Pirates: MLB’s first African-born player Ngoepe caps remarkable ride to the show
The Pittsburgh Pirates made history when they promoted Mpho Gift Ngoepe to their major league squad this past week, and the 27-year-old infielder — the only African-born player in MLB history — continues to rack up impressive firsts.
Ngoepe entered Wednesday’s game in the fourth inning and singled off Cubs ace Jon Lester in his first big-league at-bat. On Friday night, he earned his first start as a Pirate and broke out with three hits in the Pirates’ 12-2 shellacking of the Marlins.
“It’s a lot to take in,” Ngoepe said recently. “Everything is just amazing: bigger locker room, big stadium . . . Everything is just breathtaking right now.”
“It means a lot to people back home,” he added. “I’ve been getting messages all day from my friends and family, people that always supported me back home, people that play baseball. So I’ve had a tremendous crowd that’s been cheering me on and being very happy for me.
“It means that it doesn’t matter where you come from, no matter where you are or who you are, you can still make it.”
Ngoepe was born in South Africa and raised by a mother who worked for an amateur baseball team in the Johannesburg area. She died of pneumonia in 2013.
He was spotted by a Pirates scout at an MLB academy in Italy, and the organization signed him in 2008.
Ngoepe’s rise to the majors has been slow, as he has had to make cultural adjustments along with improvements to his game.
Widely viewed as the organization’s most talented defensive player, he changed from being a switch-hitter to only batting from his natural right side in 2015, and he showed a better approach at the plate in the spring.
“It was a long journey,” Ngoepe told MLB.com.
“I kept with it. There were a few times I wanted to stop. It’s the people that are behind you that keeps you going every single day. That kind of kept my fight. My ninth year and I made it to the big leagues.”
“It’s a fabulous organizational win for everybody,” Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said.
“I would love for him to have $1 for everybody who’s looked at him and said he’ll never make it . . . He’s just continued to press on and play and probably many times believed when not a whole lot of other people did.”
Ngoepe goes by Gift, which is what his first name means in his native language, Sotho.
Last year, the Pirates signed his younger brother, Victor, and assigned him to their Gulf Coast League squad.
To make room for Ngoepe, the Pirates sent pitcher Dovydas Neverauskas back to Triple-A. Neverauskas’s own promotion earlier in the week had made him the first Lithuanian-born MLB player.