Avery Brooks - Blog Posts
By popular demand: Avery Brooks (Extended Edition)
Avery Brooks deliveries that make me smile every single time I think of them.
Homestead Greys In Star Trek DS9
I recently started watching Deep Space 9 and it brought the biggest smile to my face to see Sisko wearing a Homestead Greys hat.
The Homestead Grays were a Pittsburgh-based Negro league baseball team that played in the Negro National League from 1922 to 1948…
The Homestead Grays were one of the most successful Negro league baseball teams, winning multiple championships in the Negro National League. The Homestead Grays weren’t inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame UNTIL 2006 (almost 60 years later!). The teams primary owner was inducted 60 years after his death. They were one of the best baseball teams PERIOD… They won nine straight league titles 1937-48. So seeing one of the characters in a show from the 90’s represent this team years before the baseball hall of fame even did made me so happy… The record stats from the Homestead Greys weren’t put into consideration into baseball history until this year! The Homestead Greys had some of the best baseball players of all time on their team.
As someone from Pittsburgh seeing this team represented in something as impactful as Star Trek made me so happy. Whoever did the costuming for Star Trek Deep Space 9, excellent job.
EDIT: I’ve read some of the tags and from my understanding it seems like it was Avery Brooke’s idea to include the Homestead Greys cap in DS9. Atm I am unable to confirm that. Either way, that’s so fucking cool and really has added a lot to the show for me!!
The contradiction between what we were playing and reality is this: Oftentimes we worked until two or three in the morning. We’re not the only company still shooting, but, yeah, we’re late. Cars are going through the gate, the arm comes down. There’s a line of cars. Then when I get there, the gate comes down and security says to me, “Open your trunk.” I said, “No. Why? All these other cars just … Why? What do you think I have in this Volkswagon Rabbit? What’s in there, the Defiant?” What I’m trying to say is that the contradiction, or the paradox of it all, we can’t get away from. You see what I mean? I wish sometimes that were true; that the fact I played Sisko would make some kind of difference on the street. No, only on the screen. The contradictions are evident. They are inescapable in a way.”
Avery Brooks, quoted in, The Fifty-Year Mission - The Next 25 Years, Volume 2, Edward Gross, Mark A. Altman