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Keynan Middleton typically is quiet and reserved, preferring to spend his free time with his daughters Kamrynn, Karter and Kollynz. But he has found himself moved by injustice and his children to talk a little more.
As the Chicago White Sox reliever sat in the home dugout at Guaranteed Rate Field last month, Middleton stared into the distance at the sun reflecting on the field. He had been wanting to talk about his experiences for quite some time.
During the civil unrest in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, while he was with the Los Angeles Angels, Middleton attended protests. He worried about whether his participation would draw the attention of the team’s front office and what that might mean for him.
“I’m doing all the protests, and that was a real eye-opening situation because it was like, I felt alone down there in Orange County,” Middleton told the Tribune. “I was the only Black person down there. But then once we got in the streets and I seen all these faces and I was nervous, I knew I was doing the right thing but I was like, ‘How is the baseball world going to think about me when I do this?’
“But once I got down there and I saw these little kids that were me, it opened up my eyes to be like: This is my platform. This is where I come from. If we all treat each other the same, the world would be a better place. I have to use my platform to shed light on everything.”
It wasn’t always like that for him.
Middleton, who is biracial, was raised by his dad in the Pacific Northwest and often was the only Black kid in many of his games. He recalled feeling isolated and as if no one understood him throughout his playing career, but the spirit of the protests in summer 2020 stirred something within him.
“After all the stuff that happened with (Colin) Kaepernick, and then there’s a guy named Bruce Maxwell who played for the Oakland A’s who kneeled and never played the game of baseball ever again, these things are in the back of your head when … people are deciding to kneel on the first day of the 2020 season,” Middleton said. “And that didn’t scare me at all because I had this conversation with my family. I was like: ‘I know who I am. I don’t care what anybody thinks outside of me. And I’m doing it for the right reasons.’ ”
His journey had taken him halfway across the country. Before joining the White Sox this past offseason, Middleton pitched for the Angels, Seattle Mariners and Arizona Diamondbacks.
Middleton grew up in Milwaukie, Ore., which had very few African-Americans, but he found camaraderie with a student organization called Students of African and African-American Heritage Association that met monthly.
“So you just felt different,” Middleton said. “And then you grow up. There were 20-25 of us. Nobody really sees your perspective on the court or on the field. People say racist stuff to you and you’ve just got to take it on the chin because nobody around you even really knows what that feels like.”
Growing up with a white family, he noticed they would get “weird looks” from others who were likely wondering how they were connected. Adopted by his dad when he was 8, Middleton always has known he was different, but his family never treated him as if he were.
“It took me a long time to not listen to people and the comments they make about the difference in colors between us, but I always knew it never mattered,” said Jeff Middleton, Keynan’s dad. “He was my son. That was all that mattered.”
The elder Middleton would tell his son to be himself and ignore the comments, but he also recognized the difficulty in teaching that.
“It’s not easy to teach kids how to walk away when someone is treating you badly, but he was always the kid that wants to get along with everyone,” Jeff Middleton said. “He always knew we can’t always control how people treat you, but you can control how you choose to treat them.”
Middleton’s dad got him into T-ball as a toddler, but he never dreamed of being a professional baseball player. In fact, Middleton said he loved basketball more than anything and initially attended college to play the sport. In his final year at Lane Community College in Eugene, Ore., he walked on to the baseball team as a pitcher, and the Angels drafted him two months later. He made his MLB debut on May 5, 2017.
As his baseball career progressed, Middleton still felt that familiar feeling of being different creeping in. He found favorites in former players such as Satchel Paige and Dontrelle Willis because they “looked like me and they pitched.” It’s because of them and Jackie Robinson that he feels it’s important for him to use his place in baseball for more.
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“There’s ways to get kids out, but a lot of it being they don’t see a lot of Black players out here,” Middleton said. “When I was growing up, I just gravitated toward the guys that look like me on the field. The more of us they get to play, the more kids will be drawn to this game.”
When Middleton was a free agent last winter, it became increasingly important for him to sign somewhere he felt comfortable. With the Sox, he has reunited with pitching coach Ethan Katz — his first pitching coach in the Angels organization — and he also had previous relationships with pitchers Mike Clevinger and Kendall Graveman.
He said there’s chemistry with the team and he no longer feels so alone. He’s not the only Black person on the team. “Having people here that know me is nice,” he said.
Through Monday, Middleton had appeared in nine games with a 3.86 ERA and 13 strikeouts in seven innings. After his April 12 outing against the Minnesota Twins, manager Pedro Grifol said Middleton’s early success wasn’t a surprise.
“He had really good presence, was confident,” Grifol said. “He’s done this before. He’s been really good, so it’s a matter of him getting an opportunity and he was pretty damn good. Glad he’s here.”
Middleton wants to help kids who might not feel there is a place for them in baseball, letting them know he knows how they feel. He believes the best way to do that is to get out in the community and make his presence known, and he supports organizations such as The Players Alliance.
“What do I want people to learn from me?” he asked, looking off into the distance once again. “You can’t change people. But you can change the way people look at each other, I guess. I’m saying that you can give people hope. That’s the best way I can put it.”
