Bob Kendrick is the director of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.
Those of us committed to telling the great civil rights story of Negro League baseball rejoice in the recent victory that baseball's record books have finally been integrated: Major League Baseball has officially recognized the statistics of more than 2,300 players who played from 1920 to 1948 in the various professional leagues open to black and Hispanic men.
But as I watched great hitters like Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston and Jud Wilson take their rightful place alongside Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Ted Williams, I was pleased, but also a little worried. We must not allow the integration record book to eclipse the memory of segregated playing fields.
While the well-deserved payoff was largely met with cheers, some baseball fans can't seem to accept the validity of the statistics painstakingly compiled by a group of dedicated historians. Such fans have a hard time accepting the fact that the highest level of professional baseball isn't just the National League and the American League. Those leagues gave the best white players a chance to showcase their world-class baseball prowess. The Negro Leagues did the exact same thing for the best black and Hispanic players.
I shudder when I hear comments about the Negro Leagues like “Triple-A at best” or “It's not an apples-to-apples comparison.” It wasn't easy to excel in the Negro Leagues; it was hard. Major leaguers of that era didn't have to worry about where to stop and get something to eat. Major leaguers didn't have to sleep on the team bus or change clothes under the stands. Who knows what records Judy Johnson or Cool Papa Bell might have set if the playing and living conditions for Negro League players had been better.
Recent commentary has sparked outrage over the notion that black and brown players are just as good or better than their white counterparts. Unfortunately, this same mentality is what forced the creation of the first league for black players just after World War I.
Andrew “Rub” Foster, a former player and owner of the Chicago American Giants, met with other Midwest team owners at the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City in 1920 and agreed to form the Negro National League. Rival leagues soon formed in eastern and southern states. Playing thrilling and innovative baseball, the Negro Leagues quickly became popular, drawing large, enthusiastic audiences in urban and rural communities throughout the United States, Canada and Latin America.
Foster's team, the American Giants, drew crowds of about 200,000 during the 1921 season. By 1933, the first East-West All-Star Game, played at Chicago's Comiskey Park, surpassed attendance for a Cubs doubleheader at Wrigley Field across from Chicago. This annual showcase became one of the largest sporting events in American sports history, regularly drawing more than 50,000 fans. By 1942, the Negro Leagues drew an estimated 3 million fans, often playing in the same stadiums and ballparks used by major league teams.
The Negro League players were very proud and self-confident. They never sought validation from others. They knew how good they were. They knew how good their league was. And frankly, the major league players knew it too. After all, they played countless exhibition games against each other, and the record books show that the Negro Leagues and black All-Star teams won most of those games.
After facing Leroy “Satchel” Paige in an exhibition game, Joe DiMaggio called him “the best and fastest guy I ever played against.” Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella, a three-time MVP of the National League after baseball was integrated, said of Josh Gibson, who died before his chance came, “Everything I could do, Josh could do and more.”
Few fans realize that leagues far less talented, popular, and long-lived than the Negro Leagues are included in the MLB record book. In 1969, a special baseball records committee officially recognized six “major” leagues: the National League, American League, American Association (1882-1891), Union Association (1884), Players' League (1890), and Federal League (1914-1915). The Negro Leagues were conspicuously ignored.
More than 50 years passed before that error was righted. On December 16, 2020, Commissioner Rob Manfred announced that the Negro Leagues would be recognized as “major” leagues and their statistics would be consolidated, marking the finale of the league's 100th anniversary celebrations.
I want the statistics to be a gateway to learning more about the tenacity and entrepreneurial spirit of the Negro Leagues. I want the next generation of baseball fans, white, black, any color, to see this new inclusive record and want to know more about Gibson, Walter “Buck” Leonard, and Norman Thomas “Turkey” Stearns.
They must learn that these giants of sports were once not allowed to play in the major leagues because of the color of their skin. But instead of whining about social injustice, they took action. That's the American way. America tried to stop them from sharing in the joy of our national pastime, but the American spirit enabled them to persevere and to prevail.
In 1947, Jackie Robinson made his major league debut. He was a young Negro League star with the Kansas City Monarchs, who later joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke the racial barrier. This debut is called the beginning of the civil rights movement. The history of the Negro Leagues is therefore a history of triumph. It is a story of America at its worst and at its best. The circumstances that determined the need for the Negro Leagues are painful and sad. But the Negro Leagues themselves are a testament to the power of the human spirit to persevere and triumph. Future fans should understand what these players had to endure just to “play” and set records.
We can't lose that story.
