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When the Cubs signed Justin Turner earlier this month, they designated outfielder Alexander Canario for assignment. It was a natural choice, given that Canario was already pinched by the roster crunch the team faced after earlier moves to add Jon Berti, Gage Workman, and Vidal Bruján to their mix of bench options. Still, it was notable, because the swap of Canario—a Black native of the Dominican Republic—for Turner, who is white, reduced the number of non-white players on the Cubs' 40-man roster to seven. Of the current 40, 32 are American-born, and only one person of color from the United States (reliever Tyson Miller) is in line to make the Opening Day roster.
As Black History Month draws to a close, it's jarring to note that while the Cubs are unusually white, they are far from an outlier. Baseball draws as heavily as ever on international talent, especially as the flow of talented, accomplished pros from South Korea and Japan to the United States grows more robust, but despite the annual lip service the league pays to reaching out to people of color in the domestic pool of young talent, Black participation has not rebounded from the long slump into which it fell roughly 20 years ago.
In 2023, just over 6% of the players on Opening Day rosters were Black. For the purposes of that survey, Black and Latino identities seemed to be held separate, when the reality is that many players from the Caribbean identify as Black, as well as Latino. Still, the league continues to fail in whatever efforts it's made to court African-American fans and find or empower African-American players, and the Cubs are among the worst in that regard.
Like the country of which it is such a proud part, MLB has a long history of structural racism, including formal and informal segregation; clubhouse cliques, often drawn along racial lines; and layers of tension, based not only on the construct of race but on colorism, language, ethnicity, and even geographic background. Untold numbers of players, including not just long-forgotten ones but several still playing right now, have shared stories of abuse, alienation, or discrimination, by clubs, fans, opponents, teammates, and others.
However, beginning even before Jackie Robinson and the abolition of the color line, the game has also long been a place where racial progress was won and barriers were challenged and (sometimes) torn down. Robinson's emergence with the Brooklyn Dodgers was one of the first landmark victories and galvanizing moments of the post-World War II Civil Rights movement. That some major progress made in the 50 years after Robinson's debut has since eroded, with the game growing whiter even as it leans more heavily on international talent and needs to reach more diverse a more diverse prospective fan base, is deeply worrisome.
The Cubs are becoming the face of this problem, to the limited extent to which it's being recognized and discussed. It's not just that they have few players of color, but that of those they do have, the majority are role players or likely minor-leaguers. If Workman wins the bench spot over Bruján, they could be down to just six players of color on the 40-man, and of those, Miller, Daniel Palencia, and Miguel Amaya will all be in something less than a full-time, high-volume role. The only non-white stars on the team are Seiya Suzuki and Shota Imanaga.
Presumably, the front office is not consciously working to build heavily white rosters, or to make their core of highly-paid stars predominantly white. Nonetheless, they have no person of color from North America set to make more than $1 million in 2025. They've traded two Black players who were already emerging as top prospects (Zyhir Hope and Cam Smith) in successive winters. Those trades brought back excellent players who can better help the Cubs in the short term, in Michael Busch and Kyle Tucker, and no one should argue that the team was wrong to make those deals just because those players are white and the centerpieces of the packages they sent out were not.
However, Smith is one of just two players of color the team has taken in the first round since 2013. The other, Ed Howard, has fizzled in the Chicago farm system. They've struggled to develop their top international free agent signees (nearly all of whom are people of color) from promising talents into genuine contributors. While there's no evidence of systemic prejudice in the Cubs operation (at least beyond that which seems to be much too powerful in the sport as a whole), they unequivocally need to do better when it comes to acquiring and developing star-caliber players who aren't white Americans.
Sammy Sosa is a fascinating character to see back in Cubs camp, at a moment when this trend is emerging for the franchise. His own relationship with the media was always tinged by his race and nationality, and while he's responsible for many of his own choices over the years, he left the sport feeling so exposed to the friction and frustration of racism that he underwent treatments designed to lighten his own skin tone.
Sosa wore No. 21 during his time with the Cubs in honor of Roberto Clemente, the Black Puerto Rican hero of so many mid-century players and fans of all races. Clemente, too, felt deeply mistreated and disrespected by local and national baseball media, and by many fans, even at the peak of his great fame and widespread adulation. Racism has always been a part of baseball, even as Black players and the cultures of the sport in the Caribbean, Mexico, and the Pacific Rim have been vital to its growth and survival. The Cubs can't instantly fix this troubling trend toward whiteness, even within their own clubhouse—let alone throughout the league. Nonetheless, the team photo this spring will be a good opportunity for everyone to reflect on the need for both local and widespread change, to make the game more accessible and appealing to a broader swath of a very diverse, global fan base.
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