But if recent trends continue, Willis won't have many people to whom he can pass the torch.
When baseball began its season last week, there were just four African American starting pitchers on major-league rosters: Willis, the Indians' C.C. Sabathia, the Pirates' Ian Snell, and the Nationals' Jerome Williams.
While there is still a Ryan Howard here and a Ken Griffey Jr. there, the overall pool of African Americans playing in the pros has evaporated to a puddle. The self-segregation away from baseball toward other sports and other careers has left only a handful of African Americans in major-league clubhouses.
Last month, the University of Central Florida's racial and gender report card for baseball in 2006 painted a stark picture. The study put the percentage of African Americans playing in the majors at 8.4 percent, the lowest in two decades.
By contrast, white players constituted 59.5 percent of the baseball-playing population last season, while almost 30 percent of major-leaguers - and many of the game's superstars - were of Latino descent.
As late as 1995, 19 percent of major-leaguers were African American, according to the study. But by 2005, the Houston Astros played in the World Series without a single African American on their roster.
Baseball has noticed the decline.
"I don't think we're saying every African American athlete has to be a baseball player," Jimmie Lee Solomon, Major League Baseball's executive vice president of baseball operations, said by telephone.
"But we have the longest historical link to the black community," Solomon said. "It would be a shame to let it go. We would be remiss if we didn't do everything in our power to make sure that every black kid as well as every white and every red kid and every Hispanic kid who wants to play the game gets an opportunity to play the game."
