Editorial of June 6, 2024

A New Big Inning

In a long-awaited, heavily researched and somewhat criticized move, last week Major League Baseball announced it is expanding its records to include many, but at this time not all, statistics from the Negro Leagues of 1920-1948. These leagues, of which seven are considered by Major League Baseball to be major, are now to be part of the six historical major league designations so confirmed in 1969. Somewhere in the vicinity of 3,400 African-American players who played during those years have now been, and are being, recognized. This is proving to incur some significant changes in the numbers and statistics of present-day Major League Baseball.

In the 19th century, African-Americans were not accepted on the major and minor league baseball teams, so they formed their own professional teams. The first known baseball game pitting two Black teams against each other was on November 15, 1859: the Henson Base Ball Club of Jamaica, Queens defeated the Unknowns of Weeksville, Brooklyn, 53 to 43. There followed many years of complicated activities of professional Black teams, Negro Major Leagues, minor leagues, and just plain barnstorming teams—many of which had no home fields, many of which preferred to play pick-up games against any team that would play against them, and many more of which just wanted to play before larger and more robust crowds who were willing to pay them more to play.

While a great deal of research was begun years ago by volunteers, the decision to find, decipher, analyze and adopt statistics from the Negro Leagues was made by Major League Baseball in 2020. Since then, the going has been rough, and there has been some criticism of the announcement last month, which may have been too speedy and not one that is entirely inclusive or correct. Not every stat has been verified, and many are still undisclosed. To arrive at this point is no easy achievement, but it is nevertheless an achievement. While Major League Baseball has forever preserved its statistics, keeping them neatly in bound volumes for all the world to cherish, the Negro Leagues did no such thing. They had fewer resources: their seasons fluctuated; their many teams fluctuated as well, very often crumbling into oblivion within a year of their formation; they had no single repository to record their statistics; there were no headlines blasted across national newspapers and media outlets, nor were there photographs of pitchers, catchers, home-run hitters and base-stealers in athletic action. There were essentially very few box scores. There were unofficial barnstorming games, pick-up games and even All-Star games littered within the 60 to 80 scheduled official league games, some of which never were played and most of which were never recorded.

In the end, this recognition, at last, of the immense achievement of the players in the Negro Leagues—and of their proven ability to play on even terms with their white counterparts—is an astounding, though late, accomplishment. The baseball world now has some newly remembered, astonishingly proficient players who have long been without their due merit. Congratulations to them all and let us not yet throw in the towel. There are a lot more questions to be asked and statistics to be confirmed.