 | | June 1968 Art Hamilton of the Detroit Stars being tagged out in attempted steal of second base by Jim Banks of the Memphis Red Sox during second inning of opener at Yankee Stadium. Rufus Gibson backs up play. Negro American League returned here after 12-year absence.Ernie Sisto/The New York Times |
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If baseball somehow reflects America, as romanticists like to believe, then it also shares in its blemishes. The National and American leagues were segregated until 1947, and the decades since have been marked by a halting kind of reckoning. |
On Wednesday, Major League Baseball took one of its biggest steps to redress past racial wrongs: It formally recognized several of the Negro leagues as on par with the American and National leagues, a distinction that will alter the official record books to acknowledge a quality of competition that the long-excluded players never doubted. |
With the change, more than 3,400 players from seven distinct Negro leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948 will be recognized as major leaguers. And the statistical records will be updated. |
“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,” Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, said in a statement. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.” |
The adjustments to the statistics will almost assuredly result in a new single-season record for batting average. But the impact on other records will be fairly small as a result of the shorter schedules played in the Negro leagues, most of which played only 80 to 100 games, as compared to the 154 per season that was standard in the other major leagues of the era. |
Records for some of the game’s biggest stars will receive at least mild adjustments. The Hall of Famer Willie Mays, for example, is likely to be credited with 17 more hits, though no home runs, from his time with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948. That would bring his career total, including hits from his time with the Giants and the Mets, to 3,300. The actual adjustments will be made after a review of available data by the Elias Sports Bureau, keeper of Major League Baseball’s official statistics. |
The decision to recognize Negro league players as major leaguers was a welcome change for the people who have fought for years to keep the leagues’ memory alive. But Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, said that no announcement from Major League Baseball could validate leagues that earned their own legitimacy. |
 | | The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords of the Negro Leagues pose for a team photo in front of their team bus. The Crawfords are considered the greatest black baseball team of all-time. The team included players such as Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell, Judy Johnson and Leroy \“Satchel\" Paige.National Baseball Hall of Fame Library/MLB, via Getty Images |
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“It gives greater context to the Negro leagues in a quantifiable way, as opposed to the lore and legend that sometimes drives this story,” Kendrick said of the changes. “But I can tell you this: For those who called the Negro leagues home, they never questioned their own validity.” |
The group of seven leagues has already produced 35 Hall of Famers, including recognizable major league stars like Mays, Larry Doby and Jackie Robinson, as well as figures who made their names entirely in the Negro leagues, like Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston. The leagues were dominated by champions like the Chicago American Giants and the Kansas City Monarchs. |
Negro league play continued during the early years of the integrated majors, but John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball, said the landscape changed so profoundly after 1948 — the year of the last Negro World Series — that Major League Baseball used that season as the cutoff. |
Thorn attributed the changes to a bleeding of talent to the American and National leagues, and the dissolution of the second Negro National League. Recognizable stars like Hank Aaron and Ernie Banks came to the Negro leagues after 1948, and some leagues played as late as 1960. But extending the window to include them was not appropriate, he said. |
“We’re trying not to honor individual players but the league experience, and the Black experience in baseball and America,” Thorn said. |
 | | Protesters marched in New York in June as anger spread across the country.Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times |
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‘The Daily’ looks back at protests against racial inequity |
In a year defined by a pandemic, protests and politics, “The Daily” sought out personal stories. The team put together a playlist of the 10 episodes that merit a second listen — or a first, if they are new to you. |
Among the episodes, the team captured the sounds of the Black Lives Matter movement, unprecedented in scale, by traveling to the protests’ front lines. Then, they spoke with Black police officers and union leaders at the center of the debate over defunding. |
The protests after the killing of George Floyd brought thousands of people out to the streets — some for the very first time — to voice the intensity of their emotional responses. This episode captured that moment through voices from across the country and across generations, showing that those feelings of anger and pain weren’t just for Mr. Floyd, but for many Americans who’ve experienced the effects of racial injustice and inequality. |
— Sydney Harper, a producer |
A summer of protesting raised one critical, and widely debated, question: What should the role of the police in America be? |
In the process, many wondered whether the culture of policing can be changed or if the system needs to be reimagined entirely. We decided to talk to an officer leading one of the country’s largest police unions. “This was a conversation I hadn’t heard anywhere else, and it came right when I needed to hear it. It was an interview that sought to understand but also hold power to account,” Eric Krupke, a producer, said. |
Later, in our episode “Who Replaces Me,” we spoke with one Black officer in Flint, Mich., and heard him “grapple with the immense pressure Black police officers are under to carry the torch. The episode explores how excruciating it must feel to dedicate your entire life to something and not be sure if you made a real difference.” |
— Lynsea Garrison, a producer |
| EDITOR’S PICKS We publish many articles that touch on race. Here are several you shouldn’t miss. | | | | | | | | | |
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