Special to Sports News Highlights

(SNH) — Statistics, of course, only tell part of the story.

In this case, statistics are the story. Major League Baseball recently updated its record book to include known and verifiable statistics from various Negro Leagues from about 1920 to 1948.

It’s a groundbreaking move for baseball, incorporating some statistics that were once virtually unknown. A team of more than a dozen baseball statisticians and experts got together multiple times over the last couple of years to document and verify statistics from official Negro League games.

Fortunately, newspapers often reported box scores of Negro League games, which helped in preserving its history. In the 1920s, big city newspapers often reported Negro League games just as they did MLB games. During the Great Depression, presumably due to having a smaller staff, the documented box scores seem to have dropped off.

Historians, however, pieced together what they could. Baseball’s modern day “record book” first officially came together in the late 1960s when a special committee decided to recognize statistics from six major leagues – the National League, the American League, the American Association, the Union Association, Players’ League and the Federal League. Minor Leagues, of course, were not included.

Until this week, records from only those six leagues were included.

In 2020, when MLB delayed the start of the season and ultimately played just a 60-game schedule due to COVID-19, statisticians had an epiphany.

“The condensed 60-game season for the 2020 calendar year for the National League and American League prompted us to think that maybe the shortened Negro League seasons could come under the MLB umbrella, after all,” said John Thorn, MLB’s official historian.

The committee went to work, bringing in experts who have researched Negro League stats for years.

Being added to the baseball record book are individual and managerial stats from the first Negro National League (1920-31), Eastern Colored League (1923-28), American Negro League (1929), East-West League (1932), Negro Southern League (1932), second Negro National League (1933-48) and Negro American League (1937-48).

The so-called “barnstorming” exhibition games that Negro League players often appeared in – including all-star games against Major League Baseball teams – are not included.

The change means small changes to the current record book, like Willie Mays being credited for 10 additional hits for those he had while playing for the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons or Satchel Paige getting 28 more wins for when he was in the Negro Leagues. Jackie Robinson, who broke MLB’s color barrier with the Dodgers in 1947, gets to add his 49 hits with the 1945 Kansas City Monarchs.

Perhaps the player whose career is receiving the biggest boost is the legendary Josh Gibson. A Hall of Fame inductee in 1972, Gibson didn’t play in the majors due to baseball’s infamous color barrier that did not allow non-white players.

His statistics – as evidenced by his Hall of Fame selection – speak for themselves.

Gibson hit .446 for the Homestead Grays in 1943. It’s now considered the highest single season batting average in baseball history. The same Gibson is also the career batting leader at .372, bumping him ahead of Ty Cobb, who batted .366 and has been recognized as baseball’s career batting leader for nearly a century.

Gibson also has baseball’s career slugging percentage of .718, breaking Babe Ruth’s mark of .690.

Soon, MLB will announce all the new statistics in the database. More than 3,000 names are expected to be added to the list of “major league” baseball players.

Record book updates happen frequently as new information becomes available, holes are filled, and research is completed. In this case, MLB finally did the right thing, by truly changing the course of history.

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