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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.
Lorenzo “Lo” Ogden Now Playing First Base With the Heavenly Host
When Lorenzo Ogden stepped on the Tuskegee Institute campus in1968, he was a tall, skinny kid off the sandlots of Birmingham, Alabama. He spent his summer days playing baseball during the week, but on Sundays, you could find him at old Rickwood Field watching the Birmingham Black Barons play the best competition in the Negro Leagues.
Many of the happiest days of my life are moments spent on a baseball diamond. Mostly sandlots: sometimes cow pastures turned into a ball field for Sunday baseball outings, some with meticulously kept lawns, and some in the oldest minor league ballpark in America, Luther Williams Field, in Macon, Georgia.
There is a myth that Black youngsters are not playing baseball these days. If you look at Major League Baseball (MLB) rosters and most Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), it is easy to come away with that impression. Around eight percent of professional baseball players are Black Americans. This number is down from approximately 30 percent in the late 1970s, thirty years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier that kept Black baseball players off major league rosters.