‘Where they belong.’ MLB commissioner elevates Negro Leagues to ‘Major League’ status
This is a great way to cap the Negro League’s centennial celebration this year.
Commissioner Rob Manfred announced Wednesday that Major League Baseball will classify the Negro Leagues statistics from the 1920 to 1948 seasons as “major league.” That period encompasses the start of Negro Leagues to the year after Jackie Robinson debuted with the Dodgers and broke the color barrier in MLB.
Robinson won the 1947 National League Rookie of the Year award, but his statistics from the Negro Leagues will now be consider major league, too. That includes his time with the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945.
MLB.com noted that approximately 3,400 players from the Negro Leagues will now have their stats and records become part of Major League history.
“All of us who have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” Manfred said in a statement. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: within the official historical record.”
Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, has long championed the cause.
“You’re going to get some hate against it. Because now, in the minds of some, you’re diminishing those great white ballplayers that forever we’ve been told were the absolute best,” Kendrick told the Los Angeles Times last month. “And it doesn’t diminish them at all. It introduces some other guy who was just as good.”
The news was met mostly with open arms from baseball fans.
