On May 29, Josh Gibson became Major League Baseball’s all-time leader in career batting average, slugging percentage, and on-base-plus-slugging percentage. He is now also the single-season record holder for each category. What makes the achievement particularly unusual is that Gibson has been dead since 1947. He never played a single out in the major leagues.
Gibson’s new status is the result of a change that was first announced in 2020, when MLB decided that the seven main Negro leagues would retroactively be granted “major league” status. This required integrating into the official MLB record database the statistics of more than 3,400 Black players who had been barred from playing in the American League or the National League because of their skin color. The process culminated with the May 29 statistical update. Suddenly, the all-time stat leaderboards are crowded with names unfamiliar to most baseball fans: Oscar Charleston, Turkey Stearnes, Mule Suttles.
The desire to validate the contributions of athletes who were unfairly denied the chance to play in the major leagues is noble. But the change is nevertheless misguided—a way of retroactively integrating Major League Baseball, reducing decades of segregation to a footnote and minimizing the actual discrimination that Black players faced. If the sport really wants to own up to its history, it shouldn’t pretend that Major League Baseball has been one big, happy family all along. Instead of absorbing Negro-league statistics and the mythic figures behind them, MLB shouldn’t count any statistics—Negro league or major league—accumulated during the era when Black and white players were prohibited from competing against each other.
The Negro leagues were formed by baseball’s hard color line. Black players and teams were rejected by the official amateur baseball network in 1867, and then at the professional level in 1876. In response, Black players formed their own leagues. The heyday of Black baseball under Jim Crow began in 1920, with the founding of the Negro National League. The Negro-league game was fast, flamboyant, and popular, and produced such giants as Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Buck Leonard, and Gibson. The Negro National League folded in 1948, a year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier as the first Black major leaguer. The Negro American League struggled through the ’50s, as more Black players joined MLB, and finally shut down at the end of the decade.