A Baseball Fact That May Surprise You

You're at a Major League Baseball game and you take a glance around the diamond. Players with different colored skin and from countries all over the world. I don't know the ratios, but it may be something like two or three whites, maybe one from Japan, two or three from Central America and a couple of African-Americans who, of course, are black. How many of those players you see were born in Africa? I'll answer it for you. The answer is zero! Did you realize that there has never been an African-born player in the Major Leagues?

Now I realize that in many instances if you're born in Africa, you'll have plenty of other things that take priority over baseball. If you look at the NBA and NFL, you'll find cases of players being born in Africa and immigrating to America. However it hasn't happened yet for a single baseball player.

The Majors has had players born in so many places like Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Afghanistan, Germany, Italy and so on. Some of these players were sons of servicemen. By the way, can you name the former Minnesota Twin who was born in France? I'll tell you later.

The reason I brought this up is that the Milwaukee Brewers drafted a young man by the name of Domi Orimoloye in this week's draft. He was born in Nigeria but came to Canada, where he learned to play baseball as a teenager. The highest an African-born player has gotten is Double A ball a few years back. The scouts think Orimoloye at least has a chance to become the first African-born player in the majors.

The former Twin born in France is the late Charley Lea.