History will be made Thursday night, and not just because Major League Baseball will be played for the first time in the nation’s oldest professional baseball stadium.
The entire umpiring crew for baseball’s tribute to the Negro Leagues at 114-year-old Rickwood Field will be black, a first in NL/AL history.
Only 11 Blacks have served as full-time umpires in the NL/AL, starting with Emmett Ashford in 1966. All five Black umpires currently working in the league will be on staff in Birmingham, Alabama – four on the field, one in as a replay official.
Adrian Johnson, 49, will be the team leader. Alan Porter, 46, will be behind the plate. CB Bucknor, 61; Jérémie Rehak, 36, and Malachi Moore, 34; will complete the group.
The referees said they appreciated not only the opportunity to participate in such an important match, but also the chance to work together. Each will wear a patch in honor of Ashford, similar to the one referees wore in 2016 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his first match.
“The fact that we have enough guys to field a full team and also have a guy for replays, that says a lot,” Johnson said. “This has been a long time coming. And that makes me very happy.
The choice to use only black umps at Rickwood may seem obvious, but the impetus had to come from somewhere. Rob Field, the league’s senior director of global events, was the first to broach the idea, according to Matt McKendry, vice president of referee operations.
The league had previously considered fielding an all-black team during spring training, but the logistics never worked out. For the Rickwood game, the league made an exception to its normal scheduling process, ensuring it would get the referees it wanted.
In assigning its 76 full-time referees before each season, the league creates 19 different schedules, trying to balance assignments as fairly as possible. The team leaders, in an order determined by the referees’ union, then select the times they want. Special events such as the London Series and Little League Classic are part of the normal application process.
The Rickwood game was not.
Commissioner Rob Manfred, senior vice president of baseball operations Michael Hill and the umpires union all supported the idea of using an all-black crew, McKendry said. At the annual referee meeting in January, McKendry and referee supervisor Cris Jones asked the black referees if they were interested in working the Rickwood game.
“To a man, immediately, we all said yes,” Johnson said. “Myself and the other guys were honored to be asked to work this match.”
Rehak said he welcomed the opportunity with “open arms.”
“We’re more than happy to go out there and do this,” he said. “It will be special, a cool moment.”
Johnson and Porter were initially supposed to be home taking time off, but they adjusted to working the game. Bucknor, Rehak and Moore will temporarily part ways with their crews, replaced with minor league call-ups, then return to their schedules normal Saturday (Friday is the potential catch-up date).
Adrian Johnson (left) and fellow ump Stu Scheurwater (right) visit Negro Leagues umpire Bob Motley at Dodger Stadium in 2017.
The knowledge of the five Negro Leagues umpires varies. Johnson said he visits the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum every year, as long as his schedule takes him to Kansas City. Several years ago, he met the late Bob Motley, a Negro Leagues umpire, at Dodger Stadium.
“He was a character,” Johnson said. “He never talked about racial overtones or anything like that. There were only the players. There were so many stories about how the players were real characters. It seemed like it was a really, really fun time to work.
“I saw a picture of him in the air calling out to a guy just like he was gliding through the air. When you see that picture, it’s one thing that, if we did it now, we would be killed in the media. But it was such a different time. It was truly entertaining.
Rehak, who grew up in Pittsburgh, remembers his parents often talking about the Homestead Grays, who played in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a nearby steel town. The Grays existed from 1928 to 1948. As a child, Rehak had a team photo above his bed.
Bucknor, a native of Jamaica, said some of his sandlot clubs growing up used the names of Negro Leagues teams. Both Porter and Moore said they would like to learn more about the Negro Leagues and look forward to better understanding the era.
“One of my aunts, when I told her I worked there – she’s in her 60s – it was a big deal for her,” Porter said. I was like, ‘OK, that’s cool, I love it.’ But it was much more important to her that I was on the field for that than it was for me.
The league hopes the referees will serve as an inspiration to black referees in the minors, as well as younger potential black referees who may one day join the profession. Moore, the youngest member of the crew, is an example of the kind of success that can happen.
In 2010, Moore was a second baseman and outfielder at Compton College in Los Angeles. Kerwin Danley, who would become the league’s first black crew chief, ran an officiating camp at the school. He encouraged Moore to become a referee.
“I thought he was joking,” Moore said. “In the cages, I started doing drills, calling balls and strikes. Somehow I got a scholarship to go to refereeing school. From that moment on, my life changed. I fell in love with refereeing. I spent 11 years in the minor leagues and now I’m a full-time umpire in the major leagues. It’s surreal.
Moore, seeking to mentor others as Danley guided him, is instrumental in helping teach umpiring to teenagers at MLB’s Compton Youth Academy. He helped launch the program, created by Umps Care Charities in 2021. The refereeing and leadership course lasts six weeks. One of its goals is to diversify the next generation of referees.
“We all need role models,” Darrell Miller, vice president of the Compton Youth Academy, told Fox Sports in 2023. “To see someone who looks like you in a place where you hope to be in the future, it means All.”
Bucknor, while researching a speech he gave for Black History Month in February, learned that there were more black astronauts (20 who traveled to space) than black referees (11). He found the gap notable, considering, as he put it, “it takes a lot more to be an astronaut.”
Maybe Thursday night will be a spark for the next Malachi Moore. If nothing else, it will be a unique moment for the crew members, one that they have been texting each other about in anticipation.
“I’ll live in the moment,” Moore said.
“I’m going to do my best to slow everything down,” Rehak said.
“This is my 26th year,” Bucknor said. “And given the opportunity to be a part of history, I will consider this one of the highlights of my career.”
(Top photo of Alan Porter, CB Bucknor and Adrian Johnson (L-R): Getty; G Fiume, Brandon Sloter/Icon Sportswire, Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire, Jessica Carroll/MLB Photos)