Josh Gibson (right) 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 on-base plus slugging and holds the all-time single-season records in each of those categories. Satchel Paige (left) also rose in the MLB standings once Negro Leagues statistics were incorporated in the major league’s record books. Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images

Sports

MLB Is Including Negro League Stats in Its Record Books. Is It Too Little, Too Late?

“It’s hard to say if something like this decision, now, is an act of courage or an act of desperation,” says BU’s Thomas Whalen

When Major League Baseball officials announced that they would incorporate statistics from players in the Negro Leagues in the sport’s official recordkeeping, “a great injustice in baseball history was addressed,” says Thomas Whalen, an associate professor of social sciences in Boston University’s College of General Studies, whose research includes sports and American society. 

“I mean, there were so many great players before Jackie Robinson broke into the National League in 1947—players that you could argue rivaled the greatness of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig—and now they’re finally getting their due,” Whalen says.

Still, he wonders: Is it too little, too late?

The official news came at the end of May, when MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said, “We are proud that the official historical record now includes the players of the Negro Leagues. 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.”

It’s no big secret that baseball has a fan problem. More than twice as many people polled by the Pew Research Center named football as “America’s sport” over what’s been America’s favorite pastime, baseball. And those who do watch professional baseball tend to skew older and whiter than the fan bases for professional football and basketball. 

“Baseball is probably the most conservative sport of the big four,” Whalen says. (Hockey, football, and basketball round out the four most popular sports in the United States.) “And they’ve always been dragging their feet on integration, on recognition of players of color—stars of color. But I think now, given the realities of the 21st century, given the diverse society that we’ve become, it’s also in their own self-interest to highlight these Negro Leagues stars. People of color are not flocking to the game of baseball as they once did. It’s wise for them to give people a sense that baseball has a rich history that goes beyond white players, goes beyond the American and National Leagues.”

Baseball has been around in one form or another since the early 1800s in the United States, and Black athletes have been there from the beginning. However, Black baseball players were barred from the sport’s highest professional levels for much of its history. Shut out of America’s organized (white) leagues, Black players formed their own teams, barnstorming around the country to play anyone willing to play them. 

In 1920, Andrew “Rube” Foster—a former player, manager, and owner for the Chicago American Giants, a Black baseball team—created an opportunity for Black players to properly showcase their talents. He created an eight-team Negro National League. Soon, rival leagues sprung up in the eastern and southern states, and the Negro World Series was born. It was first held from 1924 to 1927 (featuring the champions of the Negro National League against the champions of the Eastern Colored League), and came back 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). 

Legends were born in these leagues. Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Martín Dihigo, Turkey Stearns, Judy Johnson, and Oscar Charleston became household names for both Black and white baseball fans across America, even though they were not competing against baseball’s biggest white stars, such as Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, and even BU’s own Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane (Questrom’24). 

With the addition of these Negro Leagues stars’ statistics in the MLB record books, many of these players are finally being recognized by modern baseball for their athletic talent. Whereas many fans once considered Ruth to be baseball’s greatest slugger, his legacy must be compared against all of baseball’s big hitters, not just the white ones. Gibson, the legendary catcher and power hitter who played for the Negro Leagues teams the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, is now MLB’s all-time leader in batting average, slugging percentage, and on-base plus slugging, and holds the all-time single-season records in each of those categories. 

“Would Babe Ruth have gotten the hits he did if he’d been consistently batting against a pitcher like Satchel Paige, who was perhaps the greatest pitcher in history?” Whalen asks.

On June 20, two current MLB teams will play a game on historic Rickwood Field, in what officials are calling “a tribute to the Negro Leagues.” The Birmingham, Ala., field is the oldest professional baseball park in the United States (a superlative that’s distinct from the title Fenway Park boasts: “oldest park still in use by an MLB team”) and was home to the Birmingham Black Barons during its use by the Negro Leagues. 

“It’s hard to say if something like this decision, now, is an act of courage or an act of desperation” to entice more people of color to watch baseball, says Whalen, who gets a whiff of desperation in the sudden urgency with which the MLB is honoring its history. 

Nonetheless, he says he finds “a moral significance” to the decision. “These were players that were denied the chance to completely ply their talents on the biggest stage of all—Major League Baseball. And now there is—maybe grudging—admiration from the sport of everything they contributed,” he says. “The game cannot be ignored that they were great in their own right. And I think that’s an important statement to make.”