The Oakland A’s welcome the New York Mets to the Coliseum this weekend for a three-game series that will include two celebratory days.
Sunday will present a 50-year celebration of the A’s 1973 World Series triumph over the Mets, a reminder of a time when the Oakland A’s represented greatness and excitement rather than cheapness and disillusionment.
Before that the Mets and A’s will join the other 28 MLB teams in honouring the legacy of Jackie Robinson on Saturday April 15th, the annual event commemorating Robinson’s MLB debut in 1947.
Whilst MLB likes to use the day as a celebration, it is more important as a reminder that so many of the prejudices faced by Robinson and other black players remain a depressingly relevant story across society, on both sides of the Atlantic, more than 70 years on.
It also shines a light on how MLB has gone backwards in its appeal to, and engagement of, people of colour and the wider challenges of building a thriving future at a time when the core fanbase trends heavily towards an older demographic.
The decline in representation of American-born Black players in MLB has been an important topic of conversation in recent years and it was starkly shown up at the end of last season.
The 2022 World Series between Houston and Philadelphia marked the first time since 1950 that there was not a single American-born Black player on either roster, a fact lamented by Astros manager Dusty Baker.
Bay Area Baseball
Baker, of course, has proud links to the Bay Area and I was reminded of his comments when A’s legend Dave Stewart posted a great graphic on his Twitter account back in February that celebrates the black pitchers who have won 20 games in a season.
As Stew noted, he is a proud member of that club, having won 20+ games in four consecutive seasons from 1987 to 1990 with the A’s; however, the Oakland born-and-raised Ace is not the only Oakland A on the list.
Vida Blue is there, having won 20+ games three times in Oakland, as is Mike Norris, who won 22 games in the A’s rotation in 1980.
You can also give a nod to Al Downing and Mudcat Grant, both of whom are more noted for playing for other teams (Yankees and Dodgers for Downing, Cleveland and Minnesota for Mudcat) but did don the Green and Gold during their careers.
More recent members
Twenty-game winners are an increasing rarity based on how starting pitchers are managed today and there are only three relatively recent additions to the Black Aces list. One is David Price, the other two are further examples of players with local links to Oakland.
CC Sabathia grew up an approximately 45-minute drive from the Coliseum in Vallejo, California, whilst Dontrelle Willis was barely 20 minutes away as a proud product of Encinal High School in Alameda.
On to Position Players
And it doesn’t stop at pitchers either. Moving to black position players, Encinal HS was also attended by 2007 MVP Jimmy Rollins and the legendary Willie Stargell, who is commemorated with an Avenue of his name in Alameda.
When Stargell passed away in 2001, his fellow Hall-of-Famer Joe Morgan was the perfect person to speak at his memorial service. As Morgan explained on ESPN.com:
“Willie and I both grew up a couple of blocks apart from each other in Oakland, although he went to high school in nearby Alameda. I met him in 1961 during my senior year in high school. At the time he was a minor-league baseball player, but he would come back to California and work out with my high school team like he was just one of the guys.
He always gave me support. Even though I wasn’t as big as he was, Willie said I could make it to the major leagues if I played and worked hard. That had a positive influence on my development as a player”.
Joe Morgan on Willie Stargell
Morgan signed off that article on ESPN by stating “Forty years after our first meeting, it’s ironic that the big guy and the little guy from Oakland ended up in the Hall of Fame together”.
Eight years after Morgan wrote that piece, Rickey Henderson was inducted into the Hall of Fame as another Oakland original in 2009. Jimmy Rollins joined the team on the MLB Network after the news was announced to talk about “his favourite player” growing up and he has spoken many times since about being inspired by watching Rickey at the Coliseum.
The real issue
This weekend we will hear from MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred about the many initiatives that MLB is involved with around inclusion. Those are undoubtedly worthy causes, not least of which being the work of the Players Alliance, led by former-Big Leaguer Curtis Granderson and funded in part by a $150M donation from MLB.
However, in every industry, and every part of society, we constantly see that individual projects about inclusion require a much deeper consideration of structural issues if real lasting change is to be achieved. This is often difficult when the people in power have it good and may see no personal benefit, and instead perhaps minor personal detriment, from a challenge to the status quo.
If you truly believe in this cause, you would value having a team in a market with one of the deepest and most important traditions of black representation and achievement across sports (from Bill Russell to Rickey), music and political and social movements.
You would embrace the diversity of a market as a positive rather than seeing the deep-rooted challenges this can create in an area (higher levels of deprivation and need for support) as an affront to your business model (less ability and moral justification for winning a game of “who can give the billionaire the largest amount of tax-payers’ money”).
And you would realise that if you want the next generation’s Dontrelle Willis following in the footsteps of Dave Stewart, or the next generation’s Jimmy Rollins following in the footsteps of Rickey Henderson, then ensuring that there is Big League baseball in the East Bay for generations to come should be the priority, not the short-term enrichment of an ownership group that has consistently failed to make any sort of positive contribution to the sport since buying the team in 2005.
Actions speak louder than words, they say.
No doubt Commissioner Manfred will say the right things about inclusion, representation and opportunity during speeches on Saturday. What matters are the actions his office takes over the coming months, leading the process alongside the 30 ownership groups, in respect of on one of the most fundamental practical factors these things depend on: the demographic make-up of the places you choose to locate your franchises.
Do they want to inspire, encourage and facilitate a more inclusive future, or do they want to allow a billionaire who inherited his fortune to rip the team from its home of over 50 years and move it to Vegas so that he can further increase his profit margins?
Oakland A's UK 
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