When talking about how HBCU baseball teams sometimes have to field a roster, Prairie View coach Auntwan Riggins brought it back to the cult classic movie Friday and one of the funniest quips by Chris Tucker’s fictional character Smokey.
“I always tell my coaches, we never have two things that match,” Riggins said. “Either you’ve got a guy who can hit but can’t run or is average on defense. Or he is a good defensive guy and doesn’t swing the bat as well as he plays defense. But we have to make that work. From that standpoint, we have to utilize their God-given abilities to help them because they don’t know.”
To Riggins’ point, HBCU baseball may not always come perfectly packaged. Still, these baseball programs continue to thrive and make strides while allowing student-athletes to develop their games and receive a college education. There have been no bigger proponents of growing HBCU baseball than long-time Texas Southern coach Mike Robertson and Riggins.
“The place where you want to be is (at an) HBCU because a lot of other programs you may be a part of it because you are going in for the gleam and glitter, but you actually have an opportunity to be chasing fair balls instead of foul balls,” Roberston said. “That’s my conversation to (perspective recruits). Do you have a realistic chance to play, because if you are not playing, you are not developing. We’ve got to understand that.”
It was easier for baseball players and their families to understand that HBCUs were a viable option when they were the only option for Black players. But as the game has evolved from having one Black student-athlete playing in centerfield, predominantly white institutions now see the value of Black athletes at all of the infield positions, behind the plate, and even on the pitching mound. That, along with the NCAA Transfer Portal and Name, Image, and Likeness money, has considerably thinned the talent pool available to HBCU programs.
But coaches like Riggins and Robertson, along with other coaches in the SWAC and MEAC have continued to beat the bushes for talented players. Nurturing raw talent is an essential part of the process.
“I don’t think it’s hard to find Black talent. But is it hard to get? Yes,” Riggins said. “It doesn’t define how I recruit because basically, we are never going to get that kid who is throwing 95 (miles per hour), so you’ve got to develop it. We go out and kids who have some basic good fundamental things about them, and the rest of the stuff we are arrogant enough to think we can develop it.”
As a result, baseball at the HBCU level is experiencing something of a renaissance as it gains popularity among players, coaches and fans. HBCU players are now garnering even more attention from Major League Baseball.
Much of that comes from the increased exposure the game is receiving from preseason competitions like the upcoming Third Annual Cactus Jack HBCU Classic at the recently renamed Daikin Park that will feature Southern, Grambling State, Jackson State, Alabama A&M, Prairie View and Southern in a round-robin competition from February 14-16. Then the week following the HBCU Classic, the MLB Andrew Dawson Classic will be played at the Jackie Robinson Training Complex in Vero Beach, Fla. Select players also have a chance to participate in the Ken Griffey Jr. HBCU Swingman Classic each summer.
I feel like on a Tuesday or Wednesday—a midweek game—you are always looking to see what HBCU school is playing what school in the middle of the week because it could be an upset situation.
Michael Robertson, TSU coach
The HBCU Classic was the brainchild of Astros executives Paula Harris and Daryl Wade. They had watched the Astros Foundation College Classic, which has featured top programs like the University of Texas, Texas A&M, LSU, and Rice in a preseason round-robin tournament since 2001 at the former Minute Maid Park and wanted HBCUs to have a showcase on that level.
“We’ve been doing that College Classic for 26 years now, and this allows our children the opportunity to get to play on that field and have that experience,” Harris said. “Their grandparents get to come see them pitch from a Major League Ballpark. It’s really important to us.”
It’s also been really important to the participating HBCU programs.
“This will be the third year that we’ve played in the Cactus Jack and that has grown tremendously,” Roberston said. “We had no idea it was going to take off like that.”
As much as Riggins appreciates the HBCU Classic, he believes much more needs to happen to grow HBCU baseball.
People have their perception of what Black college baseball is so they are afraid of what they don’t know. I just laugh inside because if you don’t know or you don’t come, you will never know.
Auntwan Riggins, Prairie View coach
“Don’t get me wrong, these two tournaments we are playing in at the beginning of the season is good exposure, it’s just not enough. It’s great exposure,” said Riggins, whose team will also play in the Andre Dawson Classic at the facility where Jackie Robinson once trained with the Dodgers. “Kids get an opportunity to play on a big stage, an opportunity to play in front of one of the biggest crowds they will ever plan in besides midweek against a Power 5. But it’s also something they can call their own.”
However, another part of the growth comes from needed resources, which are not always abundant in HBCU baseball.
TSU, for instance, plays its home games far off campus at McGregor Park. But will soon have a home stadium across the street from campus after the Astros donated $1 million and Major League Baseball tacked on another $250,000 to build new baseball and softball facilities.
Prairie View, meanwhile, has a nice baseball facility but only has roughly eight full scholarships to divide among a full roster of players. Texas Southern has 11.7 scholarships to divide among 40 roster spots.
“The investment has to come from the presidents and athletic directors, the coaches, Major League Baseball – everybody,” Robertson said. “We just have to continue to make the investment.
“So just investment and getting families to understand that our facilities may not be as grand as LSU, University of Texas or anything like that, but it’s still good enough and grand enough where we can still develop your prized possession.”
Riggins, whose program will receive a $30,000 Trackman to provide MLB teams with detailed and comprehensive data points on players, agrees that resources must be improved.
“You can look at it that HBCUs are coming up but are they about to be shot back down because of what’s about to happen?” Riggins said. “You get 34 scholarships (next year), but which HBCU is actually going to have 34 full rides? Even PWIs won’t have 34. They might go 25 or 26.”
Competitively, Robertson and Riggins say that HBCUs can compete against the PWIs on a one-game basis, but when depth at the pitching spots comes into play, the SWAC and MEAC programs come up short. There have been plenty of midweek wins against PWI programs over the years, with TSU recording an 8-4 win over 14th-ranked Mississippi State in 2020. Then there was the biggest upset in college baseball when the Tigers upended No.1 Rice in a regional game in 2004 at Reckling Part. Prairie View has also had its share of wins against PWIs over the years.
“In some aspects a lot of our players match up to their players position-wise,” Robertson said. “It’s on that bunk where we see the difference consistently. They are going to have more depth on the pitching side than we have.
“That’s about the investment and resources. The more investment, and the more resources that we get, we will be able to enact that position and close the gap with the PWI in the school in terms of pitching depth.”
