(ThyBlackMan.com) Although the weather across the country seems to disagree at times, the 2018 Major League Baseball season is up and running. Several MLB teams and players have gotten off to productive starts, including Japanese import and Los Angeles Angels pitcher and designated hitter Shohei Ohtani, who is doing the rare task of excelling with his pitching and hitting. One of the more interesting things of the 2018 Major League Baseball season is the increased amount of black baseball players in Major League Baseball.
The percentage of black players from the United States and Canada on opening-day active rosters rose to 8.4 percent, its highest level since at least 2012 for Major League Baseball. While the NBA is considered a predominantly “black” sport and a slight majority of the NFL’s players are black, Major League Baseball is often viewed as having a mixture of white and Latino athletes dominate their team rosters. Even current Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones, who is black, has referred to baseball as “a white man’s sport”. However, the numbers of black players in Major League Baseball are making a gradual increase and familiar names like 
Jones, Andrew McCutchen, and CC Sabathia are being joined by more black baseball players who are making names for themselves with their talents and production.
The Boston Red Sox have some notable black players including pitcher David Price, outfielder Jackie Bradley, and outfielder Mookie Betts. Betts is among the best outfielders in baseball and has been a MLB All-Star in 2016 and 2017. Boston is a difficult place to play for numerous reasons and the city has a sad history of unfortunate treatment of black athletes including an ugly incident with Adam Jones, when he visited Fenway Park last season. While Shohei Ohtani has taken a lot of attention away from superstar Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels, Justin Upton has been productive throughout his career and was a former number one overall pick of the 2005 MLB Draft.
There are also some black baseball players who have emerged that many casual sports fans may be unfamiliar with. Oakland A’s outfielder Khris Davis has quietly hit over 40 home runs in back to back seasons in 2016 and 2017 because he plays for a franchise that has been struggling the last few seasons. St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Tommy Pham, who is black and Vietnamese, was a pleasant surprise for the Cardinals in 2017 and joins Dexter Fowler to form one of the better outfield combinations in Major League Baseball.
Major League Baseball having 8.4 percent of its players being black is not near the all-time record of black baseball players of 19 percent in 1986 but there are signs that the numbers will increase over the coming seasons. Twenty percent of first-round Major League Baseball Draft picks from 2012-17 were African-American including exciting prospects like J.P. Crawford, Justus Sheffield, and Hunter Greene.
Sheffield and Greene project as potential starting pitchers as they hope to follow in the footsteps of Marcus Stroman, the diminutive pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays, as a rare black pitcher in baseball. There have been some big names inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame such as Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas, and Tim Raines in recent years who represented some of the elite players in baseball during their time. They were black baseball players who were descendants of Jackie Robinson’s bravery and courage and hopefully more will continue to follow.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines
