U.S.-born Black players on Major League Baseball rosters are barely 6% of this season’s opening day rosters. The 2025 Minnesota Twins have three Black players and a Black coach.
The organization also has two Black pitchers, Alex Speas and Simeon Woods Richardson. Last week we talked to both in separate interviews.
Speas’s great-grandfather pitched in Negro Leagues
Alex Speas a few years ago took a break from playing pro baseball. The St. Paul Saints’ only Black pitcher vividly recalls why as we sat in the dugout at the team’s St. Paul Lowertown ballpark.
“Going back into 2020, Covid and 2021, I think that was one of those years for me that baseball just wasn’t fun,” said Speas. “Felt more like a job than a game, or more like a job that should be fun, and I struggled.”
So, at age 21, Speas retired from the game — he was a 2016 second-round pick by Texas. He briefly took a corporate job, but that lasted six weeks. As a result, he slowly returned to baseball first by coaching youngsters.
“I always tell everybody I relived the game and finding joy in [watching] little kids running around the field. It made me remember myself at the age of 10, 12 playing in the outfield, just trying to throw the ball to first base and get kids out.”
Speas, a Georgia native, signed with the Twins on a minor league contract last November, his sixth MLB organization (Texas, 2016-23; Oakland, 2020; Chicago White Sox, 2024; Houston,2024; and Boston, 2024). The 6’3” righthander made his MLB debut in July 2023 with the Rangers and stuck around long enough to earn a World Series ring at season’s end.
Bouncing back and forth between the minors and the majors has been frustrating for Speas, who says his love of baseball has fully returned.
“I will say God has blessed me with a great fastball, being able to get up into triple digits. God gave me the blessing to throw 100 miles per hour,” stated Speas, who missed time from 2018-19 after recovering from Tommy John surgery on his right elbow.
Last Friday in a Saints win over Omaha the pitcher retired six batters in a row, five on strikeouts that tied his career high in 2 1/3 innings, allowing only a hit.
Now he only wants another chance to stick in the majors. It’s important for him for many reasons, said Speas.
“I look back into it and the only person in my family to ever play any type of baseball was my great grandfather as a Negro Leagues pitcher. I never ever got to meet him, but being part of something like that would just mean a lot to me, my family, and honestly just being an example to the young African Americans coming up behind us.”
Woods Richardson aims to make “Black Aces” list
For several years now, each MLB player has their own “walk-up” music when they come up to bat. Pitchers also have their own music when they come to the mound.
Simeon Woods Richardson’s walk-in music is Prince’s “When Doves Cry.”
“I had that thing coming up on a little iPod my cousin left me,” explained the hurler from Texas. “We’re in the hometown of a legend, so you gotta pay respect. You gotta pay homage — hopefully the crowd likes it and sings along a little bit.”
Now in his second season in Minnesota, Woods Richardson made his first MLB start last April after he began the 2024 season with Triple-A St. Paul, where he made three starts for the Saints. The 24-year-old righthander finished second among all rookies in Twins history in strikeouts-per-9.0 innings pitched, tied for fifth among all rookies in baseball in strikeouts (26), and second among AL rookies in innings pitched.
He wore No. 78 last season, the first player or coach in Twins history to do so, but Woods Richardson this season is now wearing No. 24 to honor both Ken Griffey, Jr., and Kobe Bryant, “my two inspirational guys I looked up to,” he admitted.
Among Woods Richardson’s personal goals is one day joining the Black MLB pitchers’ “Black Aces” list — 15 Black pitchers who won at least 20 games in a season. The title is from Mudcat Grant’s book of the same name. Grant (1935-2021) went 21-7 for the Twins in 1965.
“That’s one of my goals,” Woods Richardson said.
Woods Richardson last Sunday improved his record to 1-1, going five innings and striking out five in the Twins’ 5-1 win over Detroit.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.