Major League Baseball (MLB) is promoting seven professional Negro Leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948 to Major League status, in a move MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred calls “long overdue recognition.”
Statistics of players from the Negro National League, Eastern Colored League, American Negro League, East-West League, Negro Southern League, Negro National League and Negro American League are now officially considered part of MLB history.
“Individuals in the African American community have always seen the Negro Leagues as major league,” says Dr. Michael E. Lomax, a retired professor at the University of Iowa and author of the books Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1860-1901: Operating by Any Means Necessary and Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1902-1931: The Negro National and Eastern Colored Leagues.
“Statistics are absolutely one of the foundations of baseball,” says Ron Thomas, director of the Journalism and Sports Program at Morehouse College. “Having the statistics at least reflect their accomplishments is important, in terms of the culture of the sport.”
“Doing this adds legitimacy to MLB because — at least my personal feeling is — you can’t tell me that Ted Williams was the greatest hitter if Josh Gibson never got a chance and if Williams never had to hit against Satchel Paige,” he adds.
The statistics are in
Dr. Ketra L. Armstrong, professor of sport management and director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity in Sport at the University of Michigan, says she’s happy to see the recognition, but she’s also cautious in gauging the impact.
