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HBCU Baseball in the Spotlight this Week
FAMU baseball team celebrating 2023 SWAC Baseball Championship victory (c)2023 Harold Michael Harvey
ATLANTA, Georgia – The Southwest Athletic Conference, the nation’s premiere Black College Baseball Conference, kicks off its championship tourney this week at Russ Chandler Stadium on the campus of Georgia Tech in downtown Atlanta.
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For the Second Year in a row
The Alabama State University Hornets are poised to repeat as SWAC baseball champions and received an automatic bid to the NCAA Regional Playoffs. The East Alabama school rolls into the 2023 Southwest Athletic Conference Baseball Tournament as the number one seed from the Eastern Division, riding an impressive 39-16 overall record and a conference record of 24-7 into Russ Chandler Stadium, home of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.
Just Three Miles From His Southwest Atlanta Home
In 2017, the Atlanta Braves packed up and moved the team twenty miles north of Turner Field, less than a mile outside the city limits, but clear into the next county. Turner Field had been home to the Braves since the 1996 Olympics gifted the team a new stadium.
Built One Dollar at a Time
One day during the summer of 2017, I drove to the Georgia State University Baseball Complex. A friend had told me about Mentoring Viable Prospects (MVP), an enormously popular baseball tournament serving primarily Black high school baseball players that had been in existence since the turn of the century. Teams traveled from Virginia, Florida, Texas, Chicago, California, and Detroit to showcase their skills to primarily black college baseball recruiters.
The Maroon Tigers of Morehouse College won their first game since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down baseball at the premiere all-male HBCU on Saturday, defeating Tuskegee University 8–4.
Saturday’s game was the prelude for a weekend series that will feature a display of the Atlanta Braves 2021 World Series Trophy before the start of the double hitter on Sunday. Morehouse Coach Antonio Grissom expects the Braves trophy tour to bring over 2000 fans out to see the World Series trophy and the Morehouse-Tuskegee clash on the diamond.
Like fellow Georgian, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Robinson was a peacemaker. Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia, on January 31, 1919, nearly 13 months before Andrew Foster organized the United States Baseball League, a league for Negro players, designed to compete with the White major league for the heart of baseball fans in America. The organizational meeting took place at the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City, Missouri.
Growing up in College Park, Georgia, Marcus Smith enjoyed playing baseball. It was a sport he excelled in, playing out of Old National Park from age six to fourteen. He earned an athletic scholarship to Albany State University, his mom’s alma mater. Like anyone who has ever played baseball as a kid, the thoughts of a professional career floated through Smith’s head.
On this mid-July weekend, a beautiful ocean blue sky with a couple of white puffy clouds, painted, perhaps by the almighty, a fleeting summer breeze cooled the sun’s rays that beamed down on Black teenage baseball players showcasing their talent in the 15th annual Mentoring Viable Prospects (MVP) tournament.
Greg “Goody” Goodwin and Tim Goodrum Pen Books on Baseball and Life
Cascade Publishing House is excited to announce it has reached terms with two first-time authors, Greg “Goody” Goodwin and Tim Goodrum. Both books have a baseball thread and will be among Cascade’s summer releases.
Greg Goodwin, known as “Goody,” by his friends, is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and a descendant of J. H. Goodwin, who survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.