To tell the history of baseball without including the Negro Leagues would paint an incomplete and narrow picture of America’s pastime. Baseball’s history is finally being revised.
Negro League statistics will officially become part of the MLB record book on Wednesday, a move that comes more than three years after MLB announced it was promoting the Negro Leagues to the major leagues.
More than 2,300 players who played in the seven Negro leagues from 1920 to 1948 will be integrated into the MLB database. A Special Baseball Records Committee in 1969 voted to include the American League, National League, American Association, and Union Association, but did not grant major league status to the Negro Leagues.
“This is a big day,” Negro Leagues Museum Director Bob Kendrick told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday. “What’s amazing, and we’ve said that so many times in the last few days and weeks when it comes to the Negro Leagues, is this: This is the result of a lot of hard work by incredible historians and researchers who worked tirelessly to try to accomplish something that probably never was thought possible.”
The news was first reported by USA Today’s Bob Nightingale.
“We are proud to now include Negro League players in the official historical record,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “This effort is focused on ensuring that the statistics and milestones of all the players who helped make the Negro Leagues possible are available to future generations of fans. Their accomplishments on the field will serve as a gateway to learning more broadly about this triumph in American history and the path that led to Jackie Robinson’s 1947 Dodgers debut.”
Josh Gibson slides into home plate during the Negro League East-West All-Star Game at Comiskey Park in Chicago on August 13, 1944. With his stats now part of the official MLB record book, Gibson will become the league’s new all-time record holder in batting average, slugging percentage and OPS. (Getty Images)
The Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee, comprised of baseball historians, Negro Leagues experts, former players, researchers and journalists, reviewed data, box scores, statistics and additional information uncovered by Seamheads, RetroSheet and the Elias Sports Bureau.
“We looked for historians, statisticians and stakeholders who we expected would have an interest in whether MLB gets the process and the product right,” John Thorn, MLB’s official historian and chairman of the Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee, told Yahoo Sports this week. “We weren’t looking for ‘like-minded people,’ but rather people who were likely to be controversial.”
What does this mean for MLB statistics?
One of the biggest questions baseball fans and spectators will have is how MLB determined which statistics can be used. The Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee looked at decades worth of box scores and data to find statistics for games that are considered league games. Negro League schedules typically feature 60-80 games, with an additional 40-60 games played as exhibition games. Statistics from games known as “barnstorming” or exhibition games do not count toward MLB’s recorded totals.
Similar to how MLB determines eligibility for statistical leaders, a similar formula was used in determining which players qualified for the MLB Leaderboard.
Negro League statistics will be officially registered as part of MLB’s historical record. translator.
Josh Gibson holds the MLB single-season record in the following categories:
⚾️ Batting average (.466 in 1943)
⚾️ Slugging percentage (.974 in 1937)
⚾️ OPS (1.474 in 1937) pic.twitter.com/7iETeugSAI
— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) May 28, 2024
Negro League legend and Hall of Famer Josh Gibson holds the MLB single-season records for batting average (1943, .466), slugging percentage (1937, .974) and OPS (1937, 1.474). Gibson, who played for the Pittsburgh Crawfords and Homestead Grays, holds the MLB career records in all three categories. The previous records for single-season slugging percentage and OPS were both held by Barry Bonds. Gibson’s career batting average of .372 passed Ty Cobb for the all-time lead, and his career slugging percentage of .718 and OPS of 1.177 surpassed the previous record in both categories held by Babe Ruth.
Negro League statistics will also be consolidated and updated for former Negro League players who played in the major leagues, such as Willie Mays, Minnie Minoso, Larry Doby, Jackie Robinson, etc. Statistics will continue to be reviewed and updated as more data and information is discovered.
Some of the statistical updates include:
Mays had 3,293 hits, 10 more than he had during his 1948 season with the Birmingham Black Barons.
Miñoso recorded 150 hits while with the New York Cubans, joining the 2,000-hit club.
Jackie Robinson had 49 hits for the Kansas City Monarchs, bringing his career total to 1,567.
Satchel Paige won 28 games in the Negro Leagues, bringing his total to 125.
Rules established by the SBRC in 1969 state that “for all-time records in a single season, no asterisks or official symbols will be used to indicate the number of games scheduled,” and thus new Negro League record holders and additions to the MLB leaderboard will not include asterisks.
MLB will pay tribute to the Negro Leagues on June 20 with a regular-season matchup between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. Rickwood Field, home of the Birmingham Black Barons, is believed to be the oldest professional baseball stadium in the United States.
“Giving Negro League history a mainstream voice.”
The oral history of the Negro Leagues has been around for over 100 years, making players like Gibson the stuff of legend. As new data, documents, box scores and information is collected, it brings more concrete evidence to the stories that have been told.
Kendrick was one of the greatest advocates for the Negro Leagues to be recognized by Major League Baseball and to educate fans, new and old, about the impact the Negro Leagues had on baseball history.
“No sport values its history more than baseball,” Kendrick told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday. “Baseball is romanticized a lot more than other sports, and it’s a sport that constantly compares stars of the past to stars of the present. And the united effort that we’ve embarked on over the last few years goes back to the introduction of the Negro Leagues into MLB The Show 23 last year. These events gave Negro League history a mainstream voice.
“We found that young baseball fans not only wanted to know about the Negro Leagues, but were obsessed with them. As a museum, as a cultural institution, that’s exactly what we wanted to do.”
Tuesday’s news highlights another chapter in baseball that was once ignored. The addition of Negro League statistics to MLB’s historical record doesn’t take away from MLB history — it just adds to it. As new generations of fans learn about baseball, baseball’s history will be told in a more complete and comprehensive way.
“I believe the past is living, breathing and influencing every moment of the present,” Thorn said. “No sport is more intimately connected to history and the heroes of the past than baseball, and now we have an opportunity to comprehensively tell the story of baseball and the nation.”
