M.L.B. Will Add Negro Leagues to Official Records

“For historical merit, today it is extraordinarily important,” Kendrick said in a statement. “Having been around so many of the Negro League players, they never looked to Major League Baseball to validate them. But for fans and for historical sake, this is significant — it really is.”

The leagues that have been elevated to official major league status are the Negro National League (I) (1920-31); the Eastern Colored League (1923-28); the American Negro League (1929); the East-West League (1932); the Negro Southern League (1932); the Negro National League (II) (1933-48); and the Negro American League (1937-48). Those leagues produced 35 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame, including Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell, Paige and Gibson.

The announcement called attention to the work of the historian Larry Lester, a co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, as well as Gary Ashwill, Scott Simkus, Mike Lynch and Kevin Johnson for their construction of the Negro Leagues Database, which is the most complete statistical record of the leagues.

The first step in merging the record books will be a thorough review of available information by the Elias Sports Bureau, keeper of M.L.B.’s official statistics. Its findings could result in several records changing, and could affect the career totals for any players who appeared in both the Negro leagues and the National League or the American League — a group that includes players like Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays and Paige.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/sports/baseball/mlb-negro-leagues.html