- Programming note: Watch "Race in America: A Candid Conversation" featuring "Black Aces" CC Sabathia and Dave Stewart on Friday, May 19 at approximately 6:00 p.m on NBC Sports Bay Area before "Giants Pregame Live"
SAN FRANCISCO – The NFL, hardly a beacon of social progress, has in recent years moved ahead of Major League Baseball in at least one specific measurement of racial evolution.
The Black arms race, so to speak. And the gap could widen.
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Black quarterbacks have all but erased a barrier that stood for decades even after the NFL integrated. At least 15 teams started a Black QB at least once last season. Exactly half of the league’s MVP winners over the past eight seasons are Black. With one notable exception, Colin Kaepernick, the Black quarterback is accepted. Some even embraced.
Meanwhile, Black starting pitchers in MLB, once plentiful, are a vanishing breed.
That’s why the exclusive fraternity to which Dave Stewart and CC Sabathia belong – the Black Aces, Black pitchers with at least one 20-win season – has not a clue when, or if, another will be admitted to the 15-member club.
Stewart and Sabathia recently shared their thoughts on past and present conditions as panelists in an episode of “Race in America: A Candid Conversation” on NBC Sports Bay Area.
Oakland Athletics
The pipeline of Black Aces – a term derived from the title of the book by former MLB star Mudcat Grant, who in 1965 became the first Black pitcher to win 20 games – has gone dry since 2012, when lefthander David Price went 20-5 for the Tampa Bay Rays.
“I followed, and follow, just about every Black pitcher in the game if I can,” Stewart says. “Young Black pitchers coming up, I followed them. I watched them. Watched what they did. From a distance, you always wonder what their battles are, what their complications are, how they’re making out.
“We talk about the Black Aces and being a fraternity of 20-game winners. But, quite frankly, Black pitchers are in a fraternity all their own from year to year.”
Beginning in 1987, Stewart, a righthander, posted four consecutive 20-win seasons for the Oakland Athletics. No pitcher since, regardless of skin color, had accomplished that feat. Among the 15 members of the Black Aces, only Cubs righthander Ferguson Jenkins has more, with six in a row from 1967 through 1972.
Sabathia, a lefthander who entered the fraternity after powering his way to a 21-7 record with Cleveland in 2010, was tapped as a potential Black Ace shortly after the organization drafted him as a 17-year-old in 1998.
The man who planted the seed was none other than Grant, who began his career in 1958 in Cleveland and by then was a special assistant with the franchise.
“Me and him got super close,” Sabathia recalls. “He took a liking to me. The first thing that he talked to me about was becoming a Black Ace. Just drilled it into my head. I didn’t even know about winning a game in the big leagues yet. I didn’t even see a way for me to get to the big leagues.
“I’m in Rookie Ball and all Mudcat Grant is talking to me about is winning 20 games in the big leagues.”
Grant wished for growth within the fraternity. When he won 20 games in ’65, he became the third member.
He followed Brooklyn Dodgers righthander Don Newcombe (1951, ’55 and ’56) and Sam Jones, who in 1959 went 21-15, with a 2.83 ERA, with the San Francisco Giants.
Grant’s 1965 season was matched that year by that of righthander Bob Gibson, who in the first of his five 20-win seasons went 20-12 with the Cardinals. Then came Earl Wilson and Jenkins in ’67, followed by lefthanders Vida Blue of the A’s and Al Downing of the Dodgers in 1971.
Five different Black pitchers, Astros righthander J.R. Richard being the fifth, posted 20-win seasons between 1970 and 1976.
Only three – Dontrell Willis (2005), Sabathia and Price – have reached that goal over the past 33 seasons.
MLB is a long way from a time when Stewart could be influenced by Gibson and, later, Mike Norris, another Black Ace. Sabathia was influenced by Stewart but was introduced to baseball at an early age by a father who was a huge fan of former A’s star Vida Blue.
“He was always showing me videos and tapes of Vida,” says Sabathia, who grew up in Vallejo. “That’s who he wanted me to be like. He always called me ‘Baby Vida.’ That’s who I tried to pretend I was.”
Among current MLB starters, three profile as having 20-win potential: Josiah Gray of the Nationals, Hunter Greene of the Reds, and Triston McKenzie of the Guardians. None is over 25 years old.
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Greene and McKenzie were first-round draft picks, while Gray was drafted in the second round. This is in line with the statement made by MLB in its 2022 draft, when for the first time ever four of the first five picks were Black – including righthander Kumar Rocker by the Rangers.
“That’s encouraging,” Stewart says. “But then after you get past the first round and start looking at the lower rounds, you see fewer Black kids. That is indicative of what we’re doing in baseball around the country.”
In addition to Rocker, one other Black pitcher was taken in the first round last summer: Reggie Crawford (No. 30) by the Giants.
Maybe it’s a matter of time before he and Rocker join the short waitlist for gaining entrance to the fraternity.