got a new home. It was left to rot.
- [10:55]
Gary Gillette
Some vagrants and kids that set fires in the grandstand. So there were holes in them, charred holes. You had to watch where you were walking because you could step into a hole and your leg could go through. You could still see the outline of the pitcher's mound and home plate, where home plate would have been, and the base paths, but they were overgrown with grass and weeds.
- [11:15]
Jacoby Radcliffe
By the time Gary rediscovered Hamtramck in 2008, it was fenced off. Anyone on the grounds would technically be trespassing. But by now, you can probably guess that didn't stop Gary.
- [11:31]
Gary Gillette
I was here 100 times from 2008 when I first visited it until they started working on it. I was never here once where there wasn't a hole in the fence that I could walk through. I never made a hole in the fence myself. I just walked through somebody else's hole. And so there were kids in the Grants.
- [11:43]
Jacoby Radcliffe
The stadium looks so good now. The roof is new, and there's fresh pine on the bleacher benches. Gary wanted to restore this place and its history. He's done that. But he also wanted to give kids in the city a place to play. There's fewer green spaces in Hamtramck than in most cities in America. Fewer parks means fewer diamonds. But Gary noticed that restoring participation, that's harder to do.
- [12:15]
Gary Gillette
Nobody plays pickup ball. I have never seen anybody below the age of 25 on this field playing catch just to play catch.
- [12:25]
Jacoby Radcliffe
That old Baseball adage, if you build it, they will come. Gary's finding out that it isn't that simple. And what he's noticing locally in Hamtramck is something that's happening across the country. Kids aren't playing our national pastime as much as they used to. And there's one group that's particularly impacted by this black youth. Professor Earl Smith is a sports sociologist at the University of Delaware. He's been studying race and race relations for over 25 years. But before that, he was just a little Leaguer who loved the Yankees.
- [13:12]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
I grew up in New York, and there definitely were neighborhoods that were, quote, white only. But I can't remember thinking that baseball was a white man's game because I'm in the era right after the cherry picking of the Negro Leagues. And they had to be stars. They were larger than life. So I don't think I ever saw it that way. In fact, it took me a long time to get to the realization that blacks were not playing baseball.
- [13:48]
Jacoby Radcliffe
Earl and I have both heard theories for why this is. We don't really buy them.
- [13:54]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
The person on the street who doesn't know much about these things, they'll say, oh, you know, baseball is too slow. It's like watching paint dry. People want to razzle and dazzle. Like Michael Jordan.
- [14:11]
Jacoby Radcliffe
People who said this, they actually might have been talking about me. I was that kid in the 90s wearing the Jordan jersey. But, yeah, I've heard this one a lot. Michael Jordan was just so cool that he tempted black kids away from baseball.
- [14:28]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
And so the theories that I've seen over the years were exactly those kinds of everyday thinking, not carefully thought through. Maybe these young men just don't want to play baseball anymore, when in fact, it's much more complicated than that.
- [14:49]
Jacoby Radcliffe
If you've been listening over the last five episodes, this might seem like a mystery. We've talked about how baseball was a fixture in black communities before integration. And then after the color barrier was crossed. Black stars started to be seen and recognized by white institutions like the hall of Fame. But now young black players are turning away from the game. Why? Imagine you're a black kid growing up today. You love baseball. You're like Jacoby Radcliffe obsessed. You've got posters on your wall and a full fantasy team roster on the tip of your tongue. But there's one issue. Most of the players don't look like you. In 1947, the year Jackie Robinson walked on the field for the Dodgers, less than 1% of MLB players were Black. By 1981. Black representation in MLB reached its all time peak. Almost a fifth of all players were black. So where do you think that percentage lands today? 20%? 15. Well, on opening day of the 2023 season, only 59 of 945 players were Black. That's just over 6%. The odds of seeing a black baseball player on the diamond were higher in 1956 than they are today. Now. If you're wondering if this is the case across the board, let me give you some extra context about other sports in America. The NFL and NBA both had periods of segregation too. They were much shorter than baseballs. Both of these other sports now have an overrepresentation of black players. The trend since their integration has shown numbers of black players increasing over time with no drop off. So what's going on with baseball?
- [17:05]
Earl Smith
This is gonna go into like a whole like maze of stuff.
- [17:09]
Jacoby Radcliffe
Okay, this is Marissa Kiss. She works at the Institute for Immigration Research at George Mason University. And Earl Smith was one of her dissertation advisors. Together they wrote an op ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer that tried to answer this big question. Why aren't there more black American baseball players?
- [17:33]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
We wanted to highlight the demise of native born African American players. That was one thing. That was. What did we call it? The Colony and the Country Club.
- [17:45]
Jacoby Radcliffe
The Colony and the Country Club.
- [17:49]
Earl Smith
You can no longer say that baseball is part of the American dream. You know, Major League Baseball now is really a story of the haves and the have nots, really depending on your citizenship, immigration status, and also your race.
- [18:04]
Jacoby Radcliffe
While black American participation in baseball has been going down, there's been an increase in MLB players born overseas, specifically from Latin America and the Caribbean. This increase in players born overseas, that's the Colony part of their op ed title. It began in the second half of the 20th century when major League Baseball discovered it could get talent for cheaper from Latin America and the Caribbean.
- [18:38]
Earl Smith
During the 1970s, MLB teams such as the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays started to send scouts down to the Dominican Republic to recruit and sign caliber players.
- [18:52]
Jacoby Radcliffe
Soon all MLB teams started academies in the Dominican Republic. They filled them with hundreds of young players and built them into future MLB stars. Recruiting like this is cheaper and it allows teams to get around some of the regulations of attracting and training young players. For example, players who are born overseas are not required to have a high school diploma or a GED to compete. American born athletes aren't allowed to play without one.
- [19:28]
Earl Smith
So some players in the Dominican Republic, they're recruited as young as 12 years old. You know, they're really taken out of school, they're taken away from their families. And this pipeline, it's allowed MLB to continue to recruit, develop and evaluate the play of not like one or two kids, but hundreds of young players. If they're not signed by an MLB team, they're just left now, 16, 17 years old, didn't finish high school, don't have a job and there's another kid to take their spot.
- [20:05]
Jacoby Radcliffe
The academies are a way of casting a wide net in a talent pool. There are plenty of players who won't make it, but the very top players might be lucky. 24% of MLB's players in 2022 were born in the Caribbean or Latin American. They are some of the best players in the majors, including the player Jacoby Radcliffe admires most.
- [20:32]
Earl Smith
Juan Soto and Victor Robles both came through the Nationals Academy in the Dominican Republic. They were both signed when they were 16 years old. That's the minimum age limit that MLB teams are allowed to sign foreign born players.
- [20:49]
Jacoby Radcliffe
Many players who were born in the Caribbean in Latin America are Afro Latino. So this system does put black and brown players in the majors and there's nothing wrong with that. But Earl says it also does something to our perception of who's being represented on the field.
- [21:10]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
I see players come from Cuba, they look like me and there's good reason why, but you know, for simplicity's sake, they look like me. Another player could come from Columbia and look like me. So whoever is collecting the data for whatever source, sports writer types, they just look out and they say, oh, that's a black player. Last year's World Series for the first time in 70 years, think about this. This is the quintessential game. Not one player on both teams was a native born African American player. Not one first time in 70 years. That's deep.
- [22:01]
Jacoby Radcliffe
If you've been listening to this thinking, hey, what about Ken Griffey Jr. Or Ozzie Smith or Derek Jeter? The list of greats of the past goes on and on. There's great players out there, great American born black players. The point is, nowadays there's not as many as you'd think. That's because in the US there's a different system at play to get yourself noticed by mlb. The trouble is it's one that gives some players an advantage over others. That's the country club part of Earl and Marissa's research here. A kid shot at playing in the majors is all about being noticed by scouts. And to get noticed, it isn't enough to Play in your local ballpark. Because what are the odds that an MLB scout is just going to happen to show up at your game in Lansing, Michigan, and be so impressed by that double play you did in the second inning, they're going to invest time and energy to keep following you. That would be like winning the lottery with a single ticket. Not impossible, but not likely. But there is a way around these bad odds.
- [23:27]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
So you want to be the best. So does everybody else.
- [23:33]
Jacoby Radcliffe
That's an ad for the IMG Academy, part of IMG Worldwide, which runs the IMG Models agency. At IMG Academy, parents can send their kids to play sports and basically guarantee that they will be seen by scouts at talent showcases. In the 1990s, showcase events like IMGs sprang up all over the country. One called the Perfect Game has become the dominant force in predicting major league success of players foreign and domestic. In 2021, 95% of MLB Draft selections had played in a Perfect Game showcase. It's like buying a whole reel of lottery tickets. The chances against you are still huge, but you've got a better chance the more money you spent. There's an obvious problem with that. Right.
- [24:36]
Earl Smith
So in 2019, I saw that it was about $650 for parents to pay and up to $3,500 for their child to compete on travel team going to Perfect game events and then some other families may spend anywhere from 500 to $2,500 per year and sometimes up to $4,000 per year for their kids to play on travel leagues. And think about it. I mean, these kids are playing on these travel leagues from the age of nine through they turn 18. So these yearly expensive over a course of nine years definitely adds up.
- [25:14]
Jacoby Radcliffe
It does add up to tens of thousands a year. IMG and Perfect Game have both said they try to help young athletes who can't afford the top price bracket experience. But it's not just the Perfect Game or other travel league costs. There's fewer scholarships available for aspiring collegiate baseball players than for football or basketball. Even playing in your local little league involves buying equipment and somehow getting to games. Then there's private batting coaches, which Marissa says can cost hundreds of dollars. There's websites where you create profiles to make yourself more visible to scouts, and even those require membership and subscription fees. The costs of playing baseball, even from a young age, have been going up and staying up. And what if after all this, you still don't get signed? Increasing opportunities costs money, but it also costs time. Two resources that many Americans don't have. To spare. And in particular black Americans are less likely to be able to participate. The median Black household has 10% of the net worth of a white one. Black Americans earn 30% less than their white counterparts. So in a system that favors those with disposable income in the tens of thousands, who will be more likely to succeed?
- [26:54]
Earl Smith
You know what it comes down to is where MLB decides to invest their money. MLB has been making over time clearly large financial contributions to players born outside the US in the Caribbean and Latin America and not so much investing and individuals and youth who are low income black and white players in the United States states.
- [27:20]
Jacoby Radcliffe
All that being said, over the last few years MLB has funded showcase programs to help black kids break into baseball. There's one called the Dream where ex major leaguers like Jerry Manuel coach kids for a free four day series. There's another called rbi, which stands for Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities. MLB told ABC it's spending millions of dollars trying to bring new black American players into the sport. Many of their talent development schemes are low cost or free, and there appears to be tentative signs of improvement. Almost a fifth of the top draft picks in 2023 were American born black players, many of whom were graduates of these MLB funded programs. It makes sense that MLB would want to shake things up. Generationally, we've seen a shift in who's watching the sport. Baseball has been replaced by football as the most watched sport in America. MLB needs fresh eyes and young fans to have a future. And in an increasingly diverse country, your sport should reflect its audience, right? And whatever changes MLB have been making, they haven't been enough so far. But maybe this is something else. Maybe this is MLB reaping what it sold all those decades ago and keeping black players out of the game because the color line that kept the majors white was crossed, but it was never erased.
- [29:18]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
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Jacoby Radcliffe
You'll save so much on holiday gifts.
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Vanessa Ivey Rose
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Jacoby Radcliffe
Gotcha. Or that cutting board for the ultimate holiday party buffet. Is that a charcuterie pyramid?
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Vanessa Ivey Rose
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Jacoby Radcliffe
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Vanessa Ivey Rose
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Vanessa Ivey Rose
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Jacoby Radcliffe
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Gary Gillette
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Vanessa Ivey Rose
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Gary Gillette
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- [30:17]
Jacoby Radcliffe
CT mobile.com Every day, thousands of Comcast engineers and technologists like Leslie put people at the heart of everything they create. With my team at Comcast, we developed the Xfinity Voice Remote and tested it to recognize different types of accents, inflections and languages. New Movies Movies for kids Peliculas para las familias. Now 40 million voice commands a day are heard by the Xfinity Voice remote. Visit ComcastCorporation.com to learn more. In 2016, there was a cultural moment that forced a collision of two worlds, American sports and social justice. It happened in the NFL when Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest racism and oppression. It was controversial, but soon he wasn't alone on the Seattle sideline. It wasn't just players, but coaches, employees.
- [31:21]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
Even fans following suit.
- [31:23]
Jacoby Radcliffe
Hopefully it's going to unify our country to where Back in mlb, a Baltimore Orioles player, Adam Jones, looked at baseball and couldn't see a single act of solidarity in the sport. It told him, a black American, that baseball didn't care about alienating its black players. He felt expendable, disposable. In an interview that year, he told a journalist, baseball is a white man's sport. Baseball's root is incredibly racist. So it's very difficult to shake something out of a system. It doesn't. Shakia Taylor, a sports and culture editor at the Chicago Tribune so I agree with Adam Jones completely. Even if you look at the fan base. You know, the average baseball fan once upon a time was a 55 year old white male. So if everyone running it is a white guy and everyone watching it is a white guy, I mean, how can he be wrong? Shakia says there's been a kind of atmosphere in baseball that shaped the game today. In previous decades, this has been seen by some fans as traditional. She sees it as a way of maintaining a certain status quo. People within baseball get upset about home run celebrations and players wearing jewelry and backwards caps, and they take a lot of the joy out of the sport with the rules. There is an unwritten rule where if a batter hits a home run and celebrates it a little too long that he is then hit with the ball on his next plate appearance, which is absurd. It is absolutely absurd. But things like that keep African American kids out of the sport. Culturally, I'd say, you know, we like to celebrate, we like to have fun. And if you take those things out of the game, you're gonna lose interest. The exuberant showmanship that typified the Negro Leagues, Shakia says, is not welcome in MLB. And that atmosphere is still felt today in 2021. An MLB announcer joked about the clothing of them, Mets pitcher Marcus Stroman. What clothing did he choose to joke about? His durag. It's another form of the gentlemen's agreement, unwritten rules about what kind of player you can be in the majors. And historically, that has even affected which position black players are assigned. I think across sport, regardless of the league, there's always been a perception generally that is rooted in racism that African Americans are not as smart as everyone else. And it's incredibly pervasive in positions that people consider to be like thinking man's position. In football, that would be the quarterback. In baseball, that's the pitcher and sometimes the catcher as well. This doesn't just apply to players either. This kind of thinking has an effect at the managerial level, too. It's a tough question for you.
- [34:45]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
You're still in baseball. Why. Why is it that there are no black managers, no black general managers, no Black owners? Well, Mr. Koppel, there have been some black managers, but I really can't answer that question directly. The only thing I can say is that you have to pay your dues when you become a manager. Generally, you have to go to.
- [35:07]
Jacoby Radcliffe
This is Al Campanis. He's white. He's an ex Dodgers second baseman. And during this 1987 interview with ABC's Nightline, he was their general manager. He was also a close friend of Jackie Robinson.
- [35:23]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
You know that that's a lot of baloney. I mean, there are a lot of black players. There are a lot of great black baseball men who would dearly love to be in managerial positions. And I guess what I'm really asking you is to, you know, peel it away a little bit. Just tell me, why do you think it is? Is there still that much prejudice in baseball today? No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager. You really believe that? Well, I don't say that they're all of them. But they certainly are short. How many quarterbacks do you have? How many pitchers do you have that are black? It saves. I mean, you know, I gotta tell you, that sounds like the same kind of garbage we were hearing 40 years ago.
- [36:13]
Jacoby Radcliffe
As he stumbled to explain himself, Campanus dug himself deeper. He said, why are black men, black people not good swimmers? Because they don't have the buoyancy? Perhaps, replies the host, it's because of the lack of access to country clubs and pools. Instead, 36 years have passed since Campana said that black players lacked the necessities to become managers. The natural buoyancy. Today, there's only two Black managers out of 30 in the 2023 season. A study by Arizona State University's Global Sport Institute showed that between 1995 and 2021, Black MLB managers were still held to different standards than white ones. White managers, on average, had less coaching experience when they were hired. Black managers were dismissed more quickly from their positions and were more likely to have been fired. Campanis remarks became his legacy that remains long after his death. Because hearing an executive say out loud something that black athletes still felt in the air decades after Jackie Robinson, it touched the nerve. So in all that time since integration, how much progress has America really made? This is the question that many American institutions had to try to answer in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd, whether they wanted to or not. And baseball was no exception. Nine days after Floyd's death, MLB released a statement. Like everyone else, it had phrases like zero tolerance and committed to change. To be honest, after George Floyd, I wasn't even thinking about sports at first. Witnessing Floyd's murder on camera made me think about the question. I always ask Grandma Nettie, what did Grandpa Turkey think about racism? She would always say, he just said, that's just the way things work. It took me a while to realize the layers that statement contained. He wasn't just throwing in a towel and saying, that's just life. There's nothing we can do about it. He was really saying that he knew what to expect and that he had to look inward in order to survive. One of the most unsettling things about being black in America is that here in the present, we are still experiencing the hatred of the past. It's just modernized. Like Adam Jones, Grandpa Turkey knew to what extent baseball was a white man's sport, just like he knew America was a white man's country. When MLB released its statement after George Floyd's murder, it felt hollow to me. So when a piece of unexpected News was announced in December of 2020. I was shocked.
- [39:40]
Earl Smith
A big announcement from Major League Baseball.
- [39:42]
Jacoby Radcliffe
Today it has reclassified the Negro Leagues as a major league. On December 16, MLB announced that it would elevate Negro League stats to the level of Major league stats in the official record book. 100 years after the Negro Leagues were first founded, MLB vowed that the stats that had been gathered and restored by researchers would be incorporated, integrated. Tell me how it felt to have the stats recognized.
- [40:15]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
Well, they're not.
- [40:19]
Jacoby Radcliffe
This is Sean Gibson, Josh Gibson's great grandson. We're both members of the Negro League Family Alliance, a group formed of descendants of Negro League players like me. He saw the MLB announcement and his jaw dropped. We had no idea MLB was considering this move. And we thought that finally, after all this time, progress would be made. But then, crickets.
- [40:46]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
You can't make an announcement without going through with the announcement. And that's what, you know, as family members, I feel like we're kind of in limbo of what's going on because the announcement was so huge. And the announcement came at a time where African Americans was upset because it came during a George Floyd killing that same year. And, you know, I had several reporters ask me, did I think MLB did this as a PR move? And I said, well, I can't speak on behalf of Major League Baseball. You have to ask them that question. But I hope not.
- [41:27]
Jacoby Radcliffe
The family alliance was not included in the decision to recognize the stats. And for some, the details of the announcement were concerning. MLB vowed to take some of the stats, but not all play recorded within the leagues between 1920 and 1948 would be counted, but no barnstorming records would be included. Once again, they drew a line in the sand. Some stats are worthy and others are not.
- [41:59]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
I'll say this. When they made the announcement, I was excited. My phone was ringing off the hook because everybody thought now that Josh Gibson would be the home run king. Josh had over 800 home runs, but most of his home runs were doing barnstorming and playing overseas. He only had like 327 in the Negro league, so he's not the home run king.
- [42:23]
Jacoby Radcliffe
Some say these barnstorming and overseas games are helpful data points because they still represent an athlete's ability on the field. Some say since they're not official, they can't be held as equal to major leaguers. Earlier in the series, you heard Kevin Johnson of Seam Heads explain how difficult it's been for stats collectors to gather and quantify Negro Leagues data. Box scores for the Negro Leagues are not as easy to find or interpret as the records of the major leagues. But that's no reason not to count what we have either. It does mean that whatever stats MLB does include, they'll always be controversial.
- [43:08]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
When they officially put the stats into major league records, there will be not just job, but it'll be several players from the Negro league that'll be in the top 10 top five categories and maybe some of one.
- [43:20]
Jacoby Radcliffe
What if even by conservative estimates, the top 10 baseball greats are rewritten? Can baseball fans handle their idols being replaced overnight? If Turkey Stearns is suddenly a better player than Joe DiMaggio, are people ready to hear it?
- [43:39]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
Who are you to tell us that we are now major leaguers? You know, we always considered our relatives as major leaguers, but now that they say we are major leaguers, well, then let's, let's, let's, let's show it. Let's show it. There are some players still living and they should be compensated, you know, with pensions. All the other major leaguers are benefiting from playing the major, so I feel like the families and the players who are still living should also benefit from that.
- [44:11]
Jacoby Radcliffe
The stats are complicated, but they're just one part of the puzzle. This is about treating Negro leagues players like they are full equals to major leaguers of the past, present and future. One of the main things the family alliance is asking MLB for directly is a universal Negro League's day on May 2nd of every year. That's the date of Rube Foster's first Negro league game of the season in 1920. We want fans who know nothing about the Monarchs or the Grays or the Detroit Stars to appreciate a history they may never have heard before. And not just the history of the teams, but also of the surviving Negro league players, like Bill Greason, who played for the Black Barons and later became a Baptist preacher in Alabama. Willie Mays, who is known for his major league record but not for his Negro league origins, and Ron Teasley. After integration, Ron was almost selected to play on the Dodgers with Jackie Robinson. But Ron didn't make it to the majors. He always felt that there was an unofficial quota system in place that no matter how good you were, they weren't willing to have too many black players on their team. Ron wasn't eligible for a major league pension. But now that MLB has told the world that they consider Negro leagues as major leagues, maybe now he can get what so many other players have taken as a given. Recognition, appreciation, and quickly. Ron's 96 years old. It's time to give the man his flowers. We're past the centennial of the league's founding and we're looking at it with new eyes. When we look back in 100 years time, what do you think we'll see?
- [46:13]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
Man, I hope my descendants are still celebrating Josh Gibson that's first day they will be right? You know it's funny you said that because when 100 years came up in 2020, I couldn't believe it. Here we are celebrating something that happened 100 years ago and you know Vanessa, I should say is that it's a shame that here we are celebrating 100 years and your grandfather and my great grandfather is probably looking down and saying I can't believe that they're going through this, still going through some of the same things that we went through 100 years ago. So that is one of the things that I used to always talk about is how not too much has changed.
- [47:04]
Jacoby Radcliffe
In the Nearly three years since the announcement, the silence from MLB has felt deafening. So earlier this year, when the Family alliance was invited to a meeting with mlb, we had some questions. Two months before the meeting, the alliance had announced the group's initiatives at a press conference, and this was an initial discussion to communicate them to mlb. In that meeting, someone asked the MLB rep, can you provide us an update about when the Negro League stats will be included in the MLB records? The MLB rep looked around the table. Haven't we already done that? He said. When ABC asked MLB about this exchange, they said the rep was referring to the process created to complete an agreement for use of the Negro League stats. We had heard about this agreement, but not directly from mlb. Initially, our sources told us about a possible agreement with data researchers, so we asked MLB about it. They told ABC that the reason we've been waiting so long is the result of negotiations between MLB and the data researchers. MLB said they spent time coming to an agreement that allows them to use the data on which their decision to elevate the stats was based. They also wanted to build a partnership with the experts who gathered it. They told us that the evaluation of this data is underway, but didn't give us a timeline or a target date for completion. Our sources also told us that some of them were asked to join a new committee MLB was putting together to review the stats. This committee would be made up of Negro League experts who have lived and breathed these stories for many decades. When we asked MLB about this committee, they said that after their December 2020 announcement, they wanted to handle the process with thoroughness and thoughtfulness they confirmed that this committee does exist and that it has met several times already. As of the release of this podcast, there has been no public announcement acknowledging this committee of experts or the process of working with the data researchers. But it seems like 32 months since Commissioner Robert Manfred said that Negro leagues are major leagues. MLB is now sifting through the data. Now. I've still got some questions, of course, and I tried to get them answered by the man who made that 2020 announcement in the first place. ABC asked MLB for an interview with the commissioner in April and then again in September. Our request was denied both times, so I'll ask a third time. Commissioner Manfred, the door is always open. If it sounds like I'm not happy about this progress, let me explain. It's not about MLB taking on this task. That's a promising step in the right direction. But the pace of this process is being dictated by MLB, and that feels familiar. When the leagues integrated in 1947, the decision wasn't made by Jackie. It wasn't even made by Branch rickey. It was MLB's call at a time they decided was right. These stats of these Negro leaguers exist because they were determined to play even when the sport told them to quit. If MLB absorbs the stats without acknowledging their reason for existence, there's a risk that they whitewashed that struggle. It seems paradoxical, but these stories may be lost by being brought to the surface. But just like integration in 1947, we have no choice but to play by the rules set by white baseball. Even though it could erase us. It's a lot. I'm optimistic, but I'm watching MLB's next moves carefully and I'm hoping they will not repeat the mistakes of the past. I'm not angry, I'm disappointed and I'm fed up. Okay, this is set up in sign language, he said. This is my mom choice. She taught deaf and hard of hearing students for 36 years. That's why she knows how she feels in sign language too. I want them to step up to the plate and do the right thing. Okay, so you kept them isolated and didn't afford them the opportunities that they deserve because they rightfully could play. They should have been major leaguers all the time and now they're major leaguers. Make up for it and do the right thing. MLB will host the Negro Leagues Tribute game at Rickwood Field in Alabama in 2024, but there's no league wide initiative to honor black baseball's contribution to the sport. Right now. Some teams do and some Teams don't. And in some respects, I'm lucky because my home team, the Tigers, does. They actually do something really special. And that's Negro League's weekend. This is where we started with my mom and aunt on the field at Comerica park on Negro League's weekend. When they were rehearsing, the stadium was empty. Now the stadium is full. The Tigers are about to come onto the field in Detroit Stars uniforms. My nephew Jimmy has been invited to throw out the first pitch, and my whole family is gathered in the stands to watch. And even if people in the audience still don't fully understand the history the Tigers are honoring, it means a lot to have Grandpa's story front and center. When I'm singing the national anthem, I'm elated and thrilled. I feel, you know, rejuvenated or whatever.
- [54:07]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
So whenever I perform whatever I'm singing.
- [54:10]
Jacoby Radcliffe
I put my emotions and my heart into it. And it's to.
- [54:14]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
To the people, to pass on to them.
- [54:17]
Jacoby Radcliffe
And so they'll say, the daughters of Roslyn Stearns Brown and Joyce Stearns Thompson, daughters of Norman Turkey Stearns. And so that's a proud moment.
- [54:25]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
So I'm singing that to honor him.
- [54:27]
Jacoby Radcliffe
And the Negro Leaguers.
- [54:28]
Gary Gillette
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we ask that you all please rise. Gentlemen, please remove your caps.
- [54:34]
Jacoby Radcliffe
It's a proud moment for me, too. My wife and I stand in the crowd on the warm summer night and watch the whole stadium pay attention to the daughters of a Negro Leagues Legends. Ladies and gentlemen, our national anthem. And when I'm standing there, I remember why I love this game. It's because we are our national pastime. It reflects us in all our rules and biases and complications and in the ways we try to be better. In the past, it has reflected our division. Today, it represents our progress, however slow or frustrating. Maybe that's what makes it our national sport. It's this mirror that has shown us through our history who we are in that moment. And maybe one day we'll look at our reflection and we'll all like what we see. Reclaim the Forgotten League is an original production of ABC Audio, hosted by me, Vanessa Ivey Rose. This episode was written by Madeline Wood. The series was produced by Madeline Wood, Cameron Chertavian, IRU Ekpenobi, Camille Peterson and Amira Williams. Our senior producers on this project were Susie Liu and Lakia Brown. Music and scoring by Evan Viola. A big shout out to our ABC Audio team. Liz Alessi, Josh Cohan, Ariel Chester, Sasha Aslanian, Marwa Mawaki, Audrey Mostek and Erin Farrer. Special thanks to Chris Donovan, Rick Klein, Eric Fayel, Anthony Fanek, Mara Bush and of course, my mom, Joyce Stearns Thompson, and my aunt, Rosalind Stearns Brown. Laura Mayer is our Executive producer.
- [57:20]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
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