MLB elevates Negro Leagues to Major League status

MLB elevates Negro Leagues to Major League status
17/12/2020
As an immediate result, the statistics and records of over 3,400 players will become a part of Major League Baseball’s history. 2020 is the year of the centennial celebration of the first of seven leagues active until 1948.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred announced that MLB is "correcting a longtime oversight in the game's history elevating the Negro Leagues to Major League status."

"With this action, MLB seeks to ensure that future generations will remember the approximately 3,400 players of the Negro Leagues as Major League-caliber ballplayers. Accordingly, the statistics and records of these players will become a part of Major League Baseball’s history," an official MLB release states.

Seven distinct leagues were known as Negro Leagues from 1920 to 1948. This year marks the centennial celebration of the founding of the first league, the eight-team Negro National League, governed by the National Association of Colored Professional Baseball Ball Clubs. The decline began with integration. Jackie Robinson was the first African American to join MLB when he made his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

The seven leagues featured 35 Hall of Famers

Read more: Past US Presidents celebrate Negro Leagues 100th anniversary