Crystal Garrett is the executive producer and director of Black to the Bigs, which confronts the record-low trend.
Garrett says the inspiration for the film came when her children took to the sport. “I wasn’t really into baseball until they started playing, and I just grew this passion for the game,” Garrett said.
In the decades after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier during segregation and Jim Crow, ushering Black players into the big leagues, hundreds of Black baseball players joined the MLB.
But around the 1990s, the number of Black players in the sport started dropping.
“If you look at 1981, the percentage of Black players in the MLB was, like, 18.7%,” says Garrett. “Fast-forward to 2023-24, it’s below 7%. So that makes you question, is it an issue of access? Or representation? Or opportunity? The idea is to explore the root causes of the decline and shed some light on how we can reverse that trend, and I think MLB is efforting toward doing that.”
The film features perspectives from beloved Seattle Mariner and Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr., current Mariner star J.P. Crawford, and other baseball greats.
Black to the Bigs is streaming now on Cascade PBS and premieres on our network on Jackie Robinson Day, April 15.
