A push to recognize the statistics of Black players from baseball’s era of apartheid

You too, Ted Williams. “Negro Leaguers should be compared against themselves,” said Larry Lester, a pioneer of Negro League studies and the chairman of the Society for American Baseball Research’s Negro Leagues committee. “I don’t think it’s fair to rank the Negro Leaguers and the major leaguers together for the simple fact they never played against each other.” When Major League Baseball Commissioner William Eckert in 1968 convened the Special Baseball Records Committee to determine what constituted a “major league,” the five white men on the panel chose six leagues that mostly banned Black and Latino players between 1876 and 1947, before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. “The Negro Leagues merit consideration as majors,” said John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s official historian. Because the Negro League seasons were often less than half the length of a major league season, Black baseball didn’t run up big “counting stat” totals — Stearnes, a five-tool outfielder, led the Negro Leagues in career home runs with 196.