All-Black Team Provides More Than a Little Hope

When Joseph Haley founded the Chicago-based Jackie Robinson West Little League in 1971, there were no grand plans of winning state championships or reaching the Little League World Series. There was a vision of using youth baseball to help black families moving into a previously all-white neighborhood unite and establish a sense of community. Haley died in 2005, but the league he founded has blossomed and been carried forth by his son Bill and his widow, Annie.

 “I’m sure he never envisioned anything like this,” Bill Haley said. A team of Jackie Robinson West all-stars reached the Little League World Series in 1983. This year, after a drought of 31 years, a team from the league won the Great Lakes regional championship game. On Thursday, the team played its first game in South Williamsport, Pa., beating Lynnwood, Wash., 12-2.

Continue reading the main story. Along with a team from Philadelphia led by a phenomenal young pitcher, Mo’Ne Davis, Jackie Robinson West became an early World Series story line. A similar sentiment surrounded a team from Harlem in 2002.

 

 

 

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Bill Haley said he remembered cheering for that team.

“When you see kids from similar backgrounds and similar situations, you pull for them to be successful and beat the odds,” he said.This year’s Jackie Robinson West team has attracted the attention of Mets right fielder Curtis Granderson, who grew up in the suburbs south of Chicago. Granderson began playing baseball in the Lynwood Little League, but he said he knew about Jackie Robinson West.“A lot of my friends, guys my age, played in that league,” he said.Granderson said he liked what the Jackie Robinson West team represented, as well as the idea that the team’s appearance in the World Series would prompt discussion about blacks in baseball.“The cool thing is the way people talk about it,” Granderson said. “Like, 

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 ‘Wow, there is an all-black team out there; I didn’t know there was an all-black team playing.’“The fact that people don’t realize that there is a black team means that people are under the assumption that black kids aren’t playing baseball. Hopefully this could be something that sheds light both in the African-American community and the non-African-American community.”Granderson recently contributed $5 million to the development of Curtis Granderson Stadium at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where he played for three seasons and where his No. 28 was retired. The stadium will be the home of the university’s baseball and softball teams and will serve more than 38 youth organizations in Chicago.