MLB Is Finally Delivering Justice to Negro Leagues Players
Ignoring the records of segregation-era Black players left the story of baseball — a game that worships statistics — incomplete.
Negro League slugger Josh Gibson has been belatedly recognized as the all-time Major League batting champ.
Photographer: Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post
Baseball fans are obsessed with statistics. Memorizing them; sifting them; inventing new ones. For a true seamhead, if the ballpark is a cathedral, then record books are the Bible.
What welcome news, then, that Major League Baseball has announced a new phase in its project to integrate its statistical records. After a multiyear review of Negro Leagues box scores, MLB has announced it has enough information to start adding data for those players who were excluded from White teams by Jim Crow-era segregation laws. It’s a form of long-delayed professional justice for more than 2,300 Black ballplayers .