![]() It’s the first sale of the day.īorn and raised in West End, Baby D has regularly sold water for the last year at the eastbound exit near Morehouse College. Baby D charges $1 for a bottle of water, but the man gives $10 and tells him to keep the change. Moments later, an older Black man rolls down his car window. Baby D scans the vehicles to see which ones might roll down their windows with a few bills in hand. A line of roughly 15 cars forms at the stop sign. It’s a sweltering Sunday morning at the tail end of August, and the short 16-year-old is wearing a white long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, tube socks with marijuana leaves on them, and Adidas slides. He dumps it all into the container, pulls up his face mask, and heads up the ramp toward the expressway. After rinsing the cooler with the leftover liquid, he walks a couple blocks to Family Dollar for a 24-pack of water bottles, followed by a stop at Chevron for a 10-pound bag of ice. ![]() ![]() He runs for a blue cooler hidden in the woods, which contains a few stray bottles from the day before. Lowery Boulevard exit, but churches across Atlanta are letting out, so he knows traffic will pick up soon. Few cars are pulling off Interstate 20 at the Joseph E. The Braves also have launched fellowships to boost diversity off the playing field.Įdwin Jackson, a former Braves pitcher who played for a major league-record 14 teams, said Black kids often are not afforded opportunities to play and struggle to find role models who look like them.Baby D is getting ready to start his shift. In 2021, the Atlanta Braves and MLB announced a $3 million partnership to increase access to youth baseball and softball programs in Georgia with a focus on promoting diversity. In an effort to address the problem, MLB has created programs like Hank Aaron Invitational, where the best Black players in the country work with coaches and former players like Dave Winfield and Marquis Grissom for elite-level training. “If you are a Black boy and don’t want to submit to white culture, the last thing you wanna do is play baseball. He lasted two years in pro ball, before quitting to coach and mentor. He instead went to college and was drafted again by the Cubs in 1996. Stewart became a star at Atlanta’s Westlake High School and was drafted by the Cubs in 1994. ![]() It is something that Stewart knows firsthand.īorn when his mother was 16 and raised in Atlanta public housing, Stewart learned the game from his grandfather, who watched Chicago Cubs and Braves games every day on cable. That percentage has fallen consistently since MLB’s all-time high of 18.7% in 1981, in a country where Black people currently make up 13.4% of the population, according to the U.S. But by all accounts, the broader numbers are dire.Įven with shining stars like Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees, Mookie Betts of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tim Anderson of the Chicago White Sox, just 7.2% of the players on MLB opening day rosters this season were Black, down from the 7.6% last year, according to the Society of American Baseball Research. “They are very frustrated, but you can’t have fun without funding,” Stewart said.įriday night, when the Braves hit the field against the San Diego Padres, every player will be wearing Robinson’s number 42. couldn’t afford to pick up all the kids anymore and parents couldn’t afford to get them there. Stewart’s program provides transportation from public middle schools to playing fields and drops each child at home after the game, along with afterschool meals and even haircuts. He said the rising cost of gas has forced him to slash his program from 50 kids to 15. “But that is alright, because he is getting better and they are teaching him fundamentals of being a Black man.”Īs America on Friday marks the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier, the game of baseball is still struggling to attract Black ballplayers.Īnd Stewart, who has trained eventual major leaguers like Jason Heyward and Dexter Fowler, is feeling the pinch. “He wasn’t very good when he started,” Callahan said of her son. Stewart’s L.E.A.D., an Atlanta-based mentoring program that seeks to help low-income Black youths through baseball. Jahliel, now a 12-year-old, eventually latched on to C.J.
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