The first black MVP in the American League was a former Negro leader and a catcher.

It is over the screen in the lower deck of home run.

Elston Howard with a two-run pitch homer into the right field lower seats.

But today, the black catcher has all but disappeared from professional baseball.

You know, I was always, you know, pretty much the best catcher around, and people

were still moving out from that position, which I never really understood.

We'll ask why, and take a look at the greatest catchers in the history of black baseball,

and talk to potentially the next man on that list.

The position is known as the tools of ignorance.

When in actuality, it takes a lot of not only guts and guile,

but intellect to play the catching position in baseball.

And thus came this stigma as it relates to the Negro Leagues that the black athlete wasn't smart enough to play catcher.

The last great black catcher in the major leagues. The two that come to mind,

Russell Martin, who is actually Canadian and black, and of course, Charles Johnson,

who was really the last great black catcher. I was a catcher in my entire life. I started

catching when I was eight. I played other positions, but my heart always brought me back to catching.

And, you know, for me to instill these young kids that you can catch, you can be a leader,

you can be the guy on the field that's going to really run the game.

And me and Lenny Webster and me and Lenny played in Baltimore together.

If I had to think about it,

I don't know when there probably was a tandem of African-American

catches in the big leagues.

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