What to know about Negro Leagues stats entering MLB record
Major League Baseball’s embrace of the Negro Leagues is now recognized in the record book, resulting in new-look leaderboards fronted in several prominent places by Hall of Famer Josh Gibson and an overdue appreciation of many other Black stars.
Following the 2020 announcement that seven different Negro Leagues from 1920-1948 would be recognized as Major Leagues, MLB announced Wednesday that it has followed the recommendations of the independent Negro League Statistical Review Committee in absorbing the available Negro Leagues numbers into the official historical record.
“We are proud that the official historical record now includes the players of the Negro Leagues,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “This initiative is focused on ensuring that future generations of fans have access to the statistics and milestones of all those who made the Negro Leagues possible. Their accomplishments on the field will be a gateway to broader learning about this triumph in American history and the path that led to Jackie Robinson’s 1947 Dodger debut.”
Gibson, the legendary catcher and power hitter who played for the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, is now MLB’s all-time leader in batting average, slugging percentage and OPS and holds the all-time single-season records in each of those categories. Gibson is one of more than 2,300 Negro Leagues players — including three living players who played in the 1920-1948 era in Bill Greason, Ron Teasley and Hall of Famer Willie Mays — included in a newly integrated database at MLB.com that combines the Negro Leagues numbers with the existing data from the American League, National League and other Major Leagues from history.
“The Negro Leagues were a product of segregated America, created to give opportunity where opportunity did not exist,” said Negro Leagues expert and historian Larry Lester. “As Bart Giamatti, former Commissioner of Baseball, once said, ‘We must never lose sight of our history, insofar as it is ugly, never to repeat it, and insofar as it is glorious, to cherish it.’”
John Thorn, official MLB historian and chairman of the Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee, said the new database can be understood “by realizing that stats are shorthand for stories, and that the story of the Negro Leagues is worthy of our study.”
To help fans with that study, here are answers to questions you might have about this historic and unusual (though not unprecedented) development.
What were the Negro Leagues?
Prior to the debut of Jackie Robinson with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, the American and National leagues were, like so much of society, segregated. Unable to pursue playing careers in those leagues, Black players formed leagues of their own, beginning in 1920 with the eight-team Negro National League, founded by Andrew “Rube” Foster.
Over the next 30 years, a variety of Negro Leagues came and went. The Negro World Series was held from 1924 to 1927 (featuring the champions of the Negro National League against the champions of the Eastern Colored League) and again from 1942 to 1948 (featuring the champions of the second iteration of the Negro National League against the champions of the Negro American League).
All told, the Negro Leagues produced 37 eventual members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Robinson’s integration of MLB marked the beginning of the end for the Negro Leagues.
Why are the Negro Leagues being added to the historical record?
Essentially, to right a wrong. It certainly was not the fault of Black baseball stars such as Gibson, Cool Papa Bell and Oscar Charleston that they were forbidden from participating in the AL or NL, and recognizing the Negro Leagues as Major Leagues is in keeping with long-held beliefs that the quality of the segregation-era Negro Leagues circuits was comparable to the MLB product in that same time period.
“All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” Commissioner Manfred said at the time of the 2020 announcement. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.”
In recent decades, the tireless work of researchers combing through newspapers, scorebooks and microfiche led to the expanded availability of Negro League statistics (culminating most notably in the expansive database compiled by Seamheads) and made it viable to include these leagues in the historical record.
Which Negro Leagues will be included in the official record?
There are seven, and they operated between 1920 and 1948. The reason for the starting point is that attempts to develop Negro Leagues prior to 1920 were ultimately unsuccessful and lacked a league structure. And 1948 was deemed to be a reasonable end point because it was the last year of the Negro National League and the segregated World Series. After that point, the Negro League teams and leagues that had endured were stripped of much of their talent.
The seven leagues are as follows:
• Negro National League (I) (1920–1931)
• Eastern Colored League (1923–1928)
• American Negro League (1929)
• East-West League (1932)
• Negro Southern League (1932)
• Negro National League (II) (1933–1948)
• Negro American League (1937–1948)
This first release of the MLB database also includes independent teams that formerly played within a Negro League and subsequently returned. The database includes not only these clubs’ won-lost records as independents, against league opponents, but also their players’ statistics.
Is this the first time leagues have been granted “Major League” status long after they ceased to exist?
No. In 1969, MLB’s Special Committee on Baseball Records determined which past professional leagues should be classified alongside the AL and NL as Major Leagues in the first publication of “The Baseball Encyclopedia.” At that time, the committee concluded that the American Association (1882-91), Union Association (1884), Players’ League (1890) and Federal League (1914-15) all qualified.
Not only did that committee not grant Major League status to the Negro Leagues, but the Negro Leagues weren’t even given consideration in the meetings. MLB’s 2020 decision reflected the evolved attitudes toward and respect for the Negro Leagues.
Why did it take so long to incorporate the Negro Leagues into the statistical record?
Once the 2020 decision was made to include the Negro Leagues, MLB and its official statistician, the Elias Sports Bureau, had to complete a review process of the Seamheads data, and MLB and Seamheads had thorough and detailed discussions over how the data would be utilized.
MLB built upon the Seamheads database with the help of Retrosheet, an organization that computerizes Major League games from prior to 1984, and a 16-member Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee was formed to determine, among other things, what minimum standards would be put in place for Negro Leagues players to qualify for season or career leaderboards.
Complicating the process was the understandably scattershot nature of the Negro Leagues schedules, which we will cover in a sec.