Just found this article. Only one black catcher (Charles Johnson), four black starting pitchers. But I guess "black" doesn't include black Hispanics?
Major League Baseball
Between the seams: A 'black QB' mentality?
By T.J. Quinn
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — It was obvious almost as soon as they looked at each other: Darren Oliver and Charles Johnson were not just pitcher and catcher for the Colorado Rockies last year.
"We were Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson," Johnson said.
In 2003, they were a singular battery, the only starting pitcher and catcher in the game who were American men of African descent.
"Me and C.J. — that was the first time I ever threw to a black catcher," said Oliver, now a Florida Marlin.
So every fifth day they renamed themselves after what might be the greatest battery in the history of the game, Paige and Gibson — and they're unsure when there will ever be another such combination.
"I look around and I'm like, 'Wow, there's nobody left,' " Johnson said.
Some of the finest catchers in history — Gibson, Roy Campanella, Elston Howard, Earl Battey — were black, but going into the season, Johnson was the only black catcher left in the major leagues. Oliver was one of only four black starting pitchers (Cleveland's C.C. Sabathia, Florida's Oliver and Dontrelle Willis, and San Francisco's Jerome Williams are the others).
When it comes to the two most important jobs on the field, the game doesn't look much different than it did before 1947.
"I'm flabbergasted," said the Marlins' Willis. "Where did they all go?"
There weren't many to begin with, actually. Even after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, there were never more than a handful of black catchers, and black pitchers have always been rare. In the mid-1970s, when African-Americans made up 20 percent of all players, blacks never accounted for more than 7.5 percent of starting pitchers, according to Thomas A. Timmerman, an assistant professor of management at Tennessee Tech University.
The overall number of African-American players was down to 10 percent as this season opened, and blacks comprised only 3.3 percent of all starters.
While the trend is unmistakable, the reasons are elusive, although the steady decline in the number of blacks playing the game over the past 30 years, regardless of position, is undoubtedly a factor.
Basketball and football are far more popular these days and draw the best athletes.
Black starting pitchers always have been under-represented in the majors. The obvious connection, in a game where African-Americans who want to be managers or general managers say they are not taken seriously, is race.
Former Oakland A's star pitcher Dave Stewart said the days when greats like Bob Gibson were told flat-out by white managers that they didn't have to worry about strategy may be long gone, but that lingering racist attitudes "are still there."
"It's much, much, much more subtle now," he says.
If a "black quarterback" mentality still exists in baseball, Cubs manager Dusty Baker says, it is not because a player's intelligence is questioned. Many coaches, black and white, still associate black athletes with speed, he said.
"Subconsciously it may be there," Baker says. "A lot of times, in the case of a lot of minority guys, if they could run, you put them in the outfield."
At the point when young players start to develop as pitchers or catchers, the gap begins. Both positions require extensive skill, and kids from wealthier areas commonly pay $50 to $100 an hour for private instruction. Kids from poorer areas don't get the same sort of instruction.
"The economics of it is a huge factor," Baker said.
Baker said it is hard to reverse the trend when young black players have few role models to emulate in those positions.
"You don't have the heroes," he says. "If kids don't see someone like them, they don't see themselves doing that job."
Major League Baseball
Between the seams: A 'black QB' mentality?
By T.J. Quinn
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — It was obvious almost as soon as they looked at each other: Darren Oliver and Charles Johnson were not just pitcher and catcher for the Colorado Rockies last year.
"We were Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson," Johnson said.
In 2003, they were a singular battery, the only starting pitcher and catcher in the game who were American men of African descent.
"Me and C.J. — that was the first time I ever threw to a black catcher," said Oliver, now a Florida Marlin.
So every fifth day they renamed themselves after what might be the greatest battery in the history of the game, Paige and Gibson — and they're unsure when there will ever be another such combination.
"I look around and I'm like, 'Wow, there's nobody left,' " Johnson said.
Some of the finest catchers in history — Gibson, Roy Campanella, Elston Howard, Earl Battey — were black, but going into the season, Johnson was the only black catcher left in the major leagues. Oliver was one of only four black starting pitchers (Cleveland's C.C. Sabathia, Florida's Oliver and Dontrelle Willis, and San Francisco's Jerome Williams are the others).
When it comes to the two most important jobs on the field, the game doesn't look much different than it did before 1947.
"I'm flabbergasted," said the Marlins' Willis. "Where did they all go?"
There weren't many to begin with, actually. Even after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, there were never more than a handful of black catchers, and black pitchers have always been rare. In the mid-1970s, when African-Americans made up 20 percent of all players, blacks never accounted for more than 7.5 percent of starting pitchers, according to Thomas A. Timmerman, an assistant professor of management at Tennessee Tech University.
The overall number of African-American players was down to 10 percent as this season opened, and blacks comprised only 3.3 percent of all starters.
While the trend is unmistakable, the reasons are elusive, although the steady decline in the number of blacks playing the game over the past 30 years, regardless of position, is undoubtedly a factor.
Basketball and football are far more popular these days and draw the best athletes.
Black starting pitchers always have been under-represented in the majors. The obvious connection, in a game where African-Americans who want to be managers or general managers say they are not taken seriously, is race.
Former Oakland A's star pitcher Dave Stewart said the days when greats like Bob Gibson were told flat-out by white managers that they didn't have to worry about strategy may be long gone, but that lingering racist attitudes "are still there."
"It's much, much, much more subtle now," he says.
If a "black quarterback" mentality still exists in baseball, Cubs manager Dusty Baker says, it is not because a player's intelligence is questioned. Many coaches, black and white, still associate black athletes with speed, he said.
"Subconsciously it may be there," Baker says. "A lot of times, in the case of a lot of minority guys, if they could run, you put them in the outfield."
At the point when young players start to develop as pitchers or catchers, the gap begins. Both positions require extensive skill, and kids from wealthier areas commonly pay $50 to $100 an hour for private instruction. Kids from poorer areas don't get the same sort of instruction.
"The economics of it is a huge factor," Baker said.
Baker said it is hard to reverse the trend when young black players have few role models to emulate in those positions.
"You don't have the heroes," he says. "If kids don't see someone like them, they don't see themselves doing that job."
Myth: Jackie Robinson Was the First Black Major-Leaguer
Truth: Moses Fleetwood Walker was the First
It's not generally known, but a number of black players found their way into the big leagues in the game's early years. The first seems to have been Moses Fleetwood Walker, a CATCHER who worked his way up from the college to the professional level, and by 1884 was a catcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings in the American Association.
Walker, an Ohio clergyman's son who first played varsity ball for Oberlin College, was the first black to make it all the way to the majors. (For career stats see Fleet Walker under Lists). When he joined Toledo as a catcher in 1884 he immediately ran into a wall of bigotry. The Irish pitcher, Tony Mullane, ignored Walker's signals because, he said, he wouldn't take orders from a black man. Cap Anson himself tried to have Walker ejected from an exhibition game, threatening not to play if someone didn't "get that n.... off the field!" Anson backed down only when he realized he'd forfeit his pay if he really did walk out.
At Richmond, the Toledo manager received a letter, said to be from "seventy-five dtermined men," who threatened to mob Fleet Walker if he dared make an appearance. By then, Walker had been let go, not because of his race, but because he had badly split his fingers behind the plate. As soon as his hand healed he returned to organized baseball, playing for several minor league teams before signing on with Newark in the International League, which included clubs in New Jersey, New York, and Canada and where prospects for blacks seemed brightest.
Walker was a favorite with many white Newark fans and one composed a tribute to him in verse:
There is a catcher named Walker
Who behind the bat is a corker
He throws to a base
With ease and grace
And steals 'round the bags like a stalker.
When a newspaper ridiculed him as "the coon catcher," The Sporting News came to his defense: "It is a pretty small paper that will publish a paragraph of that kind about a member of a visiting club, and the man who wrote it is without doubt Walker's inferior in education, refinement, and manliness."
Soon, Walker had a black teammate, a fastball pitcher named George Washington Stovey whose skills were described by a rueful reporter in Birmingham, New York:
Truth: Moses Fleetwood Walker was the First
It's not generally known, but a number of black players found their way into the big leagues in the game's early years. The first seems to have been Moses Fleetwood Walker, a CATCHER who worked his way up from the college to the professional level, and by 1884 was a catcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings in the American Association.
Walker, an Ohio clergyman's son who first played varsity ball for Oberlin College, was the first black to make it all the way to the majors. (For career stats see Fleet Walker under Lists). When he joined Toledo as a catcher in 1884 he immediately ran into a wall of bigotry. The Irish pitcher, Tony Mullane, ignored Walker's signals because, he said, he wouldn't take orders from a black man. Cap Anson himself tried to have Walker ejected from an exhibition game, threatening not to play if someone didn't "get that n.... off the field!" Anson backed down only when he realized he'd forfeit his pay if he really did walk out.
At Richmond, the Toledo manager received a letter, said to be from "seventy-five dtermined men," who threatened to mob Fleet Walker if he dared make an appearance. By then, Walker had been let go, not because of his race, but because he had badly split his fingers behind the plate. As soon as his hand healed he returned to organized baseball, playing for several minor league teams before signing on with Newark in the International League, which included clubs in New Jersey, New York, and Canada and where prospects for blacks seemed brightest.
Walker was a favorite with many white Newark fans and one composed a tribute to him in verse:
There is a catcher named Walker
Who behind the bat is a corker
He throws to a base
With ease and grace
And steals 'round the bags like a stalker.
When a newspaper ridiculed him as "the coon catcher," The Sporting News came to his defense: "It is a pretty small paper that will publish a paragraph of that kind about a member of a visiting club, and the man who wrote it is without doubt Walker's inferior in education, refinement, and manliness."
Soon, Walker had a black teammate, a fastball pitcher named George Washington Stovey whose skills were described by a rueful reporter in Birmingham, New York:
