Hundreds of Black athletes who were shut out of Major League Baseball a century ago are now officially a part of it.
The MLB announced on Wednesday that it has incorporated the statistics of more than 2,300 Negro Leagues players from 1920 to 1948 into its records, which are now available in a newly integrated online database.
“Today’s announcement is the first major step that makes the achievements of the players of the Negro Leagues available to fans via the official historical record,” the MLB said in a statement.
It follows nearly four years of research and a move the league made in December 2020. That year saw both the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues and nationwide protests against racial injustice.
The MLB said at the time that it was “correcting a longtime oversight” by officially elevating the Negro Leagues to Major League status and including their stats in its history books.
“All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s finest players, innovations and triumphs against the backdrop of injustice,” MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred said at the time.
The seven leagues that made up the racially segregated Negro Leagues were home to legendary talents, with 35 of its stars now enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Some of its many dominant players included Satchel Paige, whom many subsequent greats deemed the best pitcher ever; power-hitter Josh Gibson, who was considered the “greatest slugger in Negro baseball leagues” and “Cool Papa” Bell, whom the hall of fame says “may well have been the fastest man to ever play the game.”
As their statistics enter the MLB record, some of their names have risen to the top of the leaderboards.
Gibson, who died of a stroke at age 35 in 1947, is now the MLB’s all-time career leader in batting average, slugging percentage and on-base plus slugging percentage. He also holds the all-time single-season records in all three categories.
Gibson’s .372 batting average surpasses Ty Cobb’s .367, and his .718 slugging percentage overtakes Babe Ruth’s .690 — a fitting accomplishment for a man often called “the Black Babe Ruth.”