On Aug. 11, 2023, Major League Baseball launched a business partnership with Mass Appeal’s Hip-Hop 50 Live at Yankee Stadium, home of the 27-time World Series champion, New York Yankees.
The stadium is located in the Bronx, which is well-known as the birthplace of rap music, one of the core elements of hip-hop culture.
With this one-year partnership continuing into the 2024 season, the MLB along with all 30 teams will provide baseball and rap music fans a variety of things such as content creation, merchandise, and other exciting giveaways to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the marriage of the music genre and culture to the city of New York.
The choice to be the music ambassador for this year-long extravaganza turned out to be an easy one if you’re a hip-hop fan.
Chuck D (born Carlton Douglas Ridenhour on Long Island, NY) is the leader of the iconic group Public Enemy.
One of the more recognizable voices of the hip-hop generation, Chuck D has always been an ambassador to this music, so adding the title music ambassador, which will include his overseeing special content and programming, allows Major League Baseball to educate its fanbase to the overall impact of the music and culture while enjoying the historical game of baseball and its impact on African-Americans. It kind of brings Jay Z’s partnership with the NFL to mind.
Chuck D showed his humility as the first rap artist to work exclusively with MLB.
“As a longtime baseball fanatic, I am beyond honored to be the first hip-hop artist to work with Major League Baseball in this exciting new way – connecting sound and culture to the stories of the game,” said Chuck D. “Thank you MLB for adding me to the lineup… and the pitch is on the way.”
Chuck D’s love of baseball is not just for today’s game or just the MLB. He is a student of the game with knowledge dating back to the Negro Leagues. Just last year he took to social media to honor the Philadelphia Stars.
Look for Chuck’s exclusive content on all of MLB’s platforms; MLB.com, MLB.TV and the MLB Network as well as social media handles like @MLB and @MLBLife. The cerebral rapper’s resumé shows that Baseball got the most-qualified man for the job.
Besides producing iconic albums, Chuck D and Public Enemy have been the recipients of numerous honors including the group being 2013 inductees of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys.
Just this year, Chuck D released “We Wreck Stadiums” which is a collection of songs honoring some of baseball’s players from the past and their impact on the game of baseball and society.
He also developed and executive produced “Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World,” a four-episode documentary series covering the evolution of the music genre and its significant impact on society and the World. It premiered on PBS in 2023.
With his love for baseball cards, Chuck has also taken up drawing. One standout piece is his illustration of the old Shea Stadium—formerly home to his beloved Mets. (He hated the Yankees!)
Of the 107 historically black colleges and universities in the United States, only nine are considered to be in the Northern region of the country: one in Delaware, four in Maryland, two in Pennsylvania, and two in Washington, D.C. There are none in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut, although the three states have a plethora of natives and transplanted residents who are HBCU alums. Still, the culture of HBCUs is thriving in the Northeast.
Daryl K. Roberts and Rachel E. Naughton, producers of the HBCU All-Star Dream Classic, are committed to moving it forward and exposing numerous youth to the educational and athletic opportunities the college network offers. Roberts is a graduate of Lincoln University and member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. Naughten is a St. Paul’s College (Virginia) alumnus.
The duo staged the Dream Classic on August 5 at Rucker Park through the Harlem-based nonprofit Bridging Structural Holes, founded in 2018 by its CEO, the Harlem-born and -bred Roberts. The event featured 40 men’s and women’s HBCU basketball players, live musical entertainment, step shows by Divine Nine fraternities and sororities, marching bands, and cheerleaders.
The two men’s and two women’s squads were composed solely of ballers who collectively attended 28 HBCUs. New York City basketball point guard royalty Kenny Anderson, the current men’s head coach at Fisk University, served as one of the coaches. The Booker Tees won the men’s game 71-59 over the MLKings, with Yasim Hooker of Miles College earning MVP. SoJo’s Truth edged Althea’s Aces 51-46 in the women’s matchup and Bryanna Brown of Lincoln University was named MVP.
“What I am most proud of,” Roberts told the AmNews, “is that all 40 of the players received their college degrees. We want to expand the message that student-athletes can gain a high-quality academic and athletic experience at HBCUs. They don’t have to attend PWIs (predominantly white institutions) to create prosperous career pathways after college.” HBCUs are in Roberts’s DNA: Two of his grandparents attended HBCUs, as did his mother (Oakwood) and father (Morgan State).
Roberts is also the organizer of the HBCU Harlem Renaissance Classic. The games and activities were held at City College over the Thanksgiving holiday in the past two years but will move to the Gauchos Gym, scheduled for November 25.
Harlem basketball legend and longtime youth advocate Bob McCullough was honored with the inaugural Bob McCullough Community Icon Award. Sponsors for the affair included Northwest Mutual, M&T Bank, Champion, and Wilson. KRSB Radio Philadelphia streamed the event live. HBCU Gameday and For Us By Us Network (FUBU) were also represented as prominent media partners of the Dream Classic.
It was widely speculated that the days of Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin were numbered after an aborted coup in June. Now there’s speculation that he may be among those killed on a plane that crashed in Kuzhenkino, Russia.
At presstime, the most extensive reportage of the crash comes from Reuters via the BBC, where footage shows the plane, which Prigozhin owns, spiraling from the sky after an apparent explosion. According to early reports, Prigozhin’s name is on the passenger list, although there’s no conclusive evidence that he was actually on the plane.
Thus far, a Russian news agency reports that four bodies have been taken from the fiery crash. According to the passenger list, 10 were aboard the plane, which was en route from Moscow and possibly St. Petersburg, a frequent pattern of flight.
None of the social media accounts believed to be linked to Prigozhin have so far made any claims about whether he is dead or alive. Some are saying that another business jet owned by him was also in the air at the time of the crash, also having departed Moscow.
Several experts on Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, suggested that Prigozhin, 62, who was allied with Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, broke with Putin on a number of former agreements, including pay and military strategy. Many conclude that those issues precipitated the coup attempt that was halted once the forces and its leaders realized they would be slaughtered.
CNN, which showed footage of the plane falling from the sky, said it could confirm the authenticity of the video, but RIA Novosti claimed it was the moment that an Embraer jet fell from the sky in the Tver region of Russia.
President Biden, back in the White House after a visit to Hawaii, has been briefed about the incident but had released no comments at presstime for this issue.
Over a year ago, Marcus Semien and the Texas Rangers franchise hit a crossroads.
Both the manager and the general manager were fired as the team was on pace to finish with what would end up being its sixth consecutive losing season. Now, thanks to one of the best offenses in baseball, led by Major League Baseball’s most expensive middle infield and some new additions to the pitching staff, they have a shot at the first World Series in team history.
The turnaround from a year ago for the Rangers is the stuff sports movies are made of.
Last Friday, the team matched their 2022 win total of 68. Going into Tuesday night’s game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Rangers had the second-best record in the American League at 72-53 behind the Baltimore Orioles, which were 77-47.
The Rangers also had the third-best home record in MLB at 42-24 in games played in Arlington. Only the Los Angeles Dodgers (43-21) and Atlanta Braves (42-22) held a better record in their own stadiums.
The Rangers went 12-2 from the August 1st trade deadline through August 15 after acquiring some key pieces, including three-time Cy Young award winner Max Scherzer from the Mets. But they took a step back, losing five straight before facing the Diamondbacks in Arizona on Tuesday. The Rangers are in a tight race with the Houston Astros and Seattle Mariners in the AL West.
Players up and down the Rangers’ 26-man roster have stepped up when called on. Yet the team’s success can in large part be attributed to the half-a-billion-dollar middle infield tandem of American League All-Star starters Semien, 32, and 29-year-old Corey Seager.
The pair has earned every penny they signed for in the winter of 2021. Semien inked a seven-year, $175 million contract and Seager a 10-year pact for $325 million.
Playing shortstop, Seager ranks near the top of the Majors in OPS, slugging, batting average and on-base percentage for all hitters. Semien, the Rangers’ second baseman and team captain, bats in front of him in the leadoff spot.
He has played in 253 straight games dating back to May 12th of last year. Over the past three seasons, Semien has missed only one game.
“He has a killer instinct,” Rangers general manager Chris Young told MLBbro.com.
“He is aggressive to kick the game off and puts on a show from the start. With Seager behind him, it makes it that much tougher to pitch to him.”
Case in point: On August 14, in a 12-0 win over the Los Angeles Angels, Semien drove in a season-high five runners, three by way of his 19th homer of the year.
Between May and June of this year, Semien reached base in a career-high 33 consecutive games, grinding out a 25-game hitting streak over the time that ended as the third longest in club history.
“My goal is always the same, swing at strikes and get on base,” Semien told MLBbro.com.
This season for Semien could end up as one of the greatest ever for a second baseman in league history, competing with his own record-breaking 2021 when he hit an MLB-record 45 homers for the Blue Jays and won the 2021 MLBbro Player of the Year award.
He is the front-runner for both the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards and is on pace to finish with 107 RBI. That would be the most in Major League history for a leadoff hitter, passing Charlie Blackmon’s 103 runs driven in 2017.
Sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson has attained redemption.
After a series of high and lows on the track; personal struggles; and reported friction with some of her athletic peers, presumably due to her alleged diva-like behavior, the diminutive Richardson is now a giant of her sport, thanks to a stunning upset in the women’s 100-meter finals at the World Athletics Championships on Monday in Budapest, Hungry.
Her victory was shocking not so much because Richardson lacked the necessities to dethrone the Jamaican sprinters who have dominated the women’s 100 and 200 meters for the better part of the past five years. It was unexpected given her struggles in the semifinals.
Richardson, 23, labored to a clocking of 10.84, finishing third in her heat, and advancing to finals only after nervously waiting for confirmation that she had qualified based on her time being among the fastest of those who did not automatically (the top two in each heat) move on.
In the finals, Richardson was faced with an onerous challenge: facing five-time and defending 100-meter World Championships titleist 36-year-old Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce of Jamaica, widely regarded as the greatest women’s sprinter of all-time, and 29-year-old Shericka Jackson, also from Jamaica, the only athlete to ever win medals at the World Championships in 100, 200, and 400 meters.
Nevertheless, staring down the track from the far outside in lane nine, she summoned the inner strength and resilience to run the swiftest 100-meter time in the history of the event, passing Jackson in the closing 20 meters and recording 10.65 to capture the gold. Jackson took second at 10.72 and Fraser-Pryce the bronze at 10.77.
Afterward, Fraser-Pryce and Richardson displayed mutual respect and camaraderie when the eight-time Olympic medalist jokingly remarked, “You know how long the USA [has] not [won] a gold medal?”
Richardson exuberantly and laughingly replied, “Because of you! Because of you!”
Indeed, it was Tori Bowie, who tragically passed away this past May at the age of 32 due to complications related to childbirth, who last won gold for the USA in the 100 meters at the World Championships in 2017.
On July 7 at the U.S. Track and Field Championships at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field, Richardson pulled off her bright-orange wig, tossing it behind her and onto the track to unveil long cornrows.
It was a symbolic and cathartic moment for the 5-foot, 1-inch Dallas, Texas, native and Louisiana State University product, whose peaks and valleys trended from a blazing 10.75 seconds at 19 years old in the 2019 NCAA Division I Championships, setting a collegiate record in winning the 100-meter title, to being banned from the 2020 Olympics after testing positive for cannabis after her victory at the U.S. Olympic Trials in July of 2021.
(The 2020 Summer Olympics were held in Tokyo in July and August of 2021—originally scheduled to take place in July and August of 2020, but postponed due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.)
Richardson’s exclusion was a polarizing issue, with hard-core track and field fans and those who had never heard of her before the issue weighing in on whether she should have been disallowed to compete in the sport’s most significant competition for a substance not considered performance-enhancing.
“I wanted to show you guys that I’m still that girl, but I’m better,” Richardson said to a journalist named Tee on the day she discarded the wig. “I’m still that girl, but I’m stronger. I’m still that girl but I’m wiser. I had to shed the old and present the new.”
It came to fruition on Monday in Hungary, 5,700 miles from Hayward field.
The US Open began on Tuesday with Fan Week, six days in which the grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens is free and open to the public for a variety of events and activities. Players that will compete in the Open, well-known music artists, celebrities of various cultural genres, and prominent chefs will be among those interacting with visitors.
Fan Week is highlighted by Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day on Saturday, celebrating the life of the late tennis legend who was an athletic trailblazer, inspirational humanitarian, and unwavering advocate for racial and social justice.
Fan Week ends on Sunday and gives way to the beginning of matches on Monday as the US Open is the year’s last Grand Slam of tennis’ four major championships, following the Australian Open in January, French Open in late May to early June, and Wimbledon in late June to early July.
There is palpable excitement on both the men’s and women’s draws as young stars Carlos Alcaraz and Coco Gauff come into Queens at the top of their games. Alcaraz, 20, is the defending men’s US Open champion and the world’s No. 1 ranked male player, having defeated No. 2 Novak Djokovic in an epic five-set Wimbledon final last month (1-6, 7-6 (6), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4), stopping the 36-year-old Serbian’s 34-match winning streak at the tournament.
“To stay good physically and mentally for five hours against a legend, making history like I did today, it’s the happiest moment of my life. I don’t think that’s going to change for a long time,” said Spain’s Alcaraz after his enthralling victory.
The pair may have foreshadowed another inevitable finals battle at last Sunday’s Cincinnati Open, in which Djokovic outlasted Alcaraz 5-7, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (4) to capture the title. Spanning three hours and 48 minutes, the match was the longest three-setter since the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) began organizing the world’s top men’s tennis tour in 1990.
The 19-year-old Cori Dionne “Coco” Gauff, who was born in Delray Beach, Florida, and raised in Atlanta, has never won a major but was a finalist in last year’s French Open, losing 6-1, 6-3 to current world No. 1 Iga Swiatek from Poland. She looks to make the US Open her first and is favorably peaking ahead of the tournament’s start.
On Sunday, in Mason, Ohio, Gauff became the first teenager to win the Western & Southern Open since 17-year-old Linda Tuero in 1968 by defeating Karolina Muchova 6-3, 6-4. Gauff is the world’s No. 6 ranked women’s player. Gauff’s doubles partner, American Jessica Pegula, No. 3 in the world in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) rankings, is also a leading contender to win the Open.
Pegula has reached the quarterfinals of all four majors but has yet to break through to the semifinals and finals.
The New York City (NYC) Reads school initiative is a major undertaking that Mayor Eric Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks promised would be transformational in terms of literacy, reading, and basic algebra instruction. Most teachers seemed to agree, but are a little unsure about the rollout so far.
“The most basic thing we can do at our schools is ensure that all our students learn how to read and have the resources to thrive, but with more than half of our city’s public-school students reading below grade level, now is the time to act—and that is exactly what we are doing today,” said Adams in a statement.
This year, 15 selected ‘phase one’ school districts will begin implementing the new curriculum and the remaining 17 school districts of ‘phase two’ will start next year.
Deputy Chancellor of Teaching and Learning at the Department of Education (DOE) Carolyne Quintana is confident that the NYC Reads program will be a singular city-wide curriculum that’s research-based curricula, supported by intensive coaching and professional learning for educators, and culturally responsive. Quintana said, at a recent town hall with NYC educators, that this spring teachers were offered training and there were make-up trainings held this summer for those that missed out or were new hires. Every teacher should have at least eight coaching sessions in addition to several professional hours of training on NYC Reads programming and materials before and during the school year.
There will be a set reading curriculum for every grade level, said Quintana.
Early childhood programs will use the ‘Creative Curriculum’ alongside ‘Teaching Strategies GOLD’ and ‘Ages & Stages’––a developmental “screener” that’s tailored to each child’s strengths, interests, and needs. Elementary English Language Arts (ELA) classes will have a choice between three curricula options: ‘Wit and Wisdom’, ‘Into Reading’, and ‘Expeditionary Learning.’
Kate Gutwillig is an elementary ELA teacher in Manhattan. She has been teaching for over 20 years. Previously, she said, city schools were using a theory-based approach to teaching reading designed by Lucy Calkins, a leading literacy expert at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University. Calkins created this “balanced literacy” curriculum with independent study components decades ago, which city public schools chose to adopt in 2003.
“If you were really lucky and learned to read on your own and didn’t need any extra help and it just came to you, then this curriculum would work for you,” said Gutwillig. “But many, many children are not like that, especially working class in New York City. Their parents are working many jobs. Maybe there’s trauma. Maybe there’s a learning disability. Maybe you just immigrated here. There’s so many unique populations.”
Gutwillig said that people were too “enamored” with Calkins to realize that the curriculum wasn’t inclusive enough. “What would happen is that certain children would get stuck and there was no assistance in the curriculum,” said Gutwillig.
The new curriculum options will be more about the “science” of reading and phonics-based, she said, speaking from her experience teaching both styles.
Schools will also increase their focus on algebra with illustrative math, center students with disabilities and multilingual learners, and aim to incorporate more culturally diverse learning materials under the ‘Hidden Voices’ initiative. Hidden Voices spotlights narratives within the Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders (AAPI), LGBTQIA+, African diaspora, and Black American communities, said Quintana.
“Reading is a social justice and racial equity issue,” said Quintana.
About two-thirds of Black and brown students in NYC schools are not reading at grade level, she said.
According to national trends in a survey conducted by Educators for Excellence (E4E-NY), schools have “significant” staffing shortages across all positions, a constant need for teachers to give up their planning periods to cover classes, report having little say in selecting curriculum, and find curriculum doesn’t meet the academic or social-emotional needs of their students. Teachers of color, in particular, are far less likely to stay in education.
Teachers polled in the town hall by E4E-NY said that they thought the NYC Reads curriculum was critical. However, they also said that the implementation of the program could use more collaboration with teachers, timely data releases, year round coaching, more transparency, and a clearer timeline.
Gutwillig pointed out that the NYC Reads materials she’s seen could also be more culturally responsive and carefully include more figures and narratives of color that reflect students in the city.
April Rose is an elementary ELA teacher in Queens with over 20 years of experience. Her school pivoted during COVID to adopt a new reading curriculum. The school piloted the program in two classrooms and saw improvements in students. Rose said that the texts were insightful and rich, and cut down on the need for supplemental materials.
“The only thorn, which goes to the fact that no curriculum is perfect and that you have to do what’s in the best interest for students, is that we had to try out the writing part and found that it was a little too disjointed,” said Rose.
Jeta Donovan is a partner at The New Teacher Project (TNTP) and a former educator in New York City. She oversaw the implementation of a new reading and instruction curriculum statewide in Tennessee in 2019. Despite challenges with such a massive undertaking, Donovan said after a few years of staying the course and shifting mindsets, students showed marked improvements. She advised that new course materials are not enough and that teachers would need immense support from DOE.
“I think New York City is making a really historic investment in teacher professional learning and coaching as a part of this initiative and I can’t understate how important that will be to the success of this project,” said Donovan. “And I say this as a former DOE teacher myself, I know it’s important that teachers not only feel supported but will see the impact on student learning as a result of that ongoing professional coaching.”
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visitinghttps://bit.ly/amnews1.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw affirmative action in higher education is a cruel, racist, and deeply harmful attack on people of color in this country. Affirmative action has, over four decades, made a significant positive impact on the diversity of college campuses, allowing many Black and Brown students to overcome systemic barriers which restrict access to higher education.
We’ve already witnessed the dreadful consequences of various states eliminating affirmative action programs in years’ past—case studies which paint a dark picture of what may now happen nationwide, absent a major overhaul of how colleges conduct their admissions process.
For example, immediately after California outlawed affirmative action through a voter referendum in 1996, the number of enrolled students from underrepresented groups plummeted by over 60% at UCLA and UC Berkeley, with a 12% overall reduction across the University of California system, according to University of California’s own study. Fewer students of color in prestigious universities meant fewer high-earning job opportunities after graduation, and thus a long-term decline in wages after they entered the job market.
The notion promulgated by right-wing media and politicians that affirmative action somehow disadvantages white and Asian students over Black and Latino students is not based on reality. Black and Latino students already face major obstacles to accessing higher education—a reality which affirmative action was designed to help counteract. Students of color in low-income school districts, for example, often lack access to high school AP courses and extracurricular opportunities—elements of students’ resumes that colleges rely on when considering applicants.
The fact is, race-blind admissions do nothing to overcome racism—on the contrary, they reinforce existing inequities.
It is not just Black and Brown people who will suffer from the elimination of affirmative action programs in higher education. Take, for example, how it could impact our nation’s healthcare system, today in dire need of additional caregivers to rebuild a workforce depleted from three years of the pandemic.
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out that “increasing the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds who join ‘the ranks of medical professionals’ improves ‘healthcare access and health outcomes in medically underserved communities.’” We cannot build a healthy society if we do not create a truly diverse and representative healthcare workforce able to provide equitable and culturally-competent healthcare. In a nation where only 5.7% of physicians are Black, it is essential that medical schools do more, not less, to actively recruit a more diverse student body.
The sad fact is, the attack on affirmative action is based on a strategy as old as history itself—those in power attempting to pit working people of different backgrounds against each other to perverse their own wealth and privilege, at the expense of everyone else. We must not fall into this trap. All working people have a mutual interest in joining together, across races and ethnicities, in common struggle to build a fair and just society. A corrupt Supreme Court must not deter us.
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