The Negro Leagues are officially apart of the Major League Baseball stats. Being that this change happened, who’s to say what will happen next?
What We Know:
- Major League Baseball on Wednesday announced that records of Negro Leagues players would be included in the game’s official statistics in a “long-overdue recognition.” The names of some 3,400 Negro Leaguers from seven distinct leagues in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, along with all their accumulated statistics, will be added to its official records. Back in the 1940s, black players weren’t allowed to play in MLB, and fans wouldn’t be able to see their favorite players in the 20th century.
- “All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumph against a backdrop of injustice, and we are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.
- According to NBC News, the seven leagues that will now be included in official records are the original Negro National League (1920-31), the Eastern Colored League (1923-28), the American Negro League (1929), the East-West League (1932), the Negro Southern League (1932), the second Negro National League (1933-48) and the Negro American League (1937-48), MLB said.
“For historical merit, today it is extraordinarily important. Having been around so many of the Negro League players, they never looked to @MLB to validate them. But for fans and for historical sake, this is significant, it really is” – @nlbmprez pic.twitter.com/wOu4HJRTFN
— Negro Leagues Baseball Museum KC (@NLBMuseumKC) December 16, 2020
- The Negro Leagues of 1920-48 produced some of the greatest players in the sport’s history, including 32 Hall of Fame members. Names such as Robinson, Willie Mays, Roy Campanella, Satchel Paige, Monty Irvin, Josh Gibson, James Thomas “Cool Papa” Bell, and MLB’s second Black player, Larry Doby. Other baseball players are finally being recognized as major league caliber ballplayers. Their statistical records and their careers will be considered equal to anybody who had played in the National League or American League during that period of time.
- “We couldn’t be more thrilled by this recognition of the significance of the Negro Leagues in Major League Baseball history,” said Edward Schauder, legal representative for Gibson’s estate and co-founder of the Negro Leagues Players Association.
This is a historical change that should have happened years ago. Now that it has, some of the greatest players in baseball history will receive the recognition they deserve.
