Braves draft pick Isaiah Drake, other Atlanta-area Black players, part of encouraging MLB trend

ATLANTA — Isaiah Drake didn’t know that less than 7 percent of the players on current major-league rosters are Black and born in the United States, an all-time low. Or that the 2022 World Series was the first since 1950 to be played without a U.S.-born Black player.

Drake, an outfielder from North Atlanta High School who was the Braves’ fifth-round pick in last month’s MLB Draft, just knows he loves playing baseball, and so do plenty of his friends.

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“I stopped playing football after eighth grade,” said Drake, 18, whose older brother, Kenyan Drake, is a Miami Dolphins running back and seven-year NFL veteran who played in college at Alabama. “Yeah, had to choose my own path. I started playing baseball before football, so it was always kind of my first love. I was on the East Cobb 13U Astros when I was 11. I started playing with all the best kids around Georgia, and I was playing just as good or better than all of them. So I was like, ‘I might have something right here.’ So I started taking it more serious.”

He’s part of what MLB officials see as a wave of young talent that, sooner rather than later, will reverse the trend of declining African American participation in baseball at the big-league level. And Atlanta is an integral part of that, evident both in the number of Black players from the city and its suburbs in the past couple of amateur drafts, and participation levels that MLB sees in various youth programs it sponsors in Atlanta and other cities.

“There definitely is an uptick of talented African American players playing the game,” said Tony Reagins, a former Angels general manager who now serves as MLB’s Chief Baseball Development Officer. He oversees programs designed to increase youth participation in baseball, particularly among minorities. “In Atlanta, the interest is growing and participation is definitely growing. And you’re starting to see that around the country, whether it be here (in Florida), in Atlanta, in Chicago, Detroit, even in California. There’s just been a steady uptick in participation.”

One of those programs MLB is most proud of is the Hank Aaron Invitational, in which groups of 125 players are invited to one-week training camps in July at Vero Beach, Florida. From those 250 total players, 44 of the best are brought to Atlanta to play in the Hank Aaron Invitational Showcase Game at Truist Park. This year’s game is Sunday night, a few hours after the Braves’ series finale against Milwaukee.

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Among Drake’s East Cobb teammates was infielder Chandler Pollard, a fifth-round selection by the Rangers in the 2022 draft from Woodward Academy in College Park, and shortstop Antonio Anderson, a third-round pick this year by the Red Sox, who’s a close friend of Drake’s and was his teammate last season at North Atlanta High. All are U.S.-born Black kids, as is shortstop Tai Peete, the 30th pick of this year’s draft from Trinity Christian High School in Sharpsburg, outside Atlanta, and Termarr Johnson, the fourth overall pick of the 2022 draft, from Atlanta’s Mays High.

The Reds selected shortstop Bernard Moon (16th round) out of Stone Mountain’s Redan High in this year’s draft. A year ago, the Twins took shortstop Omari Daniel (14th round) from suburban Smyrna and The Walker School, and the Braves took outfielder Christian Jackson (19th round) from Dutchtown High in nearby Henry County — where current Braves center fielder Michael Harris II and former Braves star Jason Heyward are from.

There are other Atlanta-area Black players taken in the past two drafts, too, including the offspring of a pair of former major leaguers. Druw Jones, the son of legendary Braves center fielder Andruw Jones, was the second selection of the 2022 draft out of Wesleyan School in suburban Atlanta, and Cam Collier, the son of Lou Collier, was the 18th pick in that draft by the Reds. Collier attended Mount Paran Christian School in nearby Kennesaw, Georgia, getting his GED following his sophomore year, then playing one year at Chipola College in Florida.

Although the percentage of U.S.-born Black players on MLB rosters is lower than ever, MLB is encouraged that in the first round of the past 10 drafts, about 19 percent of players selected were Black and U.S.-born, many of whom participated in development programs run by MLB. The programs are free, and MLB puts together teams that play in Perfect Game and other showcase events.

“When our kids are playing, there’s hundreds of scouts at this event, and at our games, there’s standing-room only,” Reagins said by phone from Vero Beach, during the second week of the Hank Aaron Invitational camp. “You can’t even see the field, because these scouts and college coaches are watching the games. So, not only are these kids getting an opportunity in pro ball, but college as well.

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“A ton of them are committed to D-I schools, and some HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). And that’s the idea, just to get these guys an opportunity, just to kind of level the playing field in terms of just getting them the same exposure as those kids who might have the financial means, or getting the same look as guys that are equally talented as them. Just trying to level the playing field in the end.”

Reagins added, “You hear the level at the major leagues being at 6.7 or 6.8 (percent), or whatever it was, but when you’re in the space like we are and like I am, you see the talent level. I’ve been in the game for 30 years at the highest level — general manager of a major-league team, and all that — and these kids are talented. So now, for me it’s just about getting that shot, getting an opportunity.”

When Harris was starting out in baseball he cited Heyward as an inspiration, and now Drake points to Harris as an influence and a player he tries to model his game after, along with Braves star Ronald Acuña Jr.

“I just love watching them,” Drake said of Harris and Acuña. “Players that can do it all, look smooth, look like they’re having fun out there. I try to look like that, look like the pros.”

Drake played at Westlake High School as a freshman, and Westlake was the opponent for a game when Stockbridge High retired Harris’ jersey in 2020, one year after Harris was a third-round draft pick by the Braves. For wide-eyed freshman Drake, seeing a kid only four years older having his jersey retired made an impression.

“It was one of the first games of the year, and they had his jersey retirement,” Drake said. “That was before he was Michael Harris, before everybody knew him. So I was like, that’s kind of cool. Thinking back on it, like, ‘Dang, he got his high school jersey retired a year or two after he got drafted.’”

When told what Drake said about trying to emulate him, Harris smiled and said, “I was basically that same guy not too long ago. It makes me feel proud for where I’m from, what I’m doing, and I guess the legacy that I’m trying to leave. This is just the beginning, and there’s even another one — Tai Peete, he got drafted by the Mariners. I saw a video where he was swinging in the cage, took two good swings and then said, ‘I’m trying to hit like Michael Harris.’ So that put a smile on my face, that there’s people out there who want to be like me.

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“I guess it shows that I’m doing something good, and I’m just trying to keep that going. It’s bigger than just me.”

Harris influencing young players points to what Reagins said is among the contributing factors in the way grassroots efforts increase participation among young Black players. They see kids like them being drafted, players they know or competed against. And some of those players are rising quickly through minor-league systems, compared to the five or six years that it routinely took for high school-drafted players to make it through a minor-league system not long ago.

“I think the participation increase is for a number of reasons, but one of them is that young athletes are starting to see players that they played with and been around for number of years, getting drafted at the highest level,” Reagins said. “We had a number of first-rounders, second-rounders, third-rounders — and these kids have all been around each other. And so that was really what we’re trying to create, just a pipeline, a foundation, for these athletes that are interested in the game. Just get them in a place to play.”

“And the second piece,” Reagins said, “is the exposure, get them in the right situations to be seen and get drafted. Most of these kids are similarly talented as the non-African Americans, but a lot of times they’re just not playing in the right showcase, or playing in the right tournament, or being involved in some Major League Baseball programs, any of those things. So what we try to do is just put them in situations where they’re seen like their counterparts. And what has happened is these kids are being seen, getting noticed, and being drafted — and being drafted well.”

Kids of former major leaguers — there are numerous former big leaguers living in the Atlanta area — have inherent advantages in their development as players. Others end up in high-level youth programs such as East Cobb Baseball, some on scholarships, and as a result they have plenty of exposure to scouts and college coaches. But for plenty of other players, it’s a true grassroots-style development, with some of them not being involved from a young age in travel ball and other expensive youth baseball programs.

That’s where the work of former major leaguers can be so important. And some former players with Atlanta connections, including Marquis Grissom, Lou Collier, Marvin Freeman, and Grissom’s brother, Antonio, who also coaches at Morehouse College in Atlanta, are heavily involved in some of the programs that Reagins oversees, including the Hank Aaron Invitational.

For years, Marquis Grissom coached a group of prospects from the Atlanta area in the summer, many of whom have gone on to be drafted. That group included Harris, a prized pupil whose talent and work ethic led Grissom to tell The Athletic back in spring training 2021 — when Harris was 20 — that he was ready for the majors and that he was “different,” like all great players Grissom had played with or against were different.

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Grissom’s work — done on his own time, and at a camp he built on land he owns south of Atlanta and at Gresham Park in the city — caught the attention of MLB, which eventually brought him in to help run its youth programs, such as RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) and the Aaron event.

“In Atlanta, the work that Marquis is doing — and he’s partnering with younger brother Antonio and Lou Collier — along with the Braves, who’ve made a greater emphasis on getting young Black kids more involved in the game,” Reagins said. “Marquis has players at a high level, and then he’s now going into the younger levels, 7- and 8-year-olds. And the Braves got involved with Gresham Park and kind of revitalized that, brought it back to life. So, in Atlanta specifically, there’s just been a greater emphasis on getting kids to play.

“I think the desire was always there, just the outreach wasn’t quite where you would want it to be.”

Terry Pendleton, former National League MVP and former Atlanta hitting coach who now serves as a Braves special assistant in baseball operations, has been heartened to see the number of Black kids from the Atlanta area taken in the past couple of drafts and said Grissom’s work has had an impact.

“There’s no doubt about that,” Pendleton said. “No doubt whatsoever. Yes, yes, yes. The biggest part is the encouragement part, because if you’re used to playing basketball and football, there’s always action, there’s always something happening. Baseball is a learning, mental and physical skills thing, and I mean, you’ve got to have a passion and love for it in order to stick with it. So when you can instill that in a kid, a kid in Georgia, so much at a young age that he wants to pursue it, that’s big.”

So, too, is having a player such as Harris that local kids can see playing for the Braves on TV or in person at Truist Park, only a few years after he was playing for Stockbridge High School.

“He could and should have an influence on a lot of these young kids, there’s no doubt about that,” Pendleton said. “What he can do and how quick he could do it. There’s no doubt, he’s a true dream-come-true type thing — you don’t have to just dream about it, here he is in front of you, doing it.”

(Top photo of Isaiah Drake: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)