Just this month, and nearly 80 years after Suttles career ended, Ashwill was able to add two more home runs to his tally, bringing his total to 32. He began his professional career in the Negro Leagues in the 1920s after being discharged from reform school in Alabama. I grew up with the distinct impression that no statistics could ever be compiled, that it was often unclear what happened at all, and that it was more or less impossible to find out anything for sure about many of the players., Our friends at Seamheads have added new 1926 statistics to their #SABR award-winning Negro Leagues Database, including a record-setting season by Mule Suttles: https://t.co/sCWIvkVMuB @scott_simkus @KJOKBASEBALL @DanHirsch pic.twitter.com/WlQhzB8q4u. Many Old Negro League Stars Still Around - Society for American Major League Baseball has finally decided that players from the Negro Leagues should be considered Major Leaguers. All 3,400 players from 1920 to 1948 will be elevated to MLB status. We have tools and resources that can help you use sports data. Buck O'Neil, TRIBOU: Bob Kendrick heads the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum there. The second annual Honorary Negro League Game is a fundraiser for the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. Following the 1924 season, he disappeared after a homicide in New York. At their high point in mid-1930s, the team starred such greats as Biz Mackey, Jud Wilson, and Dick Lundy. Researchers are still looking to add fielding statistics, left/right splits and secondary pitching and batting stats for many Negro League seasons, especially those in the 1940s. Major League Baseball has a day to honor the leagues set for next month. TRIBOU: Jackie Robinson played briefly in the Negro Leagues. It has been 47 years since anyone last saw this man. After 100 Years, MLB Recognizes Negro Leagues As 'Major League' - TPR In 2020, MLB recognized the Nego Leagues as major leagues. This process is automatic. The responsibility to elect Negro leagues players shifted to the Hall's Veterans Committee, but with Roy Campanella as the only Black member, the committee was hamstrung by its lack of knowledge . The integration of Major League Baseball happened at the beginning of the 1947 MLB season when Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers.By the 1950s, enough black talent had integrated into the formerly "white" leagues (both major and minor) that the Negro leagues themselves had become a . Players he signed as a scout with Chicago then the Royals included Lou Brock, Oscar Gamble, Lee Smith and Joe Carter. While there are roughly 130 players alive from the Negro Leagues, according to baseball historian Larry Lester, only those four players are alive from that 1920-1948 window. Cronkite School at ASU We know which were the pitchers' parks (Chicago's Schorling Park, for example) and which were the hitters' parks (Stars Park in St. Louis and the Catholic Protectory Oval in the Bronx, home of the New York Lincoln Giants). Scores from any date in Major League history, Minor, Foreign, College, & Black Baseball, Frequently Asked Questions about MLB and Baseball, Subscribe to Stathead Baseball: Get your first month FREE. Current Greats: Clayton Kershaw, Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, . They played most of their careers in the organized Negro leagues after the Great Depression. MINNIE FORBES: It was terrible for the players at that time. There's a huge amount of information about Latin American baseball that still needs to be processed -- Black Americans played professional baseball in Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, Ashwill said. The records, as they proved with Suttles, are not static either. A charity baseball game that paid tribute to the Negro Leagues and their significance to the sport was held at Sacramento State's John Smith Field on Oct. 9. 1933 Homestead Grays, Negro League players worthy of ESPN Hall of 100 At that meeting, they created the Negro National League. Question, Comment, Feedback, or Correction? His biggest thrill came in the 1924 Negro World Series when he shut out the Kansas City Monarchs for 7 innings in relief. Keys bought the Giants franchise after the 1921 season and built the newly named Stars a stadium in '22. Do you have a blog? Mays played. Holsey Lee: A great pitcher for over 20 years, Scrip Lee spent most of his long career in the Eastern Colored League. Mioso fell short on Golden Era votes in 2011 and 2014 . Major League Baseball was segregated from 1887 through 1946. There would be the Royals dressed as the Monarchs, the Tigers as the Stars, the Pirates as the Crawfords or Grays, Triple-A Memphis as the Red Sox, Double-A Birmingham as the Black Barons, High-A. List of Negro league baseball players (M-R) This list consists of players who have appeared in Negro league baseball . Mike Trout The list includes those who played on major Negro league teams prior to integration (and any caliber Negro league team after integration) as well as in Major League Baseball. A version of this story was first published in November, 2020, a few weeks before MLB announced that Negro League stats were being made part of the official record. For families of Negro League players, MLB recognition is both All logos are the trademark & property of their owners and not Sports Reference LLC. Our reasoning for presenting offensive logos. Nat remembers a 31-game hitting streak as his best moment in baseball. He is Dean of Men at Alcorn College in Lorman, Mississippi, and also serves as baseball coach. When I began speaking with Ashwill about the database in September, Hall of Fame slugger Mule Suttles held the Negro Leagues single-season home run record with the 30 that he hit as a member of the St. Louis Stars in 1926. The museum has pushed back its year-long celebration of the centennial to next year and renamed it Negro Leagues 101. A native of Talladega, Alabama, Scales now lives in New York City. Not even 60 years old. That mission continues today.\n\nAnd I really do mean today. They also decided not to count the interleague games which were an important part of Negro League seasons, especially in the 1940s. (Though many seasons featured approximately 50 league games, "Negro League teams played 150-175 games a year overall -- the rest of the schedule being filled up with games against white semi-pro teams, lower-level Minor Leaguers, minor Black teams, and other teams whose games we haven't counted yet," Ashwill explained.). List of living major league players from the 1940s - BR Bullpen Because we compile fielding statistics, we're able to know that, for example, Dobie Moore, the Kansas City Monarchs shortstop in the 1920s, was a great fielding shortstop. , Every Sports Reference Social Media Account, Site Last Updated: Saturday, March 4, 12:52AM. Those four names aren't just pieces of data, or clickable things on a site, they are human beings who excelled despiteliving under the thick anvilof segregation. The coming seasons brought many more signings. Use Mays, Greason, Golden and Teasley as the faces of a compensation plan, like lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit, and account for what was a wide disparity in pay between Black and white players during those 28 years. Silas Simmons played in the pre-Negro League era, and he passed away just a decade ago. All logos are the trademark & property of their owners and not Sports Reference LLC. TRIBOU: The last league folded in the early 1960s. Below is a list of 52 players who played for major Negro league teams up to 1950 and eventually saw playing time for a Major League team. What about the other great players? The list does not include Negro league players who only played in the minor leagues and White Hispanic players who played in both the Negro Leagues and MLB prior to full integration (ex. Pedro Dibut). With the game still years away from the multimillion-dollar contracts handed to star players, Aaron's annual pay in 1959 was around $30,000. Foster still retains a strong interest in baseball. 1920 Chicago American Giants, and daily newspapers in cities where games were played. Founded in 1990, the museum is the only one in the world . TRIBOU: And they did. Jimmie Crutchfield: A slender outfielder, Jimmie signed with the great Pittsburgh Crawfords when he was only 19 years old. March 10, 2007 - William "Bill' Van Buren passes away. So you won't let me play with you. An additional 35 or so players played on a Negro league team after 1950. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. In 1954, he signed with the Indianapolis Clowns at the age of 16. The list includes those who played on major Negro league teams prior to integration (and any caliber Negro league team after integration) as well as in Major League Baseball. MINNIE. After contacting Lester, co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and chairman of SABR's Negro Leagues Research Committee, he provided data that was absolutely staggering. Many historical player head shots courtesy of David Davis. Register now to join us on March 10-12, 2023, in Phoenix, AZ. From 1940 to 1949, 1,705 men played at least one game in the National League or American League plus hundreds, maybe thousands, more in the Negro Leagues. PDF Negro League Players Who Played in the Major Leagues You go through the most important sources for a given year, collect the box scores, construct a schedule, go back and try to fill in gaps, double and triple check everything, then type in the games.. Jackie Robinson had an immediate impact on baseball's short and long-term future. I wanted to see them as flesh and blood people, real players who had the same kinds of complex profiles we have for players today. \n","providerName":"Twitter","providerUrl":"https://twitter.com","type":"rich","width":550},"type":"oembed"},{"__typename":"Markdown","content":"That started to change in the 1980s and early 90s as researchers like Dick Clark, Larry Lester, John Holway, James Riley and Phil Dixon began assembling a more robust statistical record. Although there are two players who played before 1946 none of them appeared in 1946, thus no players from 1946 are still alive. Willie Foster: Called by many the greatest left-handed pitcher in the black leagues, Willie won 4 World Series games in his long career, and may be the only pitcher, black or white, to have pitched a complete 9-inning All-Star game. Leroy "Satchel" Paige was bigger than mere numbers. Eventually, these two groups joined forces to create one comprehensive database. Buck lives in Rocky Mount, N.C., where he owns a realty agency. After spotting the Black newspaper The Chicago Defender in his universitys library stacks and knowing its historical importance, he dove into the reels for the 1920 season and was surprised to see incredibly thorough coverage and box scores for the Negro National League. We still have to separate truth from hyperbole, but more analysis has become available. ","type":"markdown"},{"__typename":"ExternalEmbed","data":{"__typename":"ExternalEmbedContent","html":", #Spotlight In February of 1920, The Chicago Defender previewed the formation of the Negro National League - Kansas City Selected for Meeting of Baseball Magnates - https://t.co/VANcXcLmL0 pic.twitter.com/KfBEDCalWr, A copy of the 1969 Macmillan baseball encyclopedia for show and tell @sabr. Major League Baseball was segregated from 1887 through 1946. Meanwhile you still have jackalopes foaming at the mouth that girls shouldn't be allowed to play high school ball. You know their stories, like how Paige once told his outfielders to sit down while he struck out the side. The most important sources are the Black weekly newspapers (Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, Baltimore Afro-American, Kansas City Call, etc.) To this day, no one apparently has any idea of his whereabouts or even whether he is still living. Pedro Dibut). Negro Leagues history didn't survive on its own - Beyond the Box Score The complete list is divided into four pages to reduce the size: The players below are some of the most notable of those who played Negro league baseball, beginning with the codification of baseball's color line barring African American players (about 1892), past the re-integration in 1946 of the sport, up until the Negro leagues finally expired about 1962. From 1940 to 1949, 1,705 men played at least one game in the National League or American League plus hundreds, maybe thousands, more in the Negro Leagues. Yet there was still a feeling that many more had been missed. Michigan Radio's Doug Tribou spoke to the only surviving team owner and others about the legacy of the legendary leagues. , Season Summaries, Ballparks, Owners, Player Bios, 1946 Negro World Series, Contribute, Just having a few stories here and there was not remotely enough. Jack Marshall: A star 2nd baseman for most of the top Chicago ballclubs, Jack still lives in the Windy City. TRIBOU: Minnie Forbes will keep sharing her stories with younger generations, and others will, too. "Going forward, in the 1930s following the Great Depression, salaries of Black players were about the same amount as the 1920s," Lester said. But Minnie Forbes sympathizes with the many athletes who were good enough to play in the major leagues but never got a shot. We present them here for purely educational purposes. ***** Nat Rogers: Now 78 years old and a waiter at Memphis Peabody Hotel, Nat writes that he played for 45 consecutive seasons in organized baseball, compiling a batting average of over .340. Rookies earned $75 and the stars $375. While the weeklies tried to cover every game they could, deadlines and limited space meant they often had to leave out a few games. He grew up in Cuba and says it was tough to adjust to segregation and racism he saw in the U.S. PEDRO SIERRA: It wasn't easy to see all the problems with the race. He jumped to the Lincoln Giants of the Eastern Colored League in 1923 and pitched with them for 2 years. 1928 St. Louis Stars, Our reasoning for presenting offensive logos. Streeters biggest thrill in baseball was to hit a home run. The Hilldale Club, the team that lost, took home $193.23. Ray Dandridge: Fifty-eight year old Ray Dandridge lives in Newark, N.J., and is a scout for the San Francisco Giants. March 16, 2007 - Hubert "Country" Glenn, passes away. Frank Duncan: A Kansas City native, Frank, 69, now operates a tavern in his home town. By August 1, 1947, three Major League teams had already integrated. 1924 Kansas City Monarchs, James Bell: Cool Papa Bell was probably the fastest ball player ever to don spikes. A high average hitter and an excellent first baseman, Buck played in 12 All-Star games. Much of the play-by-play, game results, and transaction information both shown and used to create certain data sets was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by RetroSheet.