Gift Ngoepe

Who is Gift Ngoepe?

M'Poh "Gift" Ngoepe is a South African professional baseball player within the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. A native of Randburg, Gauteng, Ngoepe became the first Black South African, and the sixth South African to sign a professional baseball contract when he signed in October 2008. Growing up, Ngoepe's mother was a clubhouse attendant for a team called the Mets. The family lived in one of the clubhouse rooms. Ngoepe often competed with players 10, 15, even 20 years older. He was invited to Major League Baseball's academy in Tirrenia, Italy, where the Pirates signed him.

The 2009 GCL Pirates had nine players each from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, with the United States a distant third at six. There were the two highly publicized, pioneering Indian pitchers, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, a second baseman named Henry Henry from Colombia, two players from Puerto Rico, and one each from Mexico, Panama, Australia, Canada and one of the first three players ever signed out of South Africa, Ngoepe, while one of the Americans, Chris Aure, is from Alaska. "We eat together in the cafeteria, but sometimes we try each other's foods," Ngoepe says. "I listen to the Indians' music when I go past their rooms, and they listen to my music from Africa. We tell each other stories about our home countries. We do everything together." "Everybody's the same here, like family," Venezuelan infielder Elevys Gonzalez says.