An iPhone rests on a countertop and begins to ring. A 46-year-old man wearing a light blue button-down shirt is leaning on the side as he reaches to answer. He puts the phone on speaker and in a soft yet strong tone, says hello. This seemingly normal moment is history in the making for Ken Griffey Jr. and baseball.
“May I speak with Ken Griffey (Jr.) please,” asks the man on the other line. The man is Jack O’Connell, secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers Association of America. “This is him,” responds the 46-year-old retired baseball player.
O’Connell tells Griffey he has been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in historic fashion. “We had 440 voters and you were on 437 ballots,” said O’Connell, to which the background erupted in applause and cheers. “I’m a little nervous now,” responded Griffey, who hit 630 home runs in front of crowds of over 30,000 people for 22 years.
Griffey received 99.32 percent of the vote, the most in history. It was a historic moment for baseball, but is it one that can help in shifting a problem baseball is currently battling?
The problem with baseball
In April of 2015, comedian and actor Chris Rock appeared on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel to discuss why blacks have abandoned baseball and why it matters. “I’m an endangered species,” says Rock, “A black baseball fan.” His six minute-and-36-second monologue dissects baseball’s problem to attract black America. Back in the ’80s, almost 20 percent of all MLB players were black and Rock said he could have conversations with other black people about baseball. “Now, if I say to a black person ‘did you see the Mets game last night?’ they’ll say, ‘what the f***s a Met?’” Today, only 8 percent of MLB players are black, which equates to about two players per team.
Rock continued his monologue saying that numbers of black players aren’t dropping because baseball is expensive or because there is a lack of black little leaguers. “It’s the game. It’s old-fashioned and stuck in the past,” said Rock, alluding to organ music and antique chic at ballparks. “Baseball doesn’t just have rules from another time. It has an old-fashioned code too.” Which means you don’t celebrate a homerun if you don’t want to get beamed in the head. Rock says it’s the only game you have to play a right way, “the white way,” he says.
Baseball is not only not appealing to young black Americans, it’s expensive for them as well. Griffey was blessed to have a father who played the game and was able to mentor him along the way. The same can’t be said for other black youth. Nowadays in the United States, you are scouted for how much baseball you have played overall, including little league, travel teams, camps, even institutions that mold young athletes with coaching and education. One family mentioned investing $6,000 for their two pre-teen boys and their baseball aspirations.
Could the lack of black players also be because of the influx of Latin American and Asian baseball players since the ’80s? It’s not unlikely the two go hand-in-hand given it was cheaper for franchises in the ’90s and into the ’00s to go into the international market and not charge as high for a rookie contract to a sixteen-year-old Dominican boy from the campo as opposed to investing a sixteen-year-old black boy from Boston. And even if a young American is signed, they aren’t in the majors right away like the NBA or the NFL.
Lastly, there isn’t a box office black baseball player that compares to what players like Griffey, Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden and Rickey Henderson were in the past. The closest active player is Andrew McCutchen, who won an MVP in 2013 along with being in the MVP conversation the past four seasons. But the difference between the two is Griffey trended, McCutchen hasn’t.
Young players such as Jackie Bradley Jr., Mookie Betts, and even the buzz the Jackie Robinson West Little League team created in the 2014 Little League World Series could show the tides are shifting, but the magnitude of the phone call Griffey received last week might not happen in a long time or potentially ever again with the state of baseball in the black community.
Every baseball pundit agreed on his first ballot, that Griffey was a Hall of Famer and even endorsed him being a unanimous decision. Griffey, a black baseball player, now holds the record for the most voting percentage of any National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee. There’s no denying baseball is out of touch with black America given its inability to let go of the past. Griffey’s almost-unanimous induction could serve as an opportunity for baseball to try and reclaim interest in black youth and create more historic moments that include black baseball players.
Francisco Bernard is a writer raised in The Bronx and based in Boston. His interests include long walks through city streets and writing about the intersectionality of race and pop culture. Follow him on Twitter @illbefrankie.
