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Meet the Negro League Players Now Holding Baseball’s Top Records

Major League Baseball honors Negro League greatness​

By

James Michael Brodie,

 
AARP
Comments
Published June 19, 2024
the baltimore black sox baseball team poses for a portrait during the 1925 season
The Negro League Baltimore Black Sox pose for a team portrait during the 1925 season. Jud Wilson, standing second from right, is among the top five in MLB career and single-season batting averages.
Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images

Somewhere, iconic journalist Sam Lacy, who died in 2003 at 99, is watching his life’s work come to fruition as the Negro League baseball stars he wrote about are finally getting their day in the sun.

In 2020, Major League Baseball formally recognized several Negro Leagues, which existed between 1920 and 1948, as major leagues. Based on the independent Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee’s recommendations, MLB took the final step on May 29 and added the Negro Leagues’ statistics to the official historical database.

It is a victory for Black ballplayers whose excellence has historically been overlooked and intentionally ignored. It is a victory for the fans who watched those games and rooted for their heroes on warm summer days when baseball offered a respite from Jim Crow and separate but unequal.

And it is a victory for Lacy, the driving force behind efforts to tear down segregation in baseball. I had the honor of working with him during my tenure as editor of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper.

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For years, Lacy attempted to get MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to reverse the ban that prevented Black players from participating in the MLB. Landis ignored him. When Lacy became sports editor of the Afro, he continued his fight against segregation. Other Black papers followed his lead. After Landis died in 1944, Lacy reached out to Brooklyn Dodgers team president and general manager Branch Rickey. It was Rickey who signed Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers organization in 1945; Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947.

The new baseball database includes the Negro Leagues clubs’ won-lost records and their players’ statistics. The stats are drawn from seven leagues: the first Negro National League (1920–1931), the Eastern Colored League (1923–1928), the American Negro League (1929), the East-West League (1932), the Negro Southern League (1932), the second Negro National League (1933–1948) and the Negro American League (1937–1948).

To pay tribute to the Negro Leagues, MLB has scheduled a regular season game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Francisco Giants on June 20 at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. The stadium was once the home of the Birmingham Black Barons, who counted outfielder Willie Mays among its stars.

Mays, who died June 18 at 93, played 22 years in MLB, and recorded 3,283 hits in those 23 seasons. His 10 Negro League hits increase that total to 3,293, the 12th best in history. And Robinson’s career hits total rose from 1,518 to 1,567.

Other notable Negro League players who also played in MLB will see a boost in their stats.

Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso

Cuban star Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso’s total hits record climbs to more than 2,000, placing him among the elite in the sport. Miñoso is regarded as the Jackie Robinson of Latino players, according to Puerto Rican–born Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, who praised Miñoso in his 1998 autobiography.

satchel paige warns up for a game in nineteen fourty two.
Ninety-seven Negro League wins were added to Satchel Paige’s​ MLB record. In 1942, Paige, playing for the Kansas City Monarchs, warmed up at Yankee Stadium before a Negro League game.
Matty Zimmerman/AP Photo

Satchel Paige

Pitcher Satchel Paige’s record adds 97 Negro League wins to the 28 he earned in MLB with Cleveland, bringing his total to 125.

“There is no question that Satchel Paige was the greatest pitcher ever. If someone would say, ‘Name one fact that is beyond dispute,’ this would be it,” says George Walker, 88, a Hugoton, Kansas, native, who as a youngster saw the Kansas City Monarchs play. He just missed seeing Paige, as he had left for Cleveland. “We all knew who Paige was. Even the great pitcher Bob Feller would have said as much.”

Other notable additions to the record books are men who never had the opportunity to play in the majors.

This includes Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Charlie “Chino” Smith, Jud Wilson and Charles Blackwell, whose career and single-season batting averages place them among the top five in those categories. Gibson’s career .372 average places him in first place, ahead of MLB star Ty Cobb (.367). MLB player Rogers Hornsby (.358) is now sandwiched between Negro Leaguers Charleston (.363) and Wilson (.350).

Four Negro League players are now in the top five best single-season batting averages: Gibson (.466 in 1943), Smith (.451 in 1929), Charleston (.434 in 1921) and Blackwell (.432 in 1921), joining MLB player Hugh Duffy (.440 in 1894).

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josh gibson slides into home plate in nineteen fourty four.
Josh Gibson slides into home plate during the 1944 East-West Negro League All Star Game at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Gibson’​s career and single-season batting averages put him in first place.
Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images

Josh Gibson

“I’m sure Ty Cobb is rolling over in his grave over being second to Black Josh Gibson,” says Los Angeles–based historian Philip Hart, who has created documentaries on Black history. Cobb’s animus toward African Americans has been debated for years.

If there is one stat that is going to create a lot of conversation, it’s Gibson’s actual number of home runs. What is known is that he hit 174 home runs across 14 seasons. But others argue that the total could be closer to 1,000 if one were to factor in the exhibition games against white players, semipro games and other games.

The fan base for baseball is among the oldest of any of the major sports. In 2017, MarketWatch wrote: “The average age of a baseball viewer is 57, up from 52 in 2006. There won’t be a youth movement, either, as just 7 percent of baseball’s audience is below age 18.” Perhaps this is what makes such recognition important, says Hart.

“It is significant that Major League Baseball brings these statistics into the mainstream, and let’s face it, people who follow baseball tend to be stat driven,” he says.

oscar charleston, josh gibson, ted page and william “judy” johnson pose for a photo in nineteen fourty.
From left, Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Ted Page and William “Judy” Johnson pose for a photo during a Negro League game in San Francisco in 1940.
Clarence Gatson/Gado/Getty Images

Oscar Charleston

Born in 1896 in Indianapolis, Charleston was introduced to baseball as a batboy for his hometown team, the Indianapolis ABC’s. He joined the Army and played baseball in the Manila League while stationed in the Philippines. When he returned home, he signed with the ABC’s as a center fielder.

According to the Baseball Hall of Fame, he joined the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1933 and led the team to a championship in 1935 against the New York Cubans, hitting three home runs in the series.

He died Oct. 5, 1954, and was posthumously elected to the Hall of Fame in 1976.

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Charlie “Chino” Smith

charlie “chino” smith in a baseball uniform.
Charlie “​Chino” Smith batted .464 with the New York Lincoln Giants, leading the American Negro League in the team’s only season.
Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images

During his all-too-short life, Smith was regarded as one of the great sluggers in Negro League history, according to Baseball Reference, a source for baseball history. In 1925, Smith signed as a second baseman with the Brooklyn Royal Giants and hit .339. In 1927, Smith was moved to the outfield and hit .435 to lead the Eastern Colored League. He batted .464 as a star with the New York Lincoln Giants, leading the American Negro League in the team’s only season.

On July 5, 1930, in the first Negro League game played in New York’s Yankee Stadium, Smith hit two home runs and a triple in a 13-4 win over the Baltimore Black Sox, according to the Society for American Baseball Research.

Smith died Jan. 15, 1932, at 30.

Jud Wilson

According to the Hall of Fame, Ernest Judson Wilson’s home run blasts were so powerful he was nicknamed “Boojum” because of the sound his hits made when they collided with the outfield walls.

The World War I Army veteran played 21 seasons in his Negro Leagues career and batted over .400 three times. The third baseman played on some of the best Black baseball teams, including the Baltimore Black Sox, Homestead Grays, Pittsburgh Crawfords and Philadelphia Stars. Like many of his peers, he also played in the Cuban Winter League.

Wilson died June 24, 1963, and in 2006, he was posthumously inducted to the Hall of Fame.

Charles Blackwell

Charles H. Blackwell, often called “Rucker” by his peers, was born Dec. 12, 1894, in Brandenburg, Kentucky. He was highly regarded as a great contact hitter with a good eye at the plate and good power, according to the Buck O’Neil Project.

Blackwell played from 1915 to 1929, primarily with the St. Louis Stars and Indianapolis ABC’s. In 1919, he hit .364. His best season may have been in 1921, when he batted .432. He finished with a career batting average of .326.

Blackwell died April 22, 1935.

Walker and Hart welcome MLB’s acknowledgment of the Black leagues as a step to correct past wrongs, but lament that the recognition of the players comes long after many have died.

“It is significant, and it gives real legitimacy to the Negro Leagues. You are talking about players who were equal to or better than the white players but didn’t get the opportunity because of racism,” Hart says.

“It’s complicated,” Walker says. “Better late than never.”

As for Lacy, who well understood the myriad complexities surrounding a moment like this, I can’t help but think that he would have taken it all in stride. It would be on to the next story, the next battle, the next victory. This is your day as well, sir. I know you are smiling.

James Michael Brodie is a Baltimore-based writer, journalist and author. His books include Created Equal: The Lives and Ideas of Black American Innovators and Sweet Words So Brave: The Story of African American Literature.

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