Data Provided By Aside from him, we also have Mamie "Peanut" Johnson (9/27/1935), the first female pitcher in the Negro Leagues. Find out more. Center for Negro League Baseball Research. 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. Founded in 1990, the museum is the only one in the world . 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. 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. Buck lives in Rocky Mount, N.C., where he owns a realty agency. Yet there was still a feeling that many more had been missed. Phone: 602.496.1460 Buck O'Neil, Pedro Dibut). 2006 Negro League Baseball News December 17, 2006 - Willard Brown inducted to LA. He jumped to the Lincoln Giants of the Eastern Colored League in 1923 and pitched with them for 2 years. He says his greatest thrill was a home-run he hit in the 1940 classic in Chicago. When the book was being put together, the Negro Leagues weren't even considered for inclusion. While the weeklies tried to cover every game they could, deadlines and limited space meant they often had to leave out a few games. Win Expectancy, Run Expectancy, and Leverage Index calculations provided by Tom Tango of InsideTheBook.com, and co-author of The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball. Paige probably took a pay cut when he joined the Cleveland Indians in 1948.". Some high school data is courtesy David McWater. TRIBOU: Pedro Sierra pitched in the Negro Leagues for several seasons in the 1950s. And now I look back and I say, oh, my God. TRIBOU: The last league folded in the early 1960s. In 1934, led by 20-year-old left-hander Slim Jones, the Stars defeated the Chicago American Giants in a controversial playoff series, four games to three, for the Negro National League pennant. We still have to separate truth from hyperbole, but more analysis has become available. During his long career, Frank played on 7 pennant-winners with the Kansas City Monarchs. Last I knew he was still alive but he is hard to contact sometimes. Its also why there are always new updates. Josh Gibson, If history belongs to the record keepers, then these record keepers weren't interested. TRIBOU: Bob Kendrick heads the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum there. From there, he started collecting box scores and compiling statistics pretty much right away, Ashwill said. Over at the Seamheads Negro Leagues database, a dedicated few have combed through newspapers and scorebooks, photo albums and microfiche to piece together the most complete statistical record of the Negro Leagues to date. Names of those who played in integrated organized white leagues are boldfaced, and those who played in integrated major leagues are also italicized. All 3,400 players from 1920 to 1948 will be elevated to MLB status. While baseball acknowledgingthese Black players is important, it should only be a first step. Recovering it is a constant, ongoing struggle. MINNIE. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Some defensive statistics Copyright Sports Info Solutions, 2010-2023. 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. How Cool Papa Bell was so fast that he could hit the light switch and be in bed before the lights went out. Major League Baseball has finally decided that players from the Negro Leagues should be considered Major Leaguers. Buck lives in Rocky Mount, N.C., where he owns a realty agency. All images are property the copyright holder and are displayed here for informational purposes only. BOB KENDRICK: They had no idea they were making history. Logos were compiled by the amazing SportsLogos.net. Part of that was simply how the Negro Leagues recorded their statistics, which wasn't as robust a system as the Major Leagues'. List of living major league players from the 1940s, List of living members of World Series-winning teams, List of living major league players from the 1950s, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bpv/index.php?title=List_of_living_major_league_players_from_the_1940s&oldid=1264856, Scores from any date in Major League history, Minor, Foreign, College, & Black Baseball, Frequently Asked Questions about MLB and Baseball. The 1930 St. Louis Stars. Charlie Neal Hank Aaron George Altman Maury Wills Donn Clendenon John Wyatt Blue Moon Odom Paul Casanova See also [ edit] List of starting black NFL quarterbacks List of black NHL players You know the names: Satchel Paige. A member of 8 All-Star squads, Willie remembers a home run he hit in 1931 to win the pennant for St. Louis as his greatest baseball thrill. As Lou Moore, a professor at Grand Valley State University, noted: from 1949 to 1959 - two years after Jackie Robinson's debut season - former Negro League players won all but two of the. Chuck Harmon played under alias of Charlie Fine for the Clowns so as not to violate his college basketball eligibility. Of them, only 9 are still alive as of Janury 26, 2023. Frank Duncan: A Kansas City native, Frank, 69, now operates a tavern in his home town. You knew the disparity in pay would be bad, but that gap is embarrassing for baseball. He turns 100 on December 20th, 2017. . It wouldn't even cost baseball that much money particularly since salaries of Negro League players began to increase in the 1940s as their play became so good they were practically impossible to ignore, and as Jackie Robinson started his trek towards history. Pittsburgh soon produced two of the greatest teams of all time, the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, featuring such stars as Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell and many . But you've got to establish a basic record first.. Holsey Lee: A great pitcher for over 20 years, Scrip Lee spent most of his long career in the Eastern Colored League. His salary was less than 5% of what white players were earning. We already knew they were equals, of course, it's just official now. A native of Texas, Brown is reported to have pitched as early as 1917 with the Dallas Black Giants. Eventually, these two groups joined forces to create one comprehensive database. Jimmie Crutchfield: A slender outfielder, Jimmie signed with the great Pittsburgh Crawfords when he was only 19 years old. List of Negro league baseball players who played in Major League Baseball. James Bell: Cool Papa Bell was probably the fastest ball player ever to don spikes. Third baseman Hank Thompson appeared in a game for the St. Louis Browns (now the Baltimore Orioles) on July 17, two days before outfielder Willard Brown joined him on the Browns' roster. 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. This article originally appeared in the 1972 Baseball Research Journal. For example, here, courtesy of Ashwill, are the pages from a 1941-42 Baltimore Elite Giants scorebook showing the Elites beating the Philadelphia Stars on Aug. 16, 1942: The biggest myth of them all is that the history of Negro League baseball is nothing but blurry, hard-to-substantiate legends and tall tales, Ashwill wrote in an email to MLB.com. Sports Reference . TRIBOU: Minnie Forbes will keep sharing her stories with younger generations, and others will, too. Suttles pictured back row, far left. They also represent something else. The coming seasons brought many more signings. March 10, 2007 - William "Bill' Van Buren passes away. Of course, Josh Gibson and some of the other big names have passed on, but a lot of the legendary stars are still alive and well and living in well, why dont we call the roll of some of the more familiar names, men like . You can't really settle on a few sacred numbers the way you can for MLB records.. 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. 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.. You will be redirected once the validation is complete. Streeters biggest thrill in baseball was to hit a home run. Today . This List of Negro league baseball players who played in Major League Baseball is largely based on the research compiled by the Center for Negro League Baseball Research. The text below has been updated to reflect that. But you dont know their numbers -- at least, not with the same devotion baseball fans have to statistics like Ted Williams .406 batting average or Hank Aarons 755 home runs. Nat remembers a 31-game hitting streak as his best moment in baseball. Major leagueplayersreceived from $300 to $2,000 a month and about $15 a day for meals. Our reasoning for presenting offensive logos. 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. Ernie Banks and Monte Irvin died a couple years ago. Find out more. ***** Please enable JavaScript on your browser and try again. Bill Evans: Bill (Happy) Evans enjoyed a brief career with the Homestead Grays in the early 1930s. 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. Of these, nine have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame and two of them (Greason and Mays) are still alive. He cites being selected to manage the East All-Star team in 1939 as his biggest moment. But there are a group of researchers led by Gary Ashwill who are looking to change that. Full-year historical Major League statistics provided by Pete Palmer and Gary Gillette of Hidden Game Sports. Please enable cookies on your browser and try again. He continued his research with others like Kevin Johnson, Dan Hirsch, and Scott Simkus. O'Neil served as a representative of the Negro Leagues on the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee from 1981-2000, and 11 Negro Leagues players were inducted through 2001 for a total of 18. Jack Marshall: A star 2nd baseman for most of the top Chicago ballclubs, Jack still lives in the Windy City. Today, stars like Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard and Satchel Paige are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He now operates a sporting goods store on the South Side. Sign up to receive our daily Morning Lineup to stay in the know about the latest trending topics around Major League Baseball. Do you have a blog? Then in 1947, he broke baseball's color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. TRIBOU: Minnie Forbes owned the Detroit Stars from 1956 to 1958. Michigan Radio's Doug Tribou spoke to the only surviving team owner and others about the legacy of the legendary leagues. All rights reserved. They played primarily before the organized Negro leagues. 1924 Kansas City Monarchs, A select few were All-Stars and one (Aaron) was inducted into the Hall of Fame. This article was written byJohn M. Coates, This article was published in 1972 Baseball Research Journal, The recent election of Satchel Paige to the Hall of Fame brings back memories of the old Negro leagues and the men who starred in them. Born average. Born May 6, 1931, Willie Mays is the youngest. The museum has pushed back its year-long celebration of the centennial to next year and renamed it Negro Leagues 101. 65 In 2000, Major League Baseball supplied a grant to the Baseball Hall of Fame to conduct . \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. Join our linker program. Mays played. Major League Baseball announced this week the 1920-1948 Negro Leagues was recognized as major league, Families of Negro Leaguers rejoice in MLB's decision to recognize league, After vowing change, Black candidates shut out again of MLB front office jobs, Oscar Charleston who hit .400 multiple times, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. The league ended in like 1950 so a 20 yr old then would be 86/7 this year. 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. Copyright 2000-2023 Sports Reference LLC. The 57 Texas native was certainly one of the smartest players of his day. Turkey Stearnes. Do you have a sports website? Of them, only 9 are still alive as of Janury 26, 2023. SIERRA: The Clowns are paid a hundred dollars a month. A family friend used to play for the Black Yankees, Bob Scott. Born May 6, 1931, Willie Mays is the youngest. Like O'Neil, Minnie Mioso was still alive when he was denied entry in 2006, mostly because his time was so short in the Negro Leagues. 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. KENDRICK: These athletes never cried about the social injustice. He is Dean of Men at Alcorn College in Lorman, Mississippi, and also serves as baseball coach. The second annual Honorary Negro League Game is a fundraiser for the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. At the onset of the digital age, enough now-aging players were still alive to share their experiences. In 2020, MLB recognized the Nego Leagues as major leagues. Every Sports Reference Social Media Account. A good right-handed hitter, Duncan is always mentioned as one of black baseballs best catchers. There was Oscar Charleston who hit .400 multiple times. Negro League Players Who Made the Major Leagues Player Negro League Team Major League Team Debut Year Jackie Robinson Kansas City Monarchs Brooklyn Dodgers 1947 Larry Doby Newark Eagles Cleveland Indians 1947 Hank Thompson Kansas City Monarchs St. Louis Browns 1947 Willard Brown Kansas City Monarchs St. Louis Browns 1947 . 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. The list of teams with which he played includes the largely forgotten Miami Globetrotters, Hollywood Redbirds, Miami Red Sox, Belle Glade Redwings, Florida Cuban Giants, the Lucky Stars, the Danny Dodgers; Ft. Lauderdale Braves, Pompano Beach Yankees, Ft. Lauderdale Lucky Stars, Ft. Lauderdale Gray Sox, and the Buffalo Red Sox (a travelling team that appears to have played many of its games in West Virginia and Pennsylvania). "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 . Members of the Baseball Hall of Fame are noted with a . They receivedbetween $1 to $1.50 a day for meal money. **For the best user experience, we recommend disabling the Reddit redesign. While the weeklies tried to cover every game they could, deadlines and limited space meant they often had to leave out a few games. But Minnie Forbes sympathizes with the many athletes who were good enough to play in the major leagues but never got a shot. He says, faced with segregation, Black owners and players kept pushing for organized baseball. All images are property the copyright holder and are displayed here for informational purposes only. 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.\n\nFrom there, he started collecting box scores and compiling statistics pretty much right away, Ashwill said. At that meeting, they created the Negro National League. "I always really, really wanted to get the full workup for those guys -- walks, on-base percentage, fielding stats, home runs allowed by pitchers -- so you could tell what kind of players they were, how they fit into their teams, how the teams compared to each other. I was wondering if there are any players left from those times, There's actually a good amount. Subscribe to Stathead Baseball: Get your first month FREEYour All-Access Ticket to the Baseball Reference Database. Register now to join us on March 10-12, 2023, in Phoenix, AZ. A speedy switch-hitter, Newt writes that Martin Dihigo and Dave Brown were the two greatest pitchers he ever faced. Our reasoning for presenting offensive logos. Remember these four names: Rev. Our statistics are based on box scores and game stories found in contemporary newspapers, as well as the small number of scorebooks and filled-in scorecards that can be tracked down, Ashwill wrote. All rights reserved. If you think white players made more money because they were more talented that's just false. A great 3rd baseman, Dandridge compiled a .455 batting average in 3 Negro All-Star games. The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball. It has been 47 years since anyone last saw this man. The stories, however, keep alive the memory of a man who became bigger than the game. They went out and did something about it. Copyright 2000-2022 Sports Reference LLC. 1920 Chicago American Giants, Watch our How-To Videos to Become a Stathead, Subscribe to Stathead and get access to more data than you can imagine. Many thanks to him. The Encyclopedia and various books and projects over the years printed stats for a selection of Negro League stars," Ashwill explained -- picking and choosing what information to present, and often excluding players who appeared in fewer than 10 games. 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 . All logos are the trademark & property of their owners and not Sports Reference LLC. We present them here for purely educational purposes. They are symbols for what should happen next. TRIBOU: Today, Sierra lives in New Jersey. Major League Baseball was segregated from 1887 through 1946. But more interesting, in my opinion, are some of the larger patterns we've found. This is a list of the last handful of living major leaguers from the 1940s. Or write about sports? Allens best baseball memory is an unassisted triple play he made in the early 1930s. Dennis Biddle lives down the street from my grandparents. Just think, he was playing baseball on a team that would become the Homestead Grays years before the US entered World War 1, but he lived long enough to become a fan of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. 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. An additional 35 or so players played on a Negro league team after 1950. Many historical player head shots courtesy of David Davis. If baseball (rightfully) believes that recognizing those players is important (and it is) then why not fully recognize them?