While much of the high school and college sports world has already shifted its attention toward football, some of the Northeast’s most promising young baseball players spent Saturday making sure they weren’t overlooked.
Unhidden Baseball NYC, powered by Lincoln University alum Max Guadalupe, brought together four programs from New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia for its inaugural HBCU Baseball Showcase at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, giving high school upperclassmen an opportunity to put their tools on display directly in front of a college coaching staff.
But this wasn’t simply about running 60-yard dashes and playing baseball.
It was about creating a pipeline.
Hosted at the nation’s first degree-granting Historically Black College and University, the showcase gave prospective student-athletes and their families an up-close look at what playing college baseball at an HBCU can offer both on the diamond and in the classroom.
North Jersey’s Willis Otanez Baseball Academy, Baltimore’s Vision Select/Charm City program, Virginia’s Delmarva College Prospects Baseball and Unhidden Baseball NYC made up the four-team field.
The day began with players testing their speed in the 60-yard dash before transitioning to live game action, allowing Lincoln University head baseball coach Vince Connor and others in attendance to evaluate players in an actual competitive setting rather than simply through isolated drills.
Unhidden Baseball NYC opened its day against Willis Otanez Baseball Academy before players and parents received a campus tour led by Lincoln freshman baseball player Korry Buxton. The tour offered prospective students a chance to ask questions about college life, academics and the everyday experience of being a student-athlete.
For some players, that part of the day was every bit as important as their at-bats.
While the Unhidden group toured campus, Willis Otanez continued with a second game against Baltimore’s Vision Select.
Coach Goodwin, who leads Vision Select and also serves as Mid-Atlantic Director for Minority Baseball Prospects, pushed back against one of the most persistent narratives surrounding Black participation in baseball—that Black and Brown kids simply aren’t interested in the game anymore.
“The stigma is that our kids aren’t playing baseball, but they are. You just have to know where to go to find them,” Goodwin said. “If you go down South, that’s all you see, and we are trying to get that happening here. And it’s happening…slowly but surely.”
That message was visible throughout the showcase.
Players from four different parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast were on the same HBCU campus competing for something bigger than a weekend tournament trophy. They were attempting to put themselves on a college coach’s recruiting board.
Unhidden Baseball NYC later returned to the field against Virginia’s Delmarva College Prospects before the day concluded with a recruiting Q&A featuring Connor and Lincoln left-handed pitcher Solomon McKinney.
Connor made one point particularly clear to every player in the room: baseball ability alone won’t keep you in a college uniform.
“I don’t care how good you can play. You won’t stay on this team if you’re f*****g off in the classroom,” Connor told the players, while pointing to the Lions’ 3.68 cumulative team GPA. “I sent four guys home in the past two semesters who didn’t want to do their work in the classroom. And three of ’em were starters.”
It was the kind of message young players don’t always hear at showcases built primarily around exit velocity, radar-gun readings and 60 times.
At Lincoln, the student part of student-athlete wasn’t being presented as optional.
McKinney provided another example of where that combination of opportunity and performance can lead.
The Washington, D.C. native made Lincoln history this summer when he became the first Lions player ever selected to participate in Major League Baseball’s HBCU Swingman Classic, an annual showcase created by Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. and presented by MLB and USA Baseball.
McKinney took the mound at Citizens Bank Park during MLB All-Star Week alongside some of the best HBCU baseball players in the country, giving Saturday’s prospects somebody wearing a Lincoln uniform who had recently competed on one of HBCU baseball’s biggest national stages.
That matters.
For years, much of the conversation surrounding Black American participation in baseball has centered on declining numbers at the Major League level. But getting more Black players to professional baseball doesn’t begin when a scout walks into a college stadium.
The pipeline has to exist long before that.
It starts with youth programs, travel organizations and high school baseball. It requires coaches who know where the players are, college programs willing to evaluate them and events that put those two groups in the same place.
That is the space Guadalupe and Unhidden Baseball NYC are attempting to occupy.
As a Lincoln alum, Guadalupe brought his players back to an institution with a history extending to 1854, but the objective was focused firmly on their futures: give young players exposure, let them compete and introduce them to another legitimate route toward college baseball.
The work doesn’t stop at Lincoln.
Next up for Unhidden Baseball NYC is the Blue Chip Northeast Elite Tournament on Long Island from September 18-20, where the organization is expected to compete in a field of roughly 30 teams with college scouts in attendance.
For young players dreaming about eventually reaching “The Show,” there are no guarantees attached to a showcase, tournament or recruiting conversation.
There are, however, opportunities.
And on Saturday at Lincoln University, Unhidden Baseball NYC helped make sure a group of young ballplayers from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic got one.