Atlanta ballplayers share competition, big league DREAM

TEMPE, Ariz. -- There’s an old adage that youth baseball players often hear when starting the journey toward reaching their dreams in the sport they love. At its core, the phrase is some version of, “It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you can play, coaches will find you.”

It’s an ethos that rests at the heart of MLB’s DREAM Series, which invites 80 predominately Black high school prospects to Arizona to receive intense baseball instruction and off-the-field guidance from former and current big leaguers, aimed at closing the opportunity gap to help them reach the next level of baseball.

But if you ask a certain sect of the 2025 participants -- specifically, the four prospects based out of Atlanta -- they’d politely push back on the first part of the saying. It’s a unique source of pride to hail from Georgia’s capital, a hotbed for youth baseball talent that has produced such big leaguers as Michael Harris II and Lawrence Butler, and 2022 No. 4 overall Draft pick Termarr Johnson.

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“I describe Atlanta baseball as a competitive, humbling experience,” said Carson Ray, an infielder who will graduate high school in 2026. “It’s rough, man. Everybody’s good, you just got to try to stand out, be the diamond in the rough.”

Said Butler: “It’s so competitive, because there's a saying in Atlanta that everybody thinks they’re a celebrity -- so it’s the same thing on the field. Everybody thinks they’re the best player out there. We all go hard, compete with each other. And at the end of the day, when the game is over, we’re still friends. It’s friendly competition. Everybody’s trying to win -- we don’t want to lose the bragging rights to our bros.”

The Atlanta ties were heavy at this year’s DREAM Series: Ray; fellow 2026 graduates Royce Woodson and Jonathan Griggs; and 2027 graduate Justice Morrison were among the players working out at Tempe Diablo Stadium, the most of any city. Instructors Marquis Grissom (who is from Atlanta and won a World Series in 1995 with the Braves) and Marvin Freeman (pitched for the Braves from 1990-1993) lent their assistance to the outfielders and pitchers. And current Major League talents Harris, Butler and Tampa Bay’s Taj Bradley (all DREAM Series alumni) showed up to give pointers and impart wisdom on Friday.

More than any, the Atlanta congregation is representative of the generative power of positive examples of Black baseball players having ripple effects through a community. Grissom fondly recalls the impact that the legendary Hank Aaron had on him as a young Black baseball fan growing up in the city, coinciding with Aaron’s relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. and U.N. Ambassador and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young exemplifying how to lead within one’s community. Harris cites seeing Grissom and his youth baseball organization influence Black baseball within the city, and he hopes that he and his fellow Atlanta big leaguers can return the favor that those before them completed.

“I think it just helps them seeing us and knowing that we’re from the same spot where they’re from, and that we’re doing what they want to do,” Harris said. “It gives them a lot of motivation, and it puts a smile on our face, because we know who is behind us.

“There are kids from our same spot, who are trying to come up and do the same thing -- we see them at these camps and different events -- it puts a smile on our face to see them doing something good.”

And those rosy feelings are certainly reciprocated by the DREAM Series’ participants this year.

“They’re looking out for us,” Woodson said. “So, hopefully, when I get there one day, I want to do the same thing for the youth coming up, too. It also makes me a better player, learning from them.”

The familiarity forged in years of facing off against one another in high school games, playing on the same teams in travel ball and seeing each other at MLB Develops events has deepened each time they step on the field.

And as they continue to grow in close quarters, these prospects are able to use events like the DREAM Series as a measuring stick -- a litmus test to understand where they can improve in comparison to their peers, so that when they return home they can advance to the best versions of themselves, to continue sharpening iron against iron in one of the most competitive youth baseball landscapes in the country.

“I pretty much know all of those kids … but I’ve seen them play before, and it’s a beautiful thing to see those guys get a chance to come here and see where they stack up against everybody else in the country,” Grissom said. “So now, when you get a chance to get back home, you see you’re really not the player you thought you were, and now you have work to do.

“That’s what I love about it. As coaches, instructors, teachers and mentors -- you can tell a kid a whole bunch and give him a whole bunch of information, but until he experiences it and realizes that there are a couple of players who are a little bit better, it kind of rewards us as a coach. That we’re doing the right thing, that we’re putting them in the right direction.”

But even if humbling moments may arise, with tough batting practice sessions and missed ground balls cropping up (as is the nature of the game we love), there’s an almost unshakeable confidence that rests within the Atlanta natives. And with the beacons of their predecessors’ success and guidance to follow, this current crop at the DREAM Series arrive at the same message to the rest of the baseball world.

“We’re coming, and we’re ready,” Morrison said. “And we’re always going to be ready to compete.”