ARLINGTON — A year ago, this is what the Swingman Classic was: a great idea.
The All-Star Game was going to Seattle. Made sense to get Ken Griffey Jr. involved in helping to promote the game. Major League Baseball wanted to create more outreach in the Black community. Griffey pitched a notion — a college all-star game with rosters composed from historically Black colleges and universities. The Swingman Classic was born.
For Griffey, though, it’s not just about ideas. It’s about following through. It was never going to be a one-off affair for him. It was always about building something bigger, better and long-lasting. It’s not just a game. It’s an opportunity.
“We’ve had a whole year to do more scouting of players, to get coaches to buy into it, to get them to understand what we were trying to do,” Griffey said Friday before Globe Life Field hosted the second Swingman Classic to kick off All-Star Weekend. “We are just trying to get these kids to have more exposure on and off the field, to be able to work in sports after playing, if they choose. We’re just trying to give them an opportunity they maybe didn’t have coming out of high school.”
An opportunity to better expose talent from HBCUs, sure. The game, won by the designated American League team of stars 5-4, was televised on the MLB Network. Maybe there were a couple of scouts there, though, with the draft beginning Sunday evening, most are locked away in meeting rooms. The idea is that the Swingman Classic will put a number of players on the radar for the upcoming scouting season. Four players from last year’s game were drafted. The hope is that more will be drafted this year.
For the 50 players from 17 HBCUs who participated Friday, the experience goes beyond the game. The crowd of 16,467, slightly larger than last year’s inaugural affair, was an all-out celebration of Black college baseball.
On Thursday, the players worked out at the Rangers’ West Dallas Youth Academy and heard directly from Griffey, who can make even an inventory of his camera lenses riveting (photography has become a hobby and Griffey was sharing some details Friday). On Friday, they walked the field with Hall of Famers Andre Dawson and Dave Winfield, MVP Ryan Howard, Cy Young Award winner CC Sabathia. They received big league intros, right down to smoke plumes before they went to the foul lines. They were told to play ball by the “grandmother of Juneteenth,” Opal Lee.
The hope is that for some, at least, this will fade into other baseball highlights. If not, it’s a pretty good sendoff on a baseball career.
For Tiger Borom, a 22-year-old senior from Grambling State, it could be either. A month ago, the 5-9 left-handed-hitting senior outfielder was the leadoff man in Grambling’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in 14 years. The Tigers lost to Texas A&M and Louisiana in the College Station regional, but helped reestablish the Grambling program. Borom, who hit .332 with a .963 OPS and was an All-Southwestern Athletic Conference outfielder, wants to continue to play. He hasn’t, however, heard from any scouts, he said. This is what the Swingman Classic aims to rectify.
Grambling is a great example of what’s happened to the talent base at HBCUs. Between 1960-80, the school produced players who racked up 4,618 hits in MLB. Over the next 25 years, the number dropped to 1,148. Since Gerald Williams retired in 2005, there hasn’t been a hit in the majors recorded by a former Tiger.
But Grambling is hardly exclusive. Florida A&M produced Dawson, Marquis Grissom and Vince Coleman. The Rattlers haven’t had an alum take an MLB at-bat since 2005 either. Jackson State, which produced Oil Can Boyd and Marvin Freeman, has had exactly one game’s worth of MLB appearances since 1988. It goes on. And as the amateur scouting field shrinks, it becomes more challenging for players from unsuccessful programs to be seen.
“Not many guys get to showcase themselves in this kind of atmosphere on a major league field,” Borom said. “It’s a big stage. [Griffey] told us to go out and have fun. You can be the one who changes things. Hearing that from him was awesome.”
Borom seemed to take it to heart. His two-strike, two-run single in the fifth gave the American League the lead. He then tagged up on consecutive fly balls to score another run. Walked away with the MVP trophy, too. If this is the end of a baseball career, it’s a nice parting gift. What he’d like more: a shot to continue to play.
“It was a beautiful feeling,” Borom said.
It grew from a great idea. It aims to be more than just an idea.
Twitter/X: @Evan_P_Grant
