Ian Moller Looks to Spearhead the Black Baseball Movement

In the midst of a global awakening to the inequalities of systemic discrimination, people of color are hearing their voices amplified in ways largely unprecedented.

Imbalances in baseball are a microcosm of the world we live in. Minorities have always represented a smaller portion of the league than white players. On Opening Day 2019, just 6.3 percent of the league was represented by Black players. There were just 78 Black players on Major League Baseball 40-man rosters. There were four teams that did not have a single Black player on their entire 40-man roster. This is an issue Major League Baseball has been grappling with for the better part of seven decades. The league has put resources toward the diversity gap with the creation of programs like the Urban Youth Academies and Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities movement, but still, the numbers fall short. 

Being Black in baseball is not easy. It’s still immensely challenging 73 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. More difficult still, African American catchers are almost non-existent in today’s game. Charles Johnson and Russell Martin are the only two Black catchers to start at least 70 games in a single season behind the plate in the last two decades. Before that, you have to go all the way back to 1971 and Elrod Hendricks with the Baltimore Orioles. Where are the Johnson’s and Martin’s? The Roy Campanella’s? The Earl Battey’s?

With any luck, that narrative figures to shift in 2021. Ian Moller of Dubuque, Iowa appears destined to be a first-round selection in next June’s MLB Draft. He’s enormously talented and a very polished prospect. He is a catcher. He is Black.

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Moller grew up in rural America where he says 90 percent of his hometown is white. Finding comfort in his identity has been challenging. He, like many others in this country, has felt persecuted because of the color of his skin. 

“Every day life can just be really difficult,” Moller said. “I can’t walk to the grocery store or gas station without being followed up and down aisles. I can’t play basketball at the park without cops sitting and watching, waiting for me and my friends to vandalize something. These may not seem like a big deal because we’re not getting shot and killed, but these little things make a big difference.”

Moller is a good student and a standout citizen in the community. Yet still, he struggles with stereotypes and labels that are put on him by society. He can’t escape it. Whether in school or on the baseball field, Moller said he finds it difficult to fully be himself.

“I have to live in two worlds, man,” Moller said. “I’m one of five black kids at my high school. I love my white friends, but they don’t know where I come. It’s a balancing act feeling like I have to be one person at school and another when I’m with my Black friends at the park. People mistake me as shy and quiet at school, but really it’s just a comfort thing.” 

Moller said the comfortability factor, or lack thereof, has pushed him toward switching from baseball and taking up basketball or football sometimes. He’s never done it, and doesn’t plan to, but said the draw of playing with other youth ‘of his kind’ is awfully enticing.

Playing with other Black baseball players is a huge deal for Moller. The opportunity to travel to national showcases that have other Black athletes participating is an enormous mental boost for the 17-year-old. He said playing with guys like him, guys that have gone through similar struggles and life challenges, relieves him. It puts his mind at-ease on the field.

“Over the past couple years, myself and the other Black guys out there always talk about it,” Moller said. “We talk about it religiously. It’s one of the first things that comes up when we see each other. It’s impossible to ignore. We band together.”

In Iowa, the racial divide on the baseball field is extremely pronounced. Moller was not only the sole Black player on his high school team, but he was the only Black player in the entire league.

From a young age, coaches unfamiliar with his talent behind the plate would often approach him with the opportunity to play the outfield. Moller said he believes they see his athleticism and immediately place a stigma on where he fits in the field.

““I can’t walk to the grocery store or gas station without being followed up and down aisles. I can’t play basketball at the park without cops sitting and watching, waiting for me and my friends to vandalize something.””

Playing baseball in a predominantly white town in Iowa, Moller has been the subject of side chatter on more than one occasion.

“I’ll be catching or hitting and I hear people say ‘he’s only any good and gifted and talented because he’s Black and athletic,’” Moller said. “Teams would complain about having to play against me because I’m Black and I guess ‘better’ than the white kids. My dad has always done a good job of trying to shield me from being exposed to too much of that stuff.”

Being Black, and one of the premier prep backstops in the country, Moller’s acumen behind the plate potentially puts him in rare air. Sticking at catcher is a tough task as it’s one of the most demanding positions on the diamond. Moller possesses the athleticism, flexibility, intelligence, and the arm to handle the role. His bat, maybe his most valuable asset, is the cherry on top. 

The aforementioned Charles Johnson may be the gold standard for Black catchers in baseball. He won multiple gold gloves during his 12-year career and has become a mentor for Moller.

 The two met at MLB’s Breakthrough Series a couple years ago when Johnson was one of Moller’s coaches for the event. The two have since developed a strong bond as Johnson’s coaching and expertise goes well beyond the dirt.

“I look up to Charles,” Moller said. “He means a great deal to me. We talk about being a Black athlete and people trying to change my position. He’s encouraged me to never settle and stick behind the plate. Don’t let anyone else define you.

“Charles has helped me off the field in more ways than one. He’s helped me understand what it means to be a Black athlete. He’s helped me understand how to handle myself off the field and how to represent myself and my skin color.”

But Johnson represents even more than a mentor or baseball coach. He’s a proverbial pedestal. In 1992, Johnson the Florida Marlins selected him 10th overall. To this day, it’s the highest a Black catcher has ever been selected in any MLB Draft. For Moller, that’s the mark – the stratum that he hopes to achieve come June 2021.

It’s not about the status and recognition. It’s not about the money either. Being selected in the top ten of an MLB Draft would set Moller on a path toward helping the marginalized neighborhoods he identifies with. It would legitimize his status in the Black community as an ambassador for the sport and its potential for underprivileged youth.

“Becoming the highest drafted Black catcher is definitely goal of mine,” Moller said. ”It’s important to me because it would represent a good, huge start for the Black community. It would be easier for me to promote Black baseball if that happened. I want to get Black kids involved. I’m a Black kid from Iowa. It would give me the ability to show kids that we can do this and it doesn’t have to be the label of football or basketball.”

Indeed, being drafted early would set Moller on his way toward providing what he feels the Black baseball community desperately needs. It needs acknowledgement and resources. He says Black communities are easily pushed toward football and basketball, but merely because it’s a product of a sport inaccessible to his kind.

Moller believes baseball is too expensive. Being required to join select teams and travel teams is too tall an ask for kids trying to get out of poverty. Playing for your high school team alone simply isn’t enough to get noticed. This doesn’t include the cost for good equipment either. But according to Moller, those two things are just the tip of the iceberg.

“Black kids aren’t exposed to baseball,” Moller said. “All it is is basketball courts and football fields out here. That’s a big goal and initiative for me. Restoring baseball into low income neighborhoods. I’ve researched this stuff a lot. It means a lot to me. None of these kids see baseball diamonds. Why would you choose baseball if all you ever see if football and basketball all around you?”

They’re lofty goals, but Moller appears cut from a cloth able to reach such heights. The journey doesn’t come without its hurdles. Moller said he deals with pressures other athletes do not, but those pressures are forging him into the man he is to become.

“I feel like I have to be the leader and really have to stick out on the field as a good example,” Moller said. “I do have that pressure because I need to do a lot for the world and the pressure of me not performing might not allow me to help poor and Black communities. I feel like one bad outing could hurt my stock enough to where I can’t fulfill my dreams of helping Black neighborhoods. Yeah, there’s pressure, but that might not be the right word because my focus eliminates it.”

It’s unquestionable resolve.