MLB Reclassifies Negro Leagues As Major League
Dec 16, 2020, 11:15 AM
Jackie Robinson, the first black player in Major League Baseball, pictured as a shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues in 1944. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. (Sporting News via Getty Images via Getty Images).
(Sporting News via Getty Images via Getty Images)
NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball has reclassified the Negro Leagues as a major league and will count the statistics and records of its 3,400 players as part of its history.
The league said Wednesday it was “correcting a longtime oversight in the game’s history” by elevating the Negro Leagues on the centennial of its founding. The Negro Leagues consisted of seven leagues, and MLB will include records from those circuits between 1920-48. The Negro Leagues began to dissolve one year after Jackie Robinson became MLB’s first Black player with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
Commissioner Manfred announced today that @MLB is officially elevating the Negro Leagues to “Major League” status. Culminating the centennial celebration of the founding of the Negro Leagues, MLB is proud to highlight the contributions of the pioneers who played from 1920-1948. pic.twitter.com/hkStF1UC0H
— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) December 16, 2020
Those leagues were excluded in 1969 when the Special Committee on Baseball Records identified six official “major leagues” dating to 1876.
“It is MLB’s view that the Committee’s 1969 omission of the Negro Leagues from consideration was clearly an error that demands today’s designation,” the league said in a statement.
MLB is correcting a longtime oversight in the game’s history by officially elevating the Negro Leagues to “Major League” status. pic.twitter.com/gPSaTbD5Ud
— MLB (@MLB) December 16, 2020
MLB said it considered input from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, the Negro League Researchers and Authors Group and studies by other baseball authors and researchers.
The league will work with the Elias Sports Bureau to review Negro Leagues statistics and records and figure out how to incorporate them into MLB’s history.
Before he signed with the @Dodgers, Jackie Robinson played for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. pic.twitter.com/n40e9vAvM1
— MLB Vault (@MLBVault) December 16, 2020
“All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.”
