How these newly included MLB stats recognize the legacies of Black players
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Robinson gets the first hit off Ford. It's a homer into the left-field stand.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Before Jackie Robinson became a civil rights hero, before he became widely regarded as a baseball hero, he broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: Here comes the pitch. And there goes a line drive to left field. Noren (ph) is after it. He leaps. It's over his head against the wall...
SHAPIRO: Robinson's decadelong MLB career with the Brooklyn Dodgers has become the stuff of legend.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #3: The wind-up - and here comes Robinson trying to steal home. He's safe, says the ump. He's out, says Yogi Berra. And brother, is Yogi hopping.
SHAPIRO: Before Robinson wore the No. 42 for the Dodgers, he wore No. 5 for the Kansas City Monarchs, a team in the Negro Leagues, because Black players were banned from the MLB. When Robinson signed with the Dodgers, it heralded an end to racial segregation in professional baseball. But even though MLB teams were integrated, official recordkeepers refused to acknowledge stats from the Negro Leagues for decades. Many have been fighting to change that.
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LARRY LESTER: I interviewed - I don't know how many - 80, 90 ballplayers, some several times. And they always felt like they were the equal of their Major League counterparts, and these statistics proved that to be true.
SHAPIRO: That's author and historian Larry Lester on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED in 2020. Lester is a co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and he's spent over 50 years compiling statistics from the Negro Leagues. It's been difficult because a lot of that data is incomplete or lost.
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LESTER: Before there was the internet, I would make daily trips to the library and read microfilmed newspapers, particularly the Black newspapers across the country, and make copies of the articles, editorials and the box scores and just compile them and put it - the data into a computer database that I created.
SHAPIRO: When we last talked with Lester a few years ago, the MLB had just announced a decision to recognize Negro League athletes as Major Leaguers. And now, stats from the Negro Leagues have officially been incorporated into the MLB's records, and it's reshaping the history of baseball. Josh Gibson now holds the all-time batting record, surpassing Ty Cobb.
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SHAPIRO: CONSIDER THIS - for generations, Black baseball players' contributions to the sport have been ignored. Now, their legacies are being recognized.
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SHAPIRO: From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro.
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SHAPIRO: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. It's not often that baseball is our lead story, but today's news was more than a century in the making. According to official statistics, Major League Baseball now has a new all-time batting leader. Josh Gibson played in the Negro Leagues before baseball was integrated. And for the first time, statistics from those players have been added to the official MLB record books. That means, as of today, Josh Gibson has dethroned the legend Ty Cobb. People have been fighting for decades to include Black players in these records. Here's Josh Gibson's great-grandson, Sean Gibson, speaking to MLB.com back in 2020.
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SEAN GIBSON: These guys played the game of baseball just like the white players did and did it just as well as the white players.
SHAPIRO: Larry Lester is a historian who spent about 50 years searching through old newspaper files to tabulate these records and arguing just how important they are to baseball history. Mr. Lester, welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
LESTER: Well, thank you for having me, Ari.
SHAPIRO: How good was Josh Gibson?
LESTER: Without a doubt, he was one of the greatest hitters, along with Mule Suttles, Turkey Stearnes and Oscar Charleston. These statistics validate his greatness. I mean, his home runs per at-bat ratio is similar to Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds and Babe Ruth. So that tells me and others that he was a legitimate home-run hitter and slugger - hit for a high average and seldom struck out, so he was the ideal model for the perfect slugger for any team.
SHAPIRO: You've spent your whole life documenting this history, going into the archives of public libraries, microfilms of old local newspapers. What is it like for you to see this day where, officially, the rankings are there, and they show the results of the work you've been doing for so many decades?
LESTER: Well, this is - it brings a lot of joy to my heart. It's a relief. I can exhale. Spent many hours in the library going through microfilm before there were online newspaper databases - I did it the hard way, making copies of every box score that I could find.
As an IT professional, I created a database. And even today, we have to manually input every box score. There's no app, no software that can scan a box score that will populate a spreadsheet. So every entry - every batter, at-bat, run, hit, double, triple, home run, walks, stolen bases, errors - have to be inputted manually. So it takes me roughly half an hour to input one game, and I've got over 16,000 games in my database.
SHAPIRO: Why is that work so important to you?
LESTER: Because I wanted to know the answer. I wanted to know if all the stories were true. Statistics are a shorthand for stories. So we work backwards here. I hear that Cool Papa Bell is great. I hear that Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson are great but cannot quantify it. And this is what motivated me to spend most of my life compiling these statistics from more than 450 Black newspapers.
And, you know, I was often told that African Americans were apathetic about their history and that information was not recorded, but that simply was not true. Starting in the 1920s, Black newspapers had box scores, even had play-by-plays, editorials, biographies about Black ballplayers. This was all there in the Black newspapers. It just had to be mined and processed.
SHAPIRO: Have you heard from any Ty Cobb fans who are upset today? Is anyone complaining that this is an apples-to-oranges comparison since segregation kept these players from ever facing each other?
LESTER: Well, no, I haven't had any critics, but there's no reason to criticize what is being done here. Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, like many others, did not play against a Black player. Let's remember that Babe Ruth never hit a home run off a Major League Black pitcher. And ditto for Ty Cobb. He never played against a Black Major League player. Now, the same argument can be said that Josh Gibson never hit a home run off a white Major League player. So we are comparing apples to apples or Sunkist to orange juice, or whatever.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
LESTER: It all works. The fact is they played in two separate universes - one Black, one white - but they played between the white foul lines. And let's keep in mind that the Negro League teams played in Major League ballparks. They ordered their bats from the Louisville Slugger manufacturer. They used a Wilson 150CC baseball. They ordered their gloves and uniforms from the same manufacturer - Spalding or Reach. They had the same equipment. They played under the same rules in the same ballparks. The only difference was the color of their skin.
SHAPIRO: To return to Josh Gibson, his life was full of tragedy. His wife died giving birth to twins, and he died when he was only 35 years old - less than three months before Jackie Robinson broke the MLB color barrier. What do you think this moment means for his legacy?
LESTER: I just - qualifies some of the struggles that he had to go through - him and other Black ballplayers who never received the recognition that they deserve. It saddens me that him and many others did not get to enjoy this glory of recognition. You know, we talked about, you know, Josh Gibson and his legacy and Satchel Paige and others, but so many, many, many other Negro League players - their relative anonymity is a cruel joke for every sports fan in America.
And hopefully, this statistical project by Major League Baseball will wake up their consciousness and recognize their greatness. And, you know, I welcome the pushback from the Babe Ruth families or the Ty Cobb families or whoever it may be. But we have to remember that the Negro Leagues were a product of systemic racism by Major League Baseball.
SHAPIRO: Well, Larry Lester, congratulations on reaching this day, and thank you for talking with us about it.
LESTER: Oh, you're welcome, Ari.
SHAPIRO: He's an author and historian and co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
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SHAPIRO: This episode was produced by Kai McNamee and Vincent Acovino with audio engineering by Ted Mebane. It was edited by Russell Lewis and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.
And one more thing before we go. You can now subscribe to the CONSIDER THIS newsletter. Like the podcast, we'll help you break down a major story of the day. You'll also get to know our producers and hosts, and we'll share moments of joy from the ALL THINGS CONSIDERED team. You can sign up at npr.org/considerthisnewsletter.
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SHAPIRO: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.
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