He says, faced with segregation, Black owners and players kept pushing for organized baseball. Satchel Paige, 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. FORBES: And I just wonder if I'm worthy of representing, speaking about the Negro League because when I got involved, things was easier for me than it was for the one before me. This page was last edited on 27 January 2023, at 00:27. 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 . They didn't care about making history. Newt still makes Kansas City his home. 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. List of Negro league baseball players (AD), List of Negro league baseball players (EL), List of Negro league baseball players (MR), List of Negro league baseball players (SZ), List of first black MLB players by team and date, List of player profiles from the Negro Leagues Baseball eMuseum, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lists_of_Negro_league_baseball_players&oldid=1087987010, This page was last edited on 15 May 2022, at 16:27. We will also be adding the Puerto Rican Winter League at some point.. Not even 60 years old. Find out more. It was this sense of mystery combined with an increasing confidence that in fact all kinds of evidence was there to be found. He turns 100 on December 20th, 2017. Forbes is 88 and worries about being one of the last left to tell this story. Born May 6, 1931, Willie Mays is the youngest. Use without license or authorization is expressly prohibited. They played most of their careers in the organized Negro leagues after the Great Depression. We present them here for purely educational purposes. Simkus says the work taught him how important major league recognition would be for the families of Negro Leagues veterans, few of whom are still alive. Ray Brown, , 1932 Pittsburgh Crawfords, I have always been drawn to blank spaces on maps, blank spaces in record books, Ashwill said. Soon he became involved in the Negro League Researchers and Authors Group and helped with an extensive study commissioned by the Hall of Fame and Major League Baseball. January 29, 2007 - Ralph "Big Cat" Johnson passes away. All 3,400 players from 1920 to 1948 will be elevated to MLB status. Total Zone Rating and initial framework for Wins above Replacement calculations provided by Sean Smith. 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. 1924 Kansas City Monarchs, As with any sports league, I have to assume that there are still plenty of unknown or lesser known players still out there. Today . 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. Major leagueplayersreceived from $300 to $2,000 a month and about $15 a day for meals. 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. Sports Reference . A lifetime .312 hitter, Ray remembers 1950 as a banner year when he was selected as MVP in the Triple-A American Association, while playing with the Minneapolis Millers. So they slept in the buses. Josh Gibson, Jimmie Crutchfield: A slender outfielder, Jimmie signed with the great Pittsburgh Crawfords when he was only 19 years old. How Cool Papa Bell was so fast that he could hit the light switch and be in bed before the lights went out. Created a hundred years ago, the leagues showcased Black baseball players, players who couldn't play on the major teams because of the color of their skin. Just a humbling reminder that Jim Crow laws and segregation was less than a generation ago. Members of the Baseball Hall of Fame are noted with a . Some high school data is courtesy David McWater. In 2020, MLB recognized the Nego Leagues as major leagues. 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. 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. Buck Leonard: Walter (Buck) Leonard combined with Josh Gibson for Negro baseball's best 1-2 home-run punch. Names of those who played in integrated organized white leagues are boldfaced, and those who played in integrated major leagues are also italicized. Baseball needs to retroactivelypay the newly recognized Negro League players and their surviving families. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum estimates there are about 100 former players still alive. Watch our How-To Videos to Become a Stathead, Subscribe to Stathead and get access to more data than you can imagine. 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. 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 select few were All-Stars and one (Aaron) was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He cites being selected to manage the East All-Star team in 1939 as his biggest moment. The other is that sources like the Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia -- which basically set the standard for baseball statistics when it was released in 1969 -- wasn't all that invested in featuring Negro League records. Use without license or authorization is expressly prohibited. 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. There's also Charley Pride (3/18/1935), famous country singer and one of the only black people to perform on Grand Ole Opry. KENDRICK: These athletes never cried about the social injustice. Major League Baseball has finally decided that players from the Negro Leagues should be considered Major Leaguers. . Many historical player head shots courtesy of David Davis. List of Negro league baseball players (M-R) This list consists of players who have appeared in Negro league baseball . Hall of Fame. While the weeklies tried to cover every game they could, deadlines and limited space meant they often had to leave out a few games. 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. Josh Gibson. 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. 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. It has been 47 years since anyone last saw this man. Hardball historians, however, are out there keeping the Negro Leagues alive. The league ended in like 1950 so a 20 yr old then would be 86/7 this year. "Going into the late 1930s and the early 1940s, we see player salaries jump to an average of $300 to $400 each month with the stars like Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige getting about $600-$700 a month. However, he played for minor-league clubs: What Jackson did not do was to play in any of the all-black leagues traditionally thought of as the Negro Major Leagues. 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. 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 now operates a sporting goods store on the South Side. 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. ***** A high average hitter and an excellent first baseman, Buck played in 12 All-Star games. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, The subreddit for the bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players. Then in 1947, he broke baseball's color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Part of that was simply how the Negro Leagues recorded their statistics, which wasn't as robust a system as the Major Leagues'. 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. They played most of their careers in the organized Negro leagues after the Great Depression. He stopped playing baseball when he was younger and became a Mason I believe. Newt Allen: For 20 years, Newt starred as the Kansas City Monarchs slick-fielding 2nd baseman. Black players earnedless because they were Jim Crow'd. A speedy switch-hitter, Newt writes that Martin Dihigo and Dave Brown were the two greatest pitchers he ever faced. 'THEY TRULY DESERVE IT:'Families of Negro Leaguers rejoice in MLB's decision to recognize league, OPINION: After vowing change, Black candidates shut out again of MLB front office jobs. cnlbr.org is using a security service for protection against online attacks. BOB KENDRICK: They had no idea they were making history. As protests over racial injustice in the U.S. continue, Major League Baseball is honoring the Negro Leagues that showcased Black baseball players at a time the sport was segregated. FORBES: Unfortunately, some of the good players, by the time that the time came, they were too old to play. Do you have a blog? 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. Eventually, these two groups joined forces to create one comprehensive database. Streeters biggest thrill in baseball was to hit a home run. March 10, 2007 - William "Bill' Van Buren passes away. If baseball (rightfully) believes that recognizing those players is important (and it is) then why not fully recognize them? And in 2021, Baseball Reference, a trusted source for baseball stats, expanded its coverage of the Negro Leagues and integrated Negro League data from 1920 to 1948 into its record books. Of them, only 9 are still alive as of Janury 26, 2023. 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. Chuck Harmon played under alias of Charlie Fine for the Clowns so as not to violate his college basketball eligibility. An additional 35 or so players played on a Negro league team after 1950. Join our linker program. Paige was the first Negro League player inducted . He began his professional career in the Negro Leagues in the 1920s after being discharged from reform school in Alabama. If history belongs to the record keepers, then these record keepers weren't interested. This process is automatic. 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 . The second annual Honorary Negro League Game is a fundraiser for the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. 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. They went out and did something about it. Although Brown was never formally charged, there was not much question that the police suspected him. There are a variety of reasons for that, Ashwill said, including a lack of capital and other resources, looser organization and less of a press infrastructure covering them.. Major League Baseball was segregated from 1887 through 1946. All rights reserved. Rookies earned $75 and the stars $375. In Cleveland, Larry Doby became the first Black player in the American League. America's Pastime. Larry Doby debuted with the Cleveland Indians on July 5. Richard Kent, Sam Sheppard, Dr. J.W McClelland and Dr. G.B. Full-year historical Major League statistics provided by Pete Palmer and Gary Gillette of Hidden Game Sports. All logos are the trademark & property of their owners and not Sports Reference LLC. 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. Copyright 2000-2022 Sports Reference LLC. "Going forward, in the 1930s following the Great Depression, salaries of Black players were about the same amount as the 1920s," Lester said. Accuracy and availability may vary. Do you have a sports website? 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 TRIBOU: Today, Sierra lives in New Jersey. The service requires full cookie support in order to view this website. All logos are the trademark & property of their owners and not Sports Reference LLC. Hank Aaron and Willie Mays also began their careers in the Negro Leagues. RHP Satchel Paige: The most famous Negro Leagues player, the age-defying Paige stayed young long enough to pitch in the majors -- including the World Series -- as a 42-year-old rookie in 1948. Rogers was one of the few players, black or white, who hit Satchel Paige consistently well. Theyve established -- though its no surprise -- that the speedy Bell holds the single-season record with 49 stolen bases for the Stars in 1929. Just having a few stories here and there was not remotely enough. 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. Please enable JavaScript on your browser and try again. This list comprises players who have appeared in Negro league baseball. Leroy "Satchel" Paige was bigger than mere numbers. Eventually, these two groups joined forces to create one comprehensive database. All these early leagues were financially shaky. They played primarily before the organized Negro leagues. At the onset of the digital age, enough now-aging players were still alive to share their experiences. Of them, only 9 are still alive as of Janury 26, 2023. Recovering it is a constant, ongoing struggle. Paige probably took a pay cut when he joined the Cleveland Indians in 1948.". But you've got to establish a basic record first.. Among them Fowler, Frank Grant, George Stovey, and Fleet Walker were notable players especially during the 1880s, before complete segregation. , Every Sports Reference Social Media Account, Site Last Updated: Saturday, March 4, 12:52AM. DOUG TRIBOU, BYLINE: In 1920, owners of independent Black baseball teams from the Midwest gathered in Kansas City, Mo. 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. 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. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. But thousands of Black and Latino players endured bigotry and racist taunts. I heard about it, but I hadn't experienced it. For our latest update I checked through the mainstream daily newspapers in St. Louis and picked up three more St. Louis Stars games -- and Suttles homered in two of them.. 555 N. Central Ave. #416 WANTED: INFORMATION ON DAVE BROWN. At their high point in mid-1930s, the team starred such greats as Biz Mackey, Jud Wilson, and Dick Lundy. MINNIE. The numbers do not do justice to his legend. That's about five times more in salary than Black players. Michigan Radio's Doug Tribou spoke to the only surviving team owner and others about the legacy of the legendary leagues. Basically, our earlier version of the 1926 Negro National League relied heavily on the Black weekly newspapers for games played in St. Louis -- in this case the Chicago Defender (which was distributed nationally) and the St. Louis Argus, Ashwill wrote. An excellent all-round ballplayer and a teammate of such greats as Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston, Jimmie is a Chicago resident where he is employed at the post office. Dan Bankhead Sam Bankhead Bob Boyd Ray Brown Willard Brown Bill Byrd Roy Campanella Buster Clarkson Jimmie Crutchfield Ray Dandridge Leon Day Larry Doby Luke Easter Wilmer Fields Josh Gibson Junior Gilliam Sammy Hughes Monte Irvin Last I knew he was still alive but he is hard to contact sometimes. Buck lives in Rocky Mount, N.C., where he owns a realty agency. Meanwhile you still have jackalopes foaming at the mouth that girls shouldn't be allowed to play high school ball. the Negro Leagues weren't even considered. ","contextualCaption":null,"contextualAspectRatio":null,"credit":null,"format":"jpg","templateUrl":"https://img.mlbstatic.com/mlb-images/image/private/{formatInstructions}/v1605643461/mlb/lv9mhm1fsyjmr30kii4r","type":"photo"},{"__typename":"Markdown","content":"Thats the type of work that Ashwill, who currently works as a freelance academic editor and runs the Agate Type baseball blog, has done since he began researching the Negro Leagues 20 years ago. I first saw this idea mentioned in one sentence in a Deadspin story and wondered why this wasn't something discussed much more than it has been. The most important sources are the Black weekly newspapers (Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, Baltimore Afro-American, Kansas City Call, etc.) Ray Dandridge: Fifty-eight year old Ray Dandridge lives in Newark, N.J., and is a scout for the San Francisco Giants. I read Bill James in the 1980s, and I wanted a Negro League Baseball Abstract. 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. Jack Marshall: A star 2nd baseman for most of the top Chicago ballclubs, Jack still lives in the Windy City. The text below has been updated to reflect that. Foster still retains a strong interest in baseball. 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. While baseball acknowledgingthese Black players is important, it should only be a first step. 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. But more interesting, in my opinion, are some of the larger patterns we've found. Logos were compiled by the amazing SportsLogos.net. He played for the Louisville Clippers, and later was traded with Jesse Mitchell to the Birmingham Black Barons for a used team bus. TRIBOU: Bob Kendrick heads the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum there. A native of Talladega, Alabama, Scales now lives in New York City. The coming seasons brought many more signings. Born September 3, 1924 Bill Greason is the oldest player on this list. The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball. Many thanks to him. Contact SABR, https://sabr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/research-collection4_350x300.jpg, /wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sabr_logo.png. 65 In 2000, Major League Baseball supplied a grant to the Baseball Hall of Fame to conduct . I believe the oldest living Negro League ballplayer is Roosevelt Jackson. As it stands, Newcombe is the oldest living man to play in the Negro Leagues at their major-league level. 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. Keys bought the Giants franchise after the 1921 season and built the newly named Stars a stadium in '22. Data Provided By Marshall remembers occasionally playing 4 games a day when he was with the Philadelphia Stars and he says Satchel Paige was the fastest pitcher he ever saw. There was Oscar Charleston who hit .400 multiple times. In 1954, he signed with the Indianapolis Clowns at the age of 16. Soon he became involved in the Negro League Researchers and Authors Group and helped with an extensive study commissioned by the Hall of Fame and Major League Baseball. Tipping their caps: paying homage to Negro Leagues on their 100th anniversary. The SPORTS REFERENCE and STATHEAD trademarks are owned exclusively by Sports Reference LLC. He . Some defensive statistics Copyright Baseball Info Solutions, 2010-2022. Copyright 2020 NPR. As protests over racial injustice in the U.S. continue, Major League Baseball is marking the anniversary of the Negro Leagues. We have tools and resources that can help you use sports data. Major League Baseball was segregated from 1887 through 1946. Cronkite School at ASU I knew about it. Full-year historical Major League statistics provided by Pete Palmer and Gary Gillette of Hidden Game Sports. Lee lives in Washington, D.C. George Scales: One of the strongest-hitting 2nd basemen of his time and a .311 lifetime hitter, George played in the big-time for nearly 25 years with 6 different clubs. He was known to be a great hitter, but I don't think it was fully appreciated how pivotal he was to the Monarchs' defense.. But there are a group of researchers led by Gary Ashwill who are looking to change that. 1933 Homestead Grays, A family friend used to play for the Black Yankees, Bob Scott. The star pitcher for the Chicago American Giants of the Negro National League in the early 1920s was a young left-hander named Dave Brown. 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 . NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. You know their stories, like how Paige once told his outfielders to sit down while he struck out the side. Born average. Then I'll create my own. At that meeting, they created the Negro National League. All rights reserved. They played during the decline of the Negro leagues, after the beginning of integration. 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. Buck lives in Rocky Mount, N.C., where he owns a realty agency. 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. She lives in Grand Rapids, Mich. FORBES: The players traveled, and they had nowhere to stay because of the discrimination. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. A lot of the earlier versions of Negro league statistics only gave you batting averages, home runs, pitchers' won-lost records, basic stuff," Ashwill said. pic.twitter.com/qiMXrVD4RB. . 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). ", "So take a ballplayer like Monte Irvin, in 1948, who made $5,000 with the New YorkGiants," Lester said, "or $833.33 a month. The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball. Nat remembers a 31-game hitting streak as his best moment in baseball. For our latest update I checked through the mainstream daily newspapers in St. Louis and picked up three more St. Louis Stars games -- and Suttles homered in two of them.","type":"markdown"},{"__typename":"PhotoPart","caption":"The 1930 St. Louis Stars. Sam Streeter: The star pitcher for the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the 1930s, Sam pitched for the West in the inaugural Negro leagues All-Star game in 1933. 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.). Total Zone Rating and initial framework for Wins above Replacement calculations provided by Sean Smith. An additional 35 or so players played on a Negro league team after 1950. Find out more. Jackie Robinson had an immediate impact on baseball's short and long-term future. Allens best baseball memory is an unassisted triple play he made in the early 1930s. Many of the men that played in the last era of the Negro Leagues (1937-1957) died in the past 18 years, and a good portion in the past ten or eleven years. The service requires full JavaScript support in order to view this website. Our reasoning for presenting offensive logos. We present them here for purely educational purposes. List of Negro league baseball players who played in Major League Baseball. Don Newcombe (6/14/1926) played one season for the Newark Eagles before being allowed to sign with the Dodgers, where he went on to become the first person to win MVP and Cy Young in the same season (1956, the first year the Cy Young was introduced). He continued his research with others like Kevin Johnson, Dan Hirsch, and Scott Simkus. By August 1, 1947, three Major League teams had already integrated. Copyright 2000-2023 Sports Reference LLC. Yet there was still a feeling that many more had been missed. ","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.