‘Long Time Coming’ on Netflix Tells The Fascinating Story Of Racial Integration in Little League Baseball

A sporting event became a contentious battleground over America’s race relations. Some of those who played on the field still think about how that game shaped, challenged and even supported their views on America’s supposed melting pot. You’re forgiven for thinking about incidents that took place in recent years, but one documentary helps us realize that there’s nothing new under the sun when it comes to the collision of politics, race and sports in these United States.

Long Time Coming, which was added to the Netflix library recently, is a 2017 documentary film that looks at a relatively unknown piece of baseball history. In 1955, an all-Black youth baseball team would face an all-white team in the racially segregated state of Florida for the right to advance in the nationwide Little League tournament. The game marked the first time an integrated contest would take place in the Sunshine State, but it was played in the unfriendly confines of Jim Crow.

The documentary, directed by Jon Strong, told the stories of the all-Black Pensacola Jaycees and all-white Orlando Kiwainis as a build-up to an incredibly poignant reunion between the surviving members of both teams. Yet, Strong and his team also enlisted the help of baseball royalty to bring this piece of Florida and American history back into modern times. Interviews with Hall of Fame icons Henry Aaron and Cal Ripken Jr. as well as Florida natives Gary Sheffield and Davey Johnson provided more gravitas to a tale of how these preteens took part in something bigger than themselves.

The subject of the film couldn’t have found better timing, not only in relation to baseball, but society at large. Baseball, specifically Major League Baseball, continues to fashion itself as the sport that paced ahead of the United States as a whole when in came to racial integration, despite the trials and tribulations endured by Jackie Robinson, the aforementioned Aaron, Roberto Clemente and other non-white icons of the game. Yet, Long Time Coming served as a reminder that just because the professional ranks were slowly integrating, it didn’t mean that the amateurs were going to follow suit.

Yet, where the film catches your attention the most is in how each surviving player, regardless of which team they played on, is as fond of their youthful naivete about the world in 1955 as they were frustrated about this same blue sphere six decades later. And based on how we are introduced to these men through the documentary, their worldviews are deeply rooted in upbringings within two contrasting communities. The grown-up white players spoke reverentially of being raised in “a simpler time,” but their relative affluence in Orlando kept them at bay from the more difficult lives “colored” children endured in a segregated state. Even in 2019 as the filmmakers were visiting the still-active baseball grounds both teams played in during the 1950s, it’s obvious that aspiring young players in Pensacola still are not afforded the same perks of clean playgrounds and new baseball equipment.

Even more gripping are the observations each man, white and Black, shares about current events. The baseball game of yesteryear, in most ways through the film, is the plot device that helps untangle how these 11- and 12-year-old boys became jaded about the world promised to them as adults. One of the players from the Orlando team earnestly wanted to know what his Black counterparts thought about the controversies surrounding their 1955 encounter, but in parts of the film shared his cynicism over the modern movement of Black Lives Matter. On the flip side, one of the Pensacola players felt that the baseball game was a brutal introduction into institutionalized racism within his home state.

As somber as a significant portion of Long Time Coming is, at its core is a desire for the viewer to rediscover her or his childhood as an adult. These men have spent their entire adult lives thinking about this one afternoon over sixty years ago when all that mattered was the game. The unique situation that bonded these men for life may have been centered around skin color. Yet, whether playing on the field in 1955 or reuniting with one another decades later, each man still wanted to prove that he was one of the best young baseball players in America, whether Black or white.

Jason Clinkscales is the managing editor for The Sports Fan Journal, editor at Yardbarker and contributing writer for Awful Announcing. A New York City native, he is also a former media research analyst in both television networks and advertising agencies.

Stream Long Time Coming on Netflix