Negro League supporters hope MLB stat integration is merely a first step

As Josh Gibson takes over the seat Ty Cobb long held as the best hitter to ever live, and Mule Suttles, Turkey Stearnes and Oscar Charleston assume spots in the fraternity of elite sluggers alongside Ted Williams, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, change has come for a sport that has thrived on a stone tablet of tradition.

By incorporating statistics from the Negro Leagues into its official records this week, MLB has upset some who refuse to accept the leagues as being on equal footing, in addition to those who believe the organization wants a pass for its past wrongs.

But for the families and longtime champions of the Negro Leaguers who are receiving their long overdue flowers, this is a triumphant time. They didn’t need validation for what they already knew, but now the rest of the baseball world must acknowledge and accept that excellence has long come in all shades.

“You would like things to go sooner than later,” said Sean Gibson, whose great grandfather Josh is now MLB’s career leader in batting average (.372), slugging percentage (.718) and OPS (1.177). “But, for me, I’d rather have it later than nothing at all.”

Wednesday’s integration of the statistical database was “a fabulous day,” Gibson said. But to him, and others who have spent years fighting for this recognition, the numbers should serve as merely the beginning of more widespread acknowledgment of Negro Leaguers by MLB, and not the conclusion.

Denied inclusion during their playing days, and placed in an “other” category until all but three of them died, the 2,300 Negro Leaguers who played from 1920 to 1948 have received what historian and researcher Larry Lester called “social reparations” to amend for decades of “apartheid baseball.” But their history is now a shared one, even if systemic racism kept them from facing their White contemporaries in games that counted. That progress, Lester added, should be reflected in ways that go beyond scrolling up and down a website.

“This is a step toward more recognition down the road,” Lester said.

Gibson served on the same 17-person Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee with Lester and is a founding member of the Negro Leagues Family Alliance, which would like to see MLB establish May 2 as Negro Leagues Day, marking the anniversary of the first Negro National League game on May 2, 1920.

And Gibson has lobbied the Baseball Writers Association of America, an organization of writers who vote on MLB’s end-of-season awards, to rename its most valuable player honors after Josh Gibson. The BBWAA removed late commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis’s name from the awards in 2020 because of his refusal to integrate the game during his tenure from 1920 to 1944. When MLB announced in December 2020 that the Negro Leagues would be “elevated” to MLB status, Sean Gibson said honoring Josh Gibson — the power-hitting catcher who died of a stroke at age 35, three months before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 — would be “a poetic justice story” for the Negro Leagues.

“Our story is based off Kenesaw Mountain Landis denying African Americans,” he said during an interview in 2020. “How ironic would it be for Josh Gibson to replace his name?”

Now that there is statistical support for his argument that Josh Gibson is the greatest hitter, and player, of all time, Sean Gibson’s stance on the award has become more emboldened.

“I’m still pushing,” he said. “It’s not about one player. Yes, his name will appear on that MVP award, but it’s more about the legacy of all the names that’ll be on his shoulders.”

Curiosity is what led Lester on his 40-year path of tirelessly scouring through old news clippings, box scores and microfiche, searching for answers to questions he’d always had. Among them: How many home runs did Josh Gibson hit? How many strikeouts did Satchel Paige have? How many bases did Cool Papa Bell steal? He hopes that his discoveries can help inform those casual fans who might have never cared to learn about the Negro Leagues before.

A co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Lester envisions MLB franchises in cities where Negro League teams once played paying homage to past greats in “low-maintenance but high-visibility” ways, such as the Washington Nationals — who already have a statue of Gibson outside Nationals Park — hanging championship banners for the Homestead Grays, or the Kansas City Royals doing the same for the Monarchs.

“It’s funny,” Lester said. “Everybody wants a championship team. You put that flag up and kids come in and say, ‘What does that represent?’ Well, I’m glad you asked. Let me tell you about the 1924 Kansas City Monarchs …”

This statistical recognition of the Negro Leagues is happening at a time when the percentage of African American professional baseball players is in single digits, after being at or near 20% during much of the 1970s and 1980s. Lester believes the MLB’s Negro Leagues-enhanced database will expose new fans to “these unheralded, underrated ballplayers” such as Bullet Rogan, a two-way star in the Shohei Ohtani mold who pitched every fourth day while also batting cleanup for the Monarchs — despite standing 5-feet-7 and weighing 165 pounds.

“Baseball has the luxury of not being defined by the size of the athlete,” Lester said, adding that the recognition of more legendary figures could help lure Black athletes who don’t have the builds to succeed in basketball or football.

The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., unveiled a new “Souls of the Game” exhibit last week, highlighting the trials and triumphs of the Black baseball experience from the late 1880s to today. It also paid tribute to the Negro Leagues East-West All-Star Game — which ran annually from 1933 to 1962 — with an updated classic featuring recently retired players.

That came on the heels of the announcement that MLB and its players’ union would provide an annual retired benefit for living Negro League players. And, on June 20, the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals will play at Alabama’s historic Rickwood Field, the former home of the Birmingham Black Barons.

“As the young people say, it’s hot right now,” Sean Gibson said of this embrace of the Negro Leagues. And there’s no need, he believes, for this momentum to chill.